This article aims to find what culture Nakarai Dosui, who was interested in Joseon and tried to introduce the culture of Joseon, actually introduced, and how he understood and accepted by examining the annotations and text of his novel 'Kosahukukaze'. ...
This article aims to find what culture Nakarai Dosui, who was interested in Joseon and tried to introduce the culture of Joseon, actually introduced, and how he understood and accepted by examining the annotations and text of his novel 'Kosahukukaze'. In the book, he, without assessing their values, introduced various areas of Joseon's culture, including regular annual events, four ceremonial occasions, several districts of Joseon, and customs. That's why we consider the novel as a introducing book of Joseon culture, whether the facts he said were true or not. On the contrary, he sometimes assessed the values of some aspects of Joseon cultures. For example, he spoke highly of the affection between parents and their sons or daughters and women's bravery, while almost all the assessments were not in favor of Joseon's culture. He said that Joseon had no sanitary mind and established facilities for sanitation, and was based on the premodern Confucianism. He also mentioned the sorts and cruel scenes of Joseon's punishments of the criminal system, through which he described Joseon as uncivilized. Furthermore, Joseon's people were described as corrupted officials, stupid civilians, and harassed women. In those times, Japan tried to define Japan as civilization and Joseon as barbarious to dominate the advantageous position in Joseon after First Sino-Japanese War. 'Kosahukukaze' written before the War can be evaluated as the first book that described Joseon negatively and introducing book that mentioned various aspects of Joseon's culture without special assessments.
In addition, this article examines how Higuchi Ichiyo accepted women's chastity in her novel, who had known Joseon culture through Dosui's novel and had a special interest in women's chastity. Seong Chun-hyang in 'Chun-hyang jeon' and Kim Hyang-ran in 'Kosahukukaze' were similar to those who were shown in the early works of Ichiyo in their keeping physical and spiritual faithfulness. Cheon-yang of 'Kosahukukaze' didn't keep her physical chastity but spiritually she kept her love for Im Jeong-won without being afraid of death, who Ichiyo spoke highly of as great faithfulness. She couldn't help losing her chastity in helpless situation, but kept her spiritual faithfulness to her love. In that aspect, she was closely similar to Orits in 'Uramurasaki', who tried to carry through her mind and will in the marriage situation where women had no right of choice. We can say that Ichiyo's early works were influenced by the Joseon culture in 'Chunhyang jeon' and 'Kosahukukaze', which placed emphasis on the physical and spiritual chastity, and Ichiyo's late work, 'Uramurasaki' was influencd by Jeong-yang who kept spiritual chastity.