The Master in the Clouds: Imagining Li Yu in Early Modern Japan

Attribution 4.0 United States License. This journal is published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Japanese Language and Literature Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.213 ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)


Introduction
"Li Yu, or Liweng as he called himself, lived by the West Lake. He was a wicked figure who was good at flattering people. Mingling with patrons, he enjoyed writing plays and novels, but they were extremely pornographic. ... He surely deserved to fall into the Hell of Pulling Tongues." 1 This exceptionally bitter critique describes the early modern Chinese popular writer and publisher Li Yu (李漁 1611-1680), known also as Liweng (笠翁) in Chinese or Ryūō (笠翁) in Japanese. His works of poetry, fiction, and plays circulated widely during and after his lifetime in the Qing dynasty . Not only within China, Li Yu also enjoyed great fame in Japan since the 1690s when his works were introduced to Japanese readers of the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). This negative comment above on Li Yu's characteristics is only one of many from the Qing dynasty and even later times, but as Li Yu's popularity then suggests, he was well-received among his readers nonetheless. His literary works were reproduced in various forms in Japanese and captivated Japanese intellectuals of the time. Li Yu's impact in Japan extended beyond literary production-his edited work Jieziyuan huazhuan ( 芥 子 園 画 伝 The mustard seed garden manual of painting, 1679, Jp. Kaishien gaden) was considered by early modern artists to be the first manual to have introduced literati painting (Jp. bunjinga 文人画, also known as Southern School painting or nanga 南画) to Japan.
In this article, I argue that the reproduction and interpretation of Li Yu's fictional works as well as Jieziyuan huazhuan in Tokugawa Japan played a key role in the imagination of Li Yu as one of the greatest Chinese masters at that time. I do so by revisiting the evolution of Li Yu's reception in Japan. An array of textual and visual sources reveal that Li Yu was interpreted as the author of Jieziyuan huazhuan, a master of literati painting, and furthermore, an expert of various arts; in the meantime, his I do not intend to argue against the literary value of Li Yu's works, but I also would like to turn away from interpretations of Li Yu's works or translations, adaptations, as well as parodies of his works in Japan, to focus instead on how the appreciation of him was formed in Tokugawa Japan. As Pierre Bourdieu noted regarding the value of cultural production, "the producer of the value of the work of art is not the artist but the field of production as a universe of belief which produces the value of the work of art as a fetish by producing the belief in the creative power of the artist." 6 Today, Li Yu is one of the most celebrated intellectuals in China. A huge body of academic and non-academic texts analyzes and promotes not only his writing techniques in his fictional works, but also his concepts of lifestyle. 7 Some might even consider him a cultural icon, a reputation drastically different from that of his own time, as is suggested in the quote in the beginning of this paper. 8 These changes in the reception of Li Yu was a reflection of the changing aesthetics, material, and more importantly, the ideological atmosphere throughout the eighteenth to twentieth century in both Japan and China. In a sense, Li Yu's value was created by his admirers and worshippers, as well as the numerous fictional works that were inspired by him.
Tracing the transformation of Li Yu's reputation throughout early modern Japan provides an alternative angle for observing early modern Japanese literary and cultural history. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a time of identity searching for many Tokugawa intellectuals. On the one hand, Nativist thinkers (Jp. kokugakusha 国学者) were eager to establish the Japanese identity through literature and knowledge; on the other, as the commercial exchange with China rapidly developed and access to Chinese knowledge became easier, intellectuals were learning from all kinds of Chinese literature and art, from vernacular fiction to poetry, from calligraphy to painting. 9 Against such a background, Li Yu was not the only Chinese figure to have been turned into a subject of worship by Japanese intellectuals. For instance, in the 1830s, another Chinese popular writer Luo Guanzhong 羅貫中 (1334-?, Jp. Ra Kanchū) was admired as the author of numerous vernacular novels that he did not actually write, including the famous Shuihuzhuan (水滸伝 Water margin, sixteenth century, Jp. Suikoden) and Sanguozhi (三国志 Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 1522, Jp. Sangokushi). 10 Although commercial ships brought more Chinese books to Japan, there was still a vast information gap that could only be filled with assumption and imagination between Japan and China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
From the standpoints of modern-day literary and cultural history, we can now see the repertoire of texts and images that mentioned and described these Chinese figures (or in some cases, fabricated representation of historical figures) as historical interpretation made by people in the past that was based on what they read and heard. Here I borrow the historicist framework from Frank Ankersmit, who in Meaning, Truth, and Relevance in Historical Representation (2012) holds that historical representation is ultimately a matter of aspect and a rational aesthetics. He writes: "Representation takes priority over interpretation in the historical text: there can be interpretation only after there has first been a representation and therefore an either real or imaginary reality represented by the text." 11 In this sense, the Japanese texts and images regarding Li Yu function as self-generative historical representation upon which new interpretations were constantly being created. In reading into these texts and images as the historical representation of Li Yu's existence in Japan, albeit abstract and distant, I avoid interpreting them as the evidence of Li Yu's cultural value but focus instead on the changes and developments of early modern Japanese intellectuals' interpretation of Li Yu and, ultimately, why and how such changes happened.

