英文摘要 |
As an avant-garde thinker, Wang Tao (1828-1897) was a scholar, a newspaperman, an educator, a political critic and a historian. During the process of China's modernization, he was devoted to cultural exchanges and the Reformist Movement. The purpose of this paper is to study the interactions between and consequent development of Wang's thought and that of the intellectuals of the Meiji Restoration, such as Masanao Nakamura (1832-1891), and Senjin Oka (1833-1914).Among the modern Chinese intellectuals who argued for assimilating Western knowledge, Wang identified himself with Wei Yuan (1794-1857) and considered himself a vanguard in comparison with Kang YouWei (1858-1927) and Huang ZunXian (1848-1905). Going abroad was a turning point in Wang's life. His belief in strengthening a country through political reformation attracted the attention of the intellectuals of the Meiji Restoration. When Wang left for Japan in 1879, the Meiji Restoration had just begun. The Japanese were absorbed in studying Western civilization in order to introduce reforms. Wei's two books, Sheng Wu Ji and Hai Guo Tu Zhi, were introduced during the late Tokugawa Bakuhu period. Wei's central ideas in coastal defense, ”to learn from foreign tribes their special skills in order to subdue them,” awakened many Japanese intellectuals and politicians to the importance of knowing the Western world. Wang's Pu Fa Zhan Ji (Commentaries on the Franco-Prussian War) also became an essential reference for the Japanese both in and out of government who were intent on understanding the trends in world affairs. The new thoughts of Wei Yuan and Wang Tao complimented each other in the modernization processes of both Japan and China, and acted as a bridge for the communication between the intellectual fields of the two countries.The main topics of this paper are as follows: (1) to discuss how Nakamura and Oka responded to the reformation ideas advocated by Wang by exploring new historical materials and analyzing their comments on Wang to make a clear distinction between the thoughts of both sides; (2) to compare how they maintained the values of traditional Confucianism, and how they absorbed Western knowledge, by using new historical data to discuss the interactions of the intellectuals of both countries and the changes of their thoughts in the process of modernization. |