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In Japan, Eiji Yoshikawa’s Sangokushi (Yoshikawa Sangokushi) is such a popular work that when we think of Sangokushi and it comes to Eiji Yoshikawa. However, Yoshikawa Sangokushi is not a word-for-word translation of the Chinese classical literature, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. According to the preface, he adapted this Chinese classical literature into a full-length novel that makes everyone appreciate it easily, and those characters are not just the original ones but interpreted with his own ideas. Meanwhile, it is said that because of this work, there are so many fans of SOUSO in Japan. Thus make it necessary for us to enhance our understanding toward the characters in Yoshikawa Sangokushi. However, instead of using the Chinese version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms as the original book, he used the Japanese translation version to conduct his work. Therefore, this thesis compared Yoshikawa Sangokushi with the Chinese version and the Japanese version.
Chapter 1 investigated the original books, and determined to use The Criticism of Romance of Three Kingdoms by Li Zhuowu and Bunzan Konan’s Tsuzokusangokushi as the subjects of this thesis. Chapter 2 analyzed the creation of Yoshikawa Sangokushi from two parts. The first part, the situation and back ground of the composition, examined Eiji Yoshikawa’s attitude toward the creation of historical novels, his experiences in Chinese and his thoughts on Second Sino-Japanese War. The second part, the images of characters, analyzed images of six characters by comparing them with those in the original books.
In conclusion, this thesis found out that using Tsuzokusangokushi as the original book didn’t affect Eiji Yoshikawa’s creation of characters. However, Tuszokusangokushi took over the relatively neutral attitude of The Criticism of Romance of Three Kingdoms by Li Zhuowu toward characters, which made Eiji Yoshikawa look through the two sides of specific characters and create unique images of those characters.
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