A Brief Introduction of Li Yu
Born to a rich merchant family in Zhejiang, China in 1611, Li Yu spent his early years studying the Confucian classics to become a bureaucratliteratus (Ch. shidafu 士大夫). He sat for the imperial civil service examinations but failed after several attempts. Constant war between the Ming and Manchurian courts forced him to escape into the mountains with his family in 1644, where he first found his fondness for a reclusive life. 12 After the Qing dynasty began, he did not take any more imperial examinations, but instead sought shelter in literary production. He designed his own residences and gardens where he pursued the dream of a "mountain man" (Ch. shanren 山人) wishing to "redefine his own identity apart from the official sphere," argues S. E. Kile. 13 Li Yu documented some of his ideas on aesthetics and lifestyle in his Xianqing ouji 閑情偶寄 (Casual notes of the mood, 1671) which later became a part of his essay collection Liweng yijiayan 笠翁一家言 (Liweng's own words, print year unknown). During his forties, Li Yu started writing fiction and plays and quickly became a popular name among readers beyond the literati class. His fictional works usually portray didactic and romantic stories between talented young men and beautiful girls, a form that is often referred to as the scholar-beauty story (Ch. caizi jiaren 才子佳人). 14 In 1669, Li Yu built his residence, the Mustard Seed Garden (Ch. Jieziyuan 芥子園), in Nanjing, where in the same year he also constructed a garden and opened a publishing house under the same name. "Jieziyuan" later became Li Yu's persona in Japan, even though this was only his home for a very short period of time.
The critique on Li Yu's patronage quoted at the beginning of this paper, while seemingly unsparing, is not baseless. Li Yu was not strictly a bureaucrat-official nor a literatus (wenren 文人) since he did not take the imperial examinations in the Qing court. Although deeply involved in literary and artistic production, Li Yu was, in reality, a merchant; but he maintained a close relationship with many influential and resourceful bureaucrat-literati. According to a 2006 study by Huang Qiang, Li Yu was an active member of the social circles in the Jiangnan region as well as in Beijing. 15 His abundant letter correspondence with bureaucrat-literati and merchants indicates that his writing career and hobby of garden building were funded mainly by these friends. He would write to them for financial support during difficult times. 16 Li Yu also invited his famous friends and patrons to contribute essays and poems in his collections, then advertised these collections in their names to attract more readers. Because of Li Yu's efforts in gaining patronage, the Chinese writer and scholar Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881-1936) referred to Li Yu as bangxian 幇閑, a word that is more than likely taken from the Japanese word 幇間 hōkan or taikomochi which used to refer to male entertainers in the brothels and restaurants of Yoshiwara. 17 This label indicates that Li Yu's interest in profiting was still perceived negatively in twentieth-century China. Cashing in on his cultural production, Li Yu's publications catered to the popular taste during his time and continued to garner readers even after his death. As S. E. Kile well summarizes, Li Yu "combined the innovative production of easily reproducible cultural products with the personal, strategic marketing of those products." 18 Although deeply involved in commercial production, Li Yu may have maintained a spiritual pursuit as he consistently expressed in his writings his longings for a reclusive life in the mountains. For example, in a story titled "Wenguolou 聞過楼" (Tower of faultfinding) from Li Yu's anthology 十二楼 (Ch. Shi'erlou, Twelve towers, 1658), his protagonist is tricked by his rich bureaucrat friend into moving to a small but elegant home in the mountains where he reads and writes as he pleases, as well as assisting his friend on courtly matters. 19 About this story, literary scholar Sun Kaidi in "Li Liweng yu Shi'erlou" (1935) wrote that the work bears many parallels with Li Yu's personal experience. Furthermore, Patrick Hanan in The Invention of Li Yu (1988) considers the story Li Yu's "halfserious plea for patronage." 20 Li Yu's rich friends funded the construction of his residence and gardens, and his enjoyment of these places is recorded in Xianqing ouji in detail. His poems Yiyuan shibian (伊園十便 Ten advantages of Yiyuan, 1649) and Yiyuan shieryi (伊園十二冝 Twelve pleasures of Yiyuan,1649) depict the pleasure of country life. These poems eventually became the theme of the famous picture album Jūbin jūgijō (十 便十宜帖 Ten advantages and ten pleasures, 1771) by the Japanese literati painter Ike Taiga (池大雅 1723-1776).
