Work outline

The protagonist Nai Haiwen-san was born in an old samurai family in Shizuoka Prefecture. He said goodbye to his old mother in the country and went to Tokyo alone to live in his uncle's house in Sun Bing Garden. After finishing his studies, he became a junior official in the office. Wensan's uncle often goes out to do business, and only his aunt A Zheng and two children (a boarding school) are at home. A is the ex-wife of Maccabee, a typical utilitarian and snob. At first, she thought Wensan was promising and decided to give it to her daughter Asher, who is five years younger than Wensan. Ashi is very handsome and has been the apple of her mother's eye since she was a child. When she grew up, she became a spoiled and willful girl. Influenced by the so-called "civilized" social atmosphere at that time, she was educated in the new era of capitalism full of foreign flavor in the early Meiji period. With her natural intelligence, she seems to be excellent in study and art, but in fact she is very shallow and doesn't pay much attention to the integrity of Wen San. Wen San fell in love with Asher, but never had the courage to show her love and was unhappy.

In the administrative reform two years later, Wen San, who was not good at sucking up to his boss, was dismissed. A Zheng's attitude towards Wen San suddenly plummeted. The day after Wen San was dismissed, she made rude remarks, scolded Wen Sanyi, and later often criticized him. Although Asher defended Wensan at that time, he soon became close to Wensan's colleague Honda Sheng. Honda Sheng is an experienced person who is good at playing tricks on flies. In the administrative reform, he was not removed from his post, but was promoted to a higher level and became a section chief. 165438+1On October 2nd, Honda invited A Zheng's family to Tuanziban to see chrysanthemums, but Ashi gladly went there, which made Wen San extremely upset.

After that, Honda and A Zheng became more and more close, and mocked Wen Sanjin. Ash suggested Wen San go to Honda to help him get his job back. However, Wen San doesn't want to talk to Honda, a vulgar person who only knows how to flatter his superiors. To this end, Wen San and Asher had a quarrel. He felt that he could no longer live in Tian Yuan's house, so he decided to give Ash a piece of advice and left her house resolutely.

works appreciation

Floating clouds, published in 1887, is the first excellent novel in the history of modern Japanese literature and consists of three parts. Because the author was still an unknown literary youth at that time, the first and second books were published in the name of Pingnei Xiaoyao.

The work successfully created four vivid characters. If we regard A Sheng's utilitarianism as the representative of the old ideas in feudal times, then Honda is a defender of the seemingly innovative old ideas, and A Sheng is just a floating cloud between them. The works reflect the distress of Japanese intellectuals in the early Meiji period, expose the darkness of the officialdom in the Meiji era and the indifference of the world, and criticize all kinds of shallow so-called "civilization" phenomena in the society at that time that simply imitated western society. Japanese literary circles highly praised this masterpiece of realism, which is famous in the history of literature. The History of Modern Japanese Literature written by Nakamura Hikaru and others said: "The style adopts the fresh and consistent topics that first appeared in Japan, skillfully uses the realism techniques learned from Russian novels, and accurately and realistically describes modern society and its characters." This novel has a great influence on the later Japanese creation and the development of modern literature, thus making the author one of the pioneers of modern Japanese literature.

Note: The above is excerpted from Appreciation of Modern Japanese Literary Masterpieces published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press in 2003.