日本人の中国観 : 内藤湖南と吉野作造の場合

The relation between Japan and China had been very close for a long time in culture. But after Meiji Restoration, as Japan had learned to take in Western civilization, Japanese people began to look down upon China with contempt. Especially after the victory in the Sino-Japanese War, the tendency became remarkable. The author is going to examine the opinions of Japanese scholors who studied China at that time. So the author takes up a historian, Konan Naito and a political scientist, Sakuzo Yoshino, and attempts to compare what each of them regarded the two serious events-the Hsin-hai Revolution and the May Fourth Movement-in Chinese modern history. Naito would not understand at all the new political situation happening in China because of his old view of China only viewing it from the point of national interest. On the other hand Yoshino tried to grasp the tendency of political reform in China just as it was. Specially in regard to the May Fourth Movement he showed a very precise understanding. In Japan of those days, however, the understanding as shown by Naito was easier for Japanese people to accept. Because it was derived from the Japanese national interest. The author concludes that the reason why the general point of view of the Japanese people for China was distorted, was that it was based on the national interest