However, as is equally obvious from his essays and poems, his life was not exactly reclusive. His residence Jieziyuan, for example, was not so far away from the busy city life of Jinling; he trained his own theater troupe that performed for his guests when they gathered at banquets in Jieziyuan. 21 Such a posturing of reclusion found its parallel among early modern Japanese intellectuals. In fact, since as early as the Japanese medieval period (1185-1603), educated Japanese elites already incorporated themes of reclusion in their poems and paintings. 22 The selfpresentation of seeking reclusion was one of the key factors that contributed to Li Yu's popularity in early modern Japan, along with the association between literati painting and a hermit lifestyle. 23 Interpreting Li Yu as a Nanga Master As introduced above, in Qing China, Li Yu was recognized more as a popular writer, a publisher, and a merchant; but in Japan, Li Yu gained another title-the master of literati painting. Through an examination of the circulation and reproduction of texts related to Li Yu in the middle and late Tokugawa period in Japan, in the following paragraphs I trace the Japanese reinterpretation of Li Yu that remembered him-whether intentionally or not-as the author of Jieziyuan huazhuan.
Jieziyuan huazhuan was first printed in Nanjing in 1679 and was officially imported into Japan in 1723. 24 The original Jieziyuan huazhuan contains altogether three books, each consisting of five to six volumes. According to the preface of Jieziyuan huazhuan chuji (芥子園画伝初集 book one) written by Li Yu in 1679, Li Yu's son-in-law, Shen Xinyou (沈 心友 birth and death years unknown), as well as artists Wang Gai (王概 1645-1710) and Wang Shi (王蓍 1649-1737), were the main producers of the manual. When Jieziyuan huazhuan chuji was published, Li Yu had moved to his new garden in Hangzhou and had fallen so ill that he could barely get up from bed. 25 The first book was published in the winter of 1679 shortly before Li Yu passed away in the following year. Twenty years later in 1701, Shen and Wang published two sequels, Huazhuan erji (画伝二集 book two) and Huazhuan sanji (画伝三集 book three), through Shen's own publishing house. 26 However, the Japanese interpretation of Li Yu witnessed a drastic transformation in the years to come.
