Title: A Study of the Image Culture in Chinese and Japanese Nostalgic Poems: Tang Poetry and Man'yōshū as Examples

Abstract: Nostalgia is one of the universal sensibilities. Both the Japanese poets of Man'yōshū and the Chinese poets of the Tang Dynasty created nostalgic poems rich with images. The former focus on natural landscape, meteorological phenomena, animals and plants; the latter present more diverse images such as historical figures and family letters. A tentative comparative study of images in terms of style, tone, feeling expression and humanity arrives at the following conclusions: the common point for the Chinese and Japanese nostalgic poems is that they are more often than not employed to express hopelessness in satisfying an overwhelming desire to return to the hometown; the distinction between the Chinese and Japanese nostalgic poems is that the former present images greater in number, wider in range, more sentimental and straightforward in style, and concerned more about the destiny of the nation instead of personal feelings; all those differences are derived from the different aesthetic consciousness, political concepts, cultural traditions, and social conventions.

Keywords: Tang poetry, Man'yōshū, nostalgic poems, imagery

Author: Xiu Yan, Lecturer, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China.