中國的隱逸‧日本的隱逸：試論夏目漱石的《草枕》

Seclusion as a concept generated by China in addiction to related lifestyles results in the gap between seclusion in China and seclusion in Japan. The former altered in terms of eras. The hermits in China used to live in seclusion of the current society in pursuit of sublimation due to avoidance of politics and/or of vulgar life via criticisms or dissent. Some chose to enjoy privacy by abandoning the life as an official. Despite the diversified seclusions, those hermits in China presented a lifestyle against officials. The latter presented an explicit pessimistic motivation covering the transience of Japanese literature. Unlike seclusion in China, seclusion in Japan lacked the explicit confrontation but the detestation caused by the unknown exclusion toward the vulgar society. Regarding the values toward the vulgarity, the detestation prior to criticisms was an emotional expression. Seclusion in China was caused by unsatisfactory politics whereas seclusion in Japan was driven by Buddhism and transience. The latter was a bi-layer structure consisting of both retiring from the world and leaving the Buddhism. The former refers to entering the Buddhism by retiring from the vulgar world and the latter refers to leaving the Buddhism since it is also a society. Seclusion in China was a private lifestyle with the whole family members and relatives, but seclusion in Japan was an independent lifestyle without any companion. Following the Japanese seclusion, Kusa-makura by Natsume Souseki was a paradigm of the modern seclusion in pursuit of a world free of worries and bonds of the vulgar world, i.e. an inhuman world specified by Souseki refers to a purified world free of inevitable worried in the real vulgar world. However, Kusa-makura is a novel with flaws since it presented an inhuman world in the first place but returned to a human world in the end. The hero unable to draw the portrait of Ms. Nami the heroine was finally able to draw once he identified the emotion of pity on her face at the end of the novel. Pity as a human held by Ms. Nami evidences that inhuman cannot finish the whole story. Still, if human dominated the novel, Kusa-makura would be identical with those popular novels, so Souseki accomplished this work by presenting subtle rather than excessive human. A world of seclusion presented by Kusa-makura healing the worn-out minds of modern Japanese intellects still remains in the minds of Japanese.