The earliest official records of Jieziyuan huazhuan can be found in Bakufu Shomotsukata Nikki ( 幕 府 書 物 方 日 記 Diaries of the Bakufu magistrate of books, 1706-1857). It indicates that in 1723, the Shogun Yoshimune 吉宗 (1716-1751) acquired the first book of Jieziyuan huazhuan. 27 In this record, Jieziyuan huazhuan was referred to both as Kaishien gaden and Ryūō gaden 笠翁画伝, which is a curious point that I shall return to later. In the same year, a collection of Li Yu's literary works, Liweng yijia yan , entered Japan through Nagasaki according to Shōhaku sairai mokuroku 商舶載来目録 (Catalog of books brought by trading ships, entry from 1723). 28 It consists of Li Yu's poems, essays, prefaces, travel diaries, and letter correspondence with his friends. During the following years, his fiction and dramatic compilations gradually entered Japan as well, such as Liweng chuanqi shizhong 笠翁伝奇十種 (Liweng's ten plays) and Shi'erlou (Twelve Towers), the collection of short stories I referenced earlier. 29 There are other sources from early modern Japan that mention when Jieziyuan huazhuan was introduced to Japan, but none seems to match the record in Shomotsukata nikki. For example, in Gajō yōryaku (画乗要略 A brief summary of the history of painting, 1831), the Tokugawa-period painter Shirai Kayō (白井華陽 ?-1836) wrote in an annotation explaining the origin of nanga that this style of painting was first introduced to Japan during the Genroku period (1688-1704) when Ogyū Sorai (荻生徂徠 1666-1728) obtained a copy of Jieziyuan huazhuan. But another text from the Meiji period, Un'en ryakuden (雲煙略伝 A short biography of clouds and smoke,1874) by Kiyomiya Hidekata (清宮秀堅 1809-1879) claimed that Jieziyuan huazhuan was brought to Japan by Ōbaku monks during the Kan'ei period (1624-1644), which was before the manual was even compiled. Another example of such discrepancies occurs in a 1712 painting textbook written by Hayashi Moriatsu (林守篤 birth and death years unknown) where he indicates that he had already read Jieziyuan huazhuan. 30 After the introduction of Jieziyuan huazhuan to Japan in the early 1700s, the reprinted Japanese version was crucial in establishing the image of Li Yu as the author of the manual. First, the Japanese reprint of Jieziyuan huazhuan made alterations to the publication and author information in a way that amplified Li Yu's contribution to the making of this manual. In 1748, a publishing house in Kyoto, Kōnamirō (河南楼), made the first Japanese version of Kaishien gaden, a print that would later become the most widely circulated version of the manual in Japan. 31 This print reproduced only a part of the original contents in the Chinese print. 32 Major changes were made to the inner cover and publication information of the Kōnamirō print as well. In the Chinese print of Book One, the header of the inner cover writes "Commented and Edited by Master Li Liweng" (李笠翁先生論定), a tribute to Li Yu from his son-in-law and the artists. In book two and book three, however, the header on the inner covers was changed to "Co-edited by famous masters in the universe" (宇内諸名家合 訂) in the Chinese print. Since Book Two and Book Three were published twenty years after Li Yu's death, it would only seem natural that the authors mentioned neither Li Yu as the commentator nor Jieziyuan as the publisher, since they were published through Shen Xinyou's publishing house, as mentioned before. This change in the header was reflected in all three editions that were printed throughout the Qing dynasty, and the absence of Li Yu in Books Two and Book Three indicate the lack of connection between Li Yu and the rest of the manual.
But the Japanese reproduction, Kaishien gaden, gave all the spotlight to Li Yu. The reprints produced by Kōnamirō only credited Li Yu, where the original "Co-edited by famous masters in the universe" remained "Commented and edited by master Li Liweng." Although it did not claim Li Yu as the author of the manual, such a header on the inner cover significantly weakens the role of either Shen Xinyou or the other artists, but instead emphasized alone Li Yu's contribution to the manual. The woodblocks made by Kōnamirō were later passed on to another large publishing house in Kyoto. 33 With the manual being reprinted multiple times over the following years, the header (李笠翁先生論定 Commented and edited by master Li Liweng) was reproduced in all the later prints. As a result, more and more Japanese readers became used to associating the painting manual with Li Yu's persona "Kaishien" instead of the actual authors of Jieziyuan huazhuan. 34 Furthermore, accounts from intellectuals and literati painters of the Tokugawa period more than likely reinforced the notion that Li Yu was the creator of this series of manual. In various texts, Jieziyuan huazhuan was referred to as Ryūō gaden (笠翁画伝 Liweng's painting manual) and was held as one of the highest authorities of literati painting. For example, in the aforementioned painting textbook Gasen, Hayashi Moriatsu uses "立翁画伝" to refer to the manual. 35 Moreover, in a 1724 essay collection Hitorine (ひとりね Sleeping Alone), Yanagisawa Kien (柳沢淇園 1703-1758), a famous intellectual and literati painter, writes that "the book that people who learn to paint should always read is Ryūō gaden." 36 In another section where he discusses a certain shade of yellow, he refers to Jieziyuan huazhuan for the use of this color while calling those who mismatched the name and color "illiterate" (Jp. monmō 文盲). 37 Yanagisawa's comments thus signify the authoritative status of Jieziyuan huazhuan at that time.
