帝京欲望与帝国恐惧——日本古代文学中的长安书写

Desire and Fear of Chang'an——The Narratives of Chang'an in Traditional Japanese Literature

古代日本对长安的书写素来与东亚政治格局的变动相关,同时又是古代日本国家意识确立与文化身份想象的产物。日本早期的长安书写,出现在与遣唐使渡唐相关的复杂记忆中,其间弥漫着对唐帝国的憧憬与警惕。十世纪以将,随着唐帝国的衰落与日本"小中华"意识的萌生,日本文人开始将平安京视为"东移"的长安城,而将唐都长安描述成幽闭日本使者的"恐怖之都",赋予其一种类似外交神话的功能。至平安末期,末世思想的弥漫与战乱的迭起,使贵族文人沉湎于虚构一种近似乌托邦的唐土,长安作为"海外仙都"的形象由是而生。

The shifting narratives of Chang’an in traditional Japanese literature, which have long been associated with political changes in East Asia, are largely attributable to the efforts of Japanese to construct national identity. By appropriating the memories about the Japanese mission’s journeys to Tang China in a complicated way to describe Chang’an, Japanese literati in the eighth and ninth centuries express their longing for Tang Culture as well as fear of its power. However, Japanese society in the tenth and eleventh centuries that witnesses the decline of Tang China also sees a rise of discourse about Sojunghwa. Literati during this period tend to regard Heian-kyō as an ideal version of Chang’an, while the latter is often portrayed as a horrible city. It is during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that elite literati prefer to present Chang’an as overseas fairyland. The utopian descriptions of Chang’an constructed by these literati, when read against the background of Japanese war and Sino-Japanese trade at this time, serve as a metaphor of their political ambitions.