The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has always been a masterpiece enjoyed by the Chinese people. Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi, who were historical figures more than 1000 years ago, are still well-known today. This book is not only the pride of Chinese people, but also the most popular classical Chinese novel in East Asia. What is the reason why Romance of the Three Kingdoms has such great charm that it can last forever in the circle of Chinese character civilization?

The Three Kingdoms in Novels, Not in History

We are now familiar with the allusions of the Three Kingdoms, mostly from the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which has long been divorced from historical facts and is a pure novel. The characters in Three Kingdoms are quite different from those in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The Three Kingdoms that the Chinese love are not the Three Kingdoms in the official history, but the Three Kingdoms stories that have been deduced and modified.

Before the Song Dynasty, people did not have the kind of aversion to powerful officials later, so the image of Cao Cao in the official history "Three Kingdoms" is actually very tall. He is not only a military wizard, but also an outstanding political leader, and also a hero who ended the northern war.

However, when it came to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, its image began to decline all the way and gradually became treacherous. By the Song Dynasty, especially the Southern Song Dynasty, it was almost the same as the image in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This process is also the result of the strengthening of China's centralization of power and the gradual change of people's views on powerful officials.

At this time, Cao Cao, the hero in the official History of the Three Kingdoms, was naturally disliked by the public, and gradually became black in many unofficial histories. When the Romance of the Three Kingdoms describes Cao Cao, it is not necessarily because the author has any personal prejudice against Cao Cao, but because he has absorbed a large number of previous unofficial records.

Cao Cao was demonized, while Zhuge Liang was sanctified. Originally in the Three Kingdoms, he was better at internal affairs but shorter than military affairs. However, he was pleased by later Confucian ideas because of his "dedication", so he gradually became a man of ingenuity.

The time and author of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms are widely divergent. It is generally believed that it was written by Luo Guanzhong. The full name of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is Popular Romance, which was written in the early or middle Ming Dynasty. Romance of the Three Kingdoms basically catered to the values of the Ming Dynasty. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, when Cheng and Zhu achieved great success in learning, more than 1000 characters in the story of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms were all the embodiment of the positive and negative in the minds of Confucianism.

In Japan, the story of the Three Kingdoms is full

However, the output of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was not smooth. Luo Guanzhong's Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms was called Popular Three Kingdoms when it was first translated into Japanese. The translator is Yi Che and Yue, cousins of the monks in the Tianlong Temple in Kyoto. They started in 1689, took three years to translate together, and signed it as "Hunan Wenshan".

At this time, nearly three hundred years have passed since the birth of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. And long after the translation, it was still spread among monks. What the hell is going on? In fact, this is directly related to the status of Confucianism in Japan.

According to the Japanese History, the first official history of Japan, Dr. Wang Ren of Baekje was invited to Japan in the 15th year of the Emperor of God (405 A.D.) and brought ten volumes of The Analects of Confucius and one volume of Thousand Words. This is the earliest record of the introduction of Chinese Confucianism into Japan. However, up to the Warring States Period, Confucianism had no real position as an official school in Japan.

But it all changed with one person. In 1600 AD, Tokugawa Kakam won the Battle of Guanyuan and captured the national hegemony. Then in 1603, he was forced to be appointed by the royal family as the Right Minister and the Grand General of the Japanese Army. He opened a shogunate in Edo (today's Tokyo) and began the Tokugawa shogunate rule for nearly three hundred years.

Tokugawa is not only a shrewd political commander, but also a university student who is keen on Chinese culture. He once invited Fujiwara Xingwo to teach Zhenguan Zhengyao and Hanshu, published the Book of Songs, the Book of Changes and other Chinese classics, and hired Lin Luoshan as a Confucian consultant to study and study Confucian political culture.

On the one hand, the rise of Confucian political culture during the Tokugawa Shogunate was due to the actual needs of the rulers. Especially after more than one hundred years of war, the rulers of Dechuan urgently needed to consolidate their political power, restore social and political order, and rebuild the moral foundation. Buddhism, which had played an important role in these areas, has gone into decline and become useless.

After that, Romance of the Three Kingdoms began a long process of localization. In 1836, with the publication of "Picture Book Popular Three Kingdoms", Japan quickly started the Three Kingdoms craze. Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a Japanese popular reading book based on Luo Guanzhong's Romance and Chen Shou's Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It also makes more supplements to the unfinished business, which is closer to compilation than faithful sentence by sentence translation of the original text.

At the end of the 19th century, there were still many storytelling shops telling stories about the Three Kingdoms in the ordinary areas of Osaka. The story was too long, and most of the listeners gave up halfway. However, as long as the notice "Kong Ming will come out today" was posted at the entrance of the bookstore, the audience would be so numerous that there would be no empty seats. It can be seen that the stories of the Three Kingdoms were popular in Japan at that time.

Correspondingly, after two hundred years of localization, Confucianism had taken root in Japan. Even on the eve of the Meiji Restoration, the slogan of the Anti curtain Sect was based on the Confucian thought of "respecting the king and fighting against the barbarians". It is no coincidence that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was popular in the Edo era.

North Korea and Vietnam are also loyal to the Three Kingdoms

Unlike Japan, the three countries entered the Korean Peninsula much earlier. It is known that at least before June 1569, the book had entered Korea and was well known by the scholar bureaucrat class.