In the late eighteenth century, Li Yu's reputation further grew. Not only did his Japanese admirers perceive him as the author of Kaishien gaden, but they also worshiped him as a true master of literati painting. In Hōreki shojaku mokuroku (宝暦書籍目録 Publishing catalog of the Hōreki period, 1754), a catalog of titles published between 1751 and 1754, Li Yu is listed as the only author of all four books of Jieziyuan huazhuan while the names of Shen Xinyou and other artists are nowhere to be found. 38 Meanwhile, in Genminshin shoga jinmei roku (元明清書画人名録 Catalog of Chinese calligraphers and painters of the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, 1777) edited by several renowned literati artists in the middle Tokugawa period, Li Yu is listed among Qing Dynasty painters. The annotation by his name indicates that Li Yu "excelled at painting mountains and rivers, flowers and trees, as well as writing cursive style calligraphy." 39 These are only a few of the many examples that held Li Yu as the author of Jieziyuan huazhuan, but his reputation in Japan exceeded far beyond this image.
A more widely known introduction of Li Yu comes from a biography of him in Morokoshi kidan (唐土奇談 Peculiar tales from China, 1790) written by Hatanaka Kansai (畠中寛斎 1752-1801). Hatanaka Kansai was a Confucian scholar but was better known as a kyōka (狂歌, mad verse) poet. He went by the name Dōmyaku sensei (銅脈先生) in most of his kyōka poems. While Morokoshi kidan introduces several famous Chinese figures and their stories, its focus is actually on theater performance, shibai (芝居), as the author explains in the preface. Apart from this biography of Li Yu, the rest of the book is Hatanaka's attempt at rewriting Japanese theater according to a Chinese style. Considering that Li Yu wrote numerous plays and discussed his understanding of theater in some of his essays, such as Xianqing ouji, it is understandable that Hatanaka Kansai would use Li Yu's works as the example for his adaptation of Japanese kyōgen plays.
In the beginning of the first volume, next to a portrait and a poem describing Li Yu, Hatanaka writes: Master Ri Ryūō lived during the Kangxi period of the Qing dynasty; he lived by a lake and called himself "the old man of Yiyuan." He was originally from a rich family; he had no interest in becoming a bureaucrat. His talents were above all others and his writings had his unique style. He was good at calligraphy and painting, as well as music, rhythm, instruments, and songs-there was nothing he could not do well. The Emperor Kangxi summoned him to the court and offered him a position, but he refused to take it.

李笠翁先生は、清の康煕年中の人にして、湖上に住り、伊園老人と号す。元 より家富と、仕官を好まず、天性其才人に勝れ、文章一家の風をなす。書を よくし画をよくし、また音律絃歌に至るまでよくせずといふ事なし。康煕皇 帝これを召して、官位を授んとの詔あれど、辞して受ず。 40
This "biography" was mostly fabricated. Li Yu was quite keen to become a court bureaucrat before his multiple failed attempts at the imperial exams. He was never summoned by any emperor for any position-in fact, some of his works were banned during Kangxi's reign for their erotic and political contents. 41 As for the portrait of Li Yu in this book, it was mostly based on imagination. In a 2000 article, Yoshida Eri identifies the similarities between this portrait and several other ones of famous bureaucrat-literati in the past, such as Su Shi and Sima Qian. As Yoshida argues, most elements in this portrait, such as the hat, the tall chair, and the robe, were common in portraits of bureaucrat-literati but do not fit Li Yu's status since he was a merchant. 42 The poem on the next page that describes how Li Yu met with the emperor in simple clothing was written by a person who was actually fictional. 43 Nonetheless, Li Yu was believed to have been a great master of various arts and a hermit of esteemed characteristics. He even appeared in fictional works as an authority on the arts.
Around 1837, Miki Kussai (三木屈斎, birth and death years unknown) published a work of comedic fiction Shoka hitsudoku dehōdai (諸家必読 出放題 Mouthing off) that set its stage at an 1836 celebrity banquet where famous literati of the Edo city gathered, a shogakai (書画会 gathering of artists and writers). 44 Little information about Miki Kussai is available, but he was likely a Confucian scholar from Akita and actively participated in shogakai banquets. 45 This compilation of short stories portrays fictionalized scenes where Chinese masters lectured Japanese literati, the list of whose names takes up quite a few pages, on their horrendous art works. In the stories, three Chinese masters of painting and calligraphy stumble across a banquet and decide to join the Japanese masters, only to find themselves in complete disappointment. Li Yu is consistently referred to as Kaishien. In chapter one, he appears as a literati painting master and scolds Tani Bunchō (谷文晁 1763-1841), one of the most prestigious artists of the time, for his dreadful painting skills. In chapter five, Li Yu castigates Japanese intellectuals for their lack of skills in painting and fiction writing and speaks of himself as a dedicated writer and a loyal follower of the ancient saints (Jp. sentetsu 先哲). Whether this fictionalized confrontation was purely for fun or the half-serious criticism from the author Kussai as a Confucian scholar, the appearance of Li Yu as the most authoritative master shows evidence of his high status among Japanese intellectuals of the time.

Imagining a Reclusive Writer
The Japanese reprint of Jieziyuan huazhuan had a great impact during the Tokugawa period when literati painting became one of the most popular painting styles among Japanese intellectuals, and the close connection between literati painting and living a reclusive life as an artist certainly played an important role in Li Yu's image as a painting master with a hermit spirit. 46 Moreover, his longing for living a reclusive life that found a voice in his poems and works of fiction was also a key contributor to the reinterpretation of him in Tokugawa Japan as a reclusive writer. This stance of longing for reclusion, besides the didactic moral teachings and extensive use of vernacular Chinese language, attracted Japanese intellectuals, and may have even been the reason that Li Yu was so popular among fiction writers in the late Tokugawa period.
Li Yu's famous fictional works include Shi'erlou, Wusheng xi (無声 戯 Silent opera, 1658), and presumably the classic erotic novel Rouputuan (肉蒲団 The carnal prayer mat, Jp. Nikubuton, written year unknown). 47 As popular fiction (yomihon) gained increasing readers and attracted more writers to produce them, many works of popular fiction were adapted from Chinese vernacular novels, including Li Yu's works. 48 By the 1840s, there were at least twenty yomihon works adapted from Li Yu's fictional works. Most of them were written by the most popular writers of the time such as Ishikawa Masamochi ( 石 川 雅 望 1754-1830), Santō Kyōden, and Kyokutei Bakin. 49 A glance at Bakin's accounts of Li Yu reveals his admiration towards Li Yu. Bakin appreciated Li Yu for his lifestyle, his talent, and more importantly, his "hermit" spirit, the evidence of which can be found throughout Bakin's diaries as well as several of his yomihon that drew direct inspiration from Li Yu's works. 50 For example, in an 1833 letter to a close friend Tonomura Jōsai (殿村篠斎 1779-1874), Bakin writes: Ri Ryūō lived in the beginning of the Qing dynasty. He built his house at the West Lake, hence he was called "the old man on the lake." One might wonder what he did for a living, but he was born into a rich family. He built his study by the lake and built the window [in the shape of a fan]. He sat under this window, at his desk, and enjoyed writing poems, essays, fiction, and plays. As such, one can imagine how refined and elegant he was.