At the beginning of its introduction, most Korean scholar bureaucrats, like those before the middle of the Ming Dynasty, were critical of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. They quoted the works of Confucius and Mencius or Cheng Zhu, adopted an attitude of exclusion towards Chinese popular novels such as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and criticized the unorthodox, unethical, non historical and licentious nature of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

However, as the most authentic Confucian country, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms naturally has an incomparable appeal to North Korea. This also let some enlightened scholar doctors lay down their prejudices. For example, Jin Wanzhong, a famous scholar in the Li Dynasty, fully affirmed the unique value of Chinese popular novels such as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which can not be replaced by the official history. "This is the power of the Romance of Roche. Now we gather people to tell it in Chen Shoushi's Biography and Wen Gong's Tongjian that people may not have tears. This popular novel is also made."

Like Japan, it took a lot of time for the DPRK to fully accept the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. An opportunity for the Koreans to reach the peak of their obsession with the three countries - the Renchen War. During the war, most of the Korean territory was occupied by the Japanese, and a large number of people were captured. With the help of the Ming army, Li's Korea needed to strengthen Confucianism to stabilize its position. Under this trend of thought, the story of the Three Kingdoms is very popular in Korea. Almost everyone knows Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.

Apart from Japan and South Korea, Vietnam is the country that is most affected by China. Historically, Vietnam and China have been closely related since ancient times. From the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty, Vietnam was ruled by Chinese dynasties for a long time. Vietnamese historians called it the Northern Period.

In the post Li Dynasty, the ruling class in Vietnam was more exclusive to Confucianism, which made Confucianism enter a peak period. In particular, Li Shengzong infiltrated Confucianism into politics, economy, culture, education, folk customs and other aspects of the society, making Confucianism the dominant ideology in the late feudal society of Vietnam.

Therefore, Vietnam has a profound Confucian foundation. And different from Japan and South Korea, Vietnam was directly ruled by the Central Plains dynasties several times, and the Ming Dynasty was one of them. Therefore, there are many Ming Dynasty adherents or soldiers living abroad. Compared with Japan and South Korea, this media is undoubtedly more direct.

At present, Vietnamese historical novels in Chinese basically adopt the form of chapter structure, which is exactly what Vietnamese writers learned from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Among all the historical novels in Vietnam, Emperor Li Yitong Zhi has the highest achievement and the greatest influence. It is also known as the outstanding representative of Vietnam's medieval literature. Its influence by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms has long been recognized by the academic community.

Influenced by The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Unification of Emperor Li is a famous Chinese literary work in Vietnam/ http://goodreads.com

It is worth mentioning that The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also the first foreign novel translated into a new language after the Latinization of Vietnamese characters, and its influence can be seen.

Japan makes the three countries go to the world

If China uses words and illustrations to form novels to make the Confucian world recognize the Three Kingdoms, then Japan uses games and animation to let the world know about the Three Kingdoms. After all, with the changes of more than a hundred years, the Confucian tradition in the three countries of East Asia is weakening, especially in the Korean Peninsula, where even Chinese characters have been abandoned, and most people can't even read the original novel.

In 1971, Hengshan Guanghui's comic book "Three Kingdoms" began to be serialized. Until 1986, there were 60 separate editions and tens of millions of copies were issued. This cartoon was later adapted into animation, which was very popular in Japan and abroad.

However, in the works of the Three Kingdoms in Japan in the new era, it is difficult to see the figures with Confucian thinking in the novels. After counting the works of the Three Kingdoms from Japan after World War II, we can see that more heroes are in line with the modern concept, and there are no nearly perfect and embodied "gods" or "demons" in the past.

The cartoon "The Heavenly Voyage" with Cao Cao as the main character is a typical example. There is no absolute good or evil in it, but only heroes who act for their own ideals. In "The Three Kingdoms of Iron and Steel", Zhuge Liang turns into a villain, but the ultimate goal is to save the world.

At this time, the works of the Three Kingdoms are more romantic than the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Many of them only draw on the human design of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but the core of them is completely the routine of modern animation "saving the world".

The game is to carry forward the culture of the Three Kingdoms and fascinate young people. In 1985, the Three Kingdoms game, which affected several generations of Chinese people, was released. By 2016, 13 generations of products had been released, which is a good story in the history of simulation games. Since then, the Three Kingdoms game has been out of control. This enduring game is the childhood memory of countless young Chinese.

And handheld games such as Kong Ming Zhuan have accompanied the childhood of many children around the world, including those born in the 1980s and 1990s in China. No matter how wonderful the fire in the original novel is, the depth of memory will be much weaker than that of manually creating a "fire attack" in the palm of your hand.

And the fighting of the generals in The Three Kingdoms is also a more vivid expression of the characters of the three kingdoms. In addition, the political distinction between good and evil and between good and evil has been removed, and it has become completely neutral.

This is the same as the "Heavenly Voyage", which abandons the red and white faced good and evil model of the traditional Three Kingdoms. Almost everyone's goal is to make the world better, which is undoubtedly more in line with contemporary values than black and white. Many Europeans and Americans read the original book after becoming enthusiasts of the "Three Kingdoms of Japanese Style", and read the feeling completely different from that of East Asians.

Japan's position in animation and comics also contributed to the culture of the three countries. In 2003 alone, Japanese comics achieved US $4.84 billion in sales in the United States. In 2007, 70% of the comics sold in Germany came from Japan. Wang Dao cartoons like Dragon Ball have become childhood memories of many Europeans and Americans.

Through its exquisite design and modern interpretation, Japan has made the Three Kingdoms shine different from the past. It is no exaggeration to say that although the culture of the Three Kingdoms was born in China, it is Japan that really carries it forward.