This description of Li Yu is based on his introduction in the aforementioned Morokoshi kidan, with additional information that was most likely drawn from Li Yu's poems and essays. In Bakin's imagination, Li Yu was the representation of elegance and refinement, fūryū 風流, one of the most celebrated characteristics of Japanese intellectuals of the time. 52 Furthermore, in a preface of Bakin's most popular work Nansō satomi hakkenden (南総里見八犬伝 Eight dogs, 1814), he praised how Li Yu refused to bend his will to the rich and powerful, but instead chose a reclusive life and only focused on writing freely (Jp. inkyo hōgen 隠居放 言). 53 Ironically, Li Yu's patronage was mostly the rich and powerful-his merchant and court official friends funded most of his publishing and garden building projects. Nevertheless, Bakin's admiration for Li Yu was so well known at the time that he was thought to have taken upon Li Yu's penname as his own. 54 Bakin's contemporaries repeatedly compared him to Li Yu for his achievements in popular fiction. One of his closest friends, Kimura Mokurō (木村黙老 1774-1857), a renowned scholar and highlevel bakufu official, once complimented Bakin as "the Ri Ryūō of our country" (皇朝の李笠翁). 55 However, it is also worth mentioning that some of Bakin's accounts on Li Yu were self-contradictory. In the same letter written to Jōsai in 1833, Bakin mentioned Li Yu's fictional works Shi'erlou and Rouputuan. 56 He states, "Although Li Yu's poems and essays are carefully and well written, in terms of taste, he cannot meet half of that of Luo Guanzhong. I would not put my faith in Li Yu. While he has works with positive intentions such as Shi'erlou or Shizhongqu, he has also written vulgar works like Rouputuan. His works should not be considered proper." 57 But in a letter written on the same day to another friend Ozu Keisō (小津桂窓 1804 -1858), Bakin talks about how desperately he wants to read Liancheng bi again, the play Priceless Jade discussed earlier in this article. Curiously, seven year later in another letter to Jōsai, Bakin compared the erotic Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei (金瓶梅 Plum in the golden vase, 1617) to Rouputuan and praised that the latter taught about the "karmic punishment for evilness and erotism" (邪淫の悪報). 58 As the above texts indicate, Bakin's attitude towards Li Yu's works was mixed. It may be difficult to say for sure that Bakin admired Li Yu completely, but some of his works certainly borrowed elements from Li Yu's fiction and plays. 59 As William Hedberg observes, Chinese vernacular novels circulated in eighteenth-century Japan for readers without proper philological training in the Chinese language and education about China. 60 It is safe to argue that Li Yu's fictional works, among many other Chinese vernacular novels imported into Japan around this time, were interpreted into other contexts for other purposes. This does not negate Li Yu's value to his Japanese readers from the perspective of cultural history. For Tokugawa-period fiction writers, Li Yu was so respected a figure that his name was listed alongside other names of great authors. One example is in Mokurō's catalog of fiction writers, Gesakushakō hoi (戯作者考補遺 Appendix to biographies of popular writers, 1845), where Mokurō listed the two greatest writers of China to be Li Yu and Luo Guanzhong, the author of Sangokushi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) which was the most popular Chinese vernacular novel in early modern Japan. 61 Even in the Meiji period, intellectuals still regarded Li Yu as a highly authoritative figure in literary production. The late-Tokugawa and early-Meiji writer Kanagaki Robun (仮名垣魯文 1829-1894) named Li Yu and Murasaki Shikibu the two most sublime authors whose works had continued influence in Japanese culture. In the prologue of Kana tehon chūshingura (仮名手本忠臣蔵 A kana copy of the forty-seven samurai tale, 1871), Robun writes: The loyalty of the forty-seven ronin shall not decay after a thousand years; the jōruri scripts of Gidayūbushi shall not be discarded even in his late years. Ōboshi yuranosuke concentrated his crafts and Takeda Izumo put in all his work. Either Ri Ryūō from China or Princess Murasaki from our country is no different from such. So, generation after generation, authors made hundreds of adaptions based on this story. There have been so many books like this. I only humbly responded to the request of my publisher and wrote down my thoughts overnight into this for children's play.
It can be inferred that Robun refers to Li Yu's fictional works here, comparing his high status in fiction writing to the classical jōruri works such as Chūshingura (忠臣蔵 The treasury of loyal retainers) while also comparing Li Yu to Takeda Izumo, one of the most legendary jōruri writers in Japanese history. Also in Robun's Hyakubyō gafu (百猫画譜 Illustrations of one hundred cats, 1878) which is a compilation of kanshi and haikai poems, essays, and illustrations of cats by intellectuals of the early Meiji period, Li Yu's essay Zhumao wen (逐猫文 Essay on exiling a cat, written year unknown) was fully cited in the beginning to serve as the prologue. 63 Furthermore, in the famous Meiji-era essay on Japanese literary theory, Shōsetsu shinzui, ( 小説 神髄 The essence of the novel, 1885), author Tsubouchi Shōyō (坪内逍遥 1859 -1935) argues that popular writers of the Tokugawa period only knew how to copy the style of Li Yu and write didactic stories. 64 Although these references to Li Yu do not directly speak of his writings or his characteristics, the fact that Meiji writers were still familiar with his works and gave them high credit testifies to his influence on the Japanese literary field.
As the above discussion demonstrates, the wide circulation of Li Yu's fiction as well as Japanese adaptations based on his works in the Tokugawa period contributed to his popularity in Japan. The association of him as a hermit certainly fueled such popularity, for living as a recluse, whether literally or metaphorically, was one of the characteristics pursued by intellectuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Japan. 65 What intrigued Li Yu's Japanese readers was his skill in fiction writing and, perhaps, his self-presentation as a hermit.

The Master's Homecoming to Modern China
Due to certain sensitive contents in Li Yu's essays, since the Kangxi period (1654-1722) some of Li Yu's works-such as Shi'erlou and Wusheng xi-had been banned from being published in China. 66 While receiving high esteem in Japan, they did not circulate widely in China until the modern period. What revived Li Yu's works in modern China was, ironically, the colonialist expansion of Japan in the early twentieth century.
In 1904 at the start of the Russo-Japanese war (1904)(1905), Honganji (本願寺), the largest Jōdo Shinshū school of Buddhism, supported the Japanese army. Among its many branches, Nishi Hongan-ji (西本願寺) in Kyoto was the largest and most powerful. Under the leadership of the abbot Ōtani Kōzui (大谷光瑞 1876 -1948), Nishi Hongan-ji sent supplies and monks to Dalian to build a branch temple there and to spread Buddhist teachings. 67 One goal of establishing a branch in Dalian was to further expand Japan's presence in other parts of East Asia. In the following years of the war, Ōtani invested more than ten-million yen to build religious institutions such as temples and schools in Dalian and nearby areas. 68 Until the 1910s, both he and the administration of Hongan-ji became increasingly involved in the colonialist expansion in the area of Manchuria. Both sources invested large sums of money in the South Manchurian Railway Company (SMRC) whose main train line extended from Dalian to Changchun. For this reason, Ōtani was criticized by some intellectuals in Japan in 1918 for "inhumane behaviors that were against Nichiren teachings." 69 Ōtani's lavish investment in Central Asia did not receive a satisfying payback, for in 1926 he had to repay the loans that he took from the SMRC with his book collection. 70 This collection became the Ōtani Collection in the SMRC Dalian Library. In 1931, the Chinese scholar Sun Kaidi started cataloging pre-modern Chinese popular fiction and collecting lost manuscripts from around the world. In the then Dalian Library, he found the Shi'erlou (Twelve Towers), Wusheng xi (Silent Opera), and several other of Li Yu's works. 71 In 1931, Sun Kaidi published Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo shumu (中国通俗小説書目 Catalog of Chinese vernacular novels) which covered titles from the Song through Qing dynasties . For the first time, Li Yu was introduced to modern Chinese readers as a popular writer.
From a despised writer in Qing China to a worshipped master in Tokugawa Japan, and later, a cultural icon in modern China, both the interpretation and misinterpretation of Li Yu shaped his cultural value, the impact of which continues to this day. Li Yu is now celebrated as one of the greatest novelists, playwrights, theater theorists and practitioners, architects, and aesthetic theorists in collections of classical Chinese literature, three and a half centuries after his death. As Huang Qiang argues, however, this critique on Li Yu is not entirely reliable. 2 I borrow the term "celebrity" from Jamie Greenbaum's study on Chen Jiru (陳 継儒). In his book Chen Jiru (1558-1639): The Development and Subsequent Uses of Literary Personae (Amsterdam: Brill, 2007), Greenbaum uses "celebrity" to describe Chinese writers whose fame extended beyond the audience of their specialty and whose market value was closely tied to certain social and economic conditions. While some scholars also use wenren 文人 or bunjin 文人 to describe Li Yu, in my attempt to discuss the historical representation (rather than interpretation) of Li Yu's cultural activities, "celebrity" is a more accurate term in summarizing the influence of him in Japan. Meanwhile, studies that referred to Li Yu as a bunjin include literary scholars Oka Haruo's "Ri Gyo hyōka ni kansuru kōsatsu" 李漁評価に関する考察, Geibun kenkyū 54 (1989)