As a country that deeply loves the Tang Dynasty, Japanese people love many Tang poems. But for more than a thousand years, the one Tang poem that has made Japanese people fall in love with it for a long time, even to the point of madness, is undoubtedly "Night Mooring on the Maple Bridge" by Zhang Ji, a poet of the mid-Tang Dynasty. How about deterring them from writing this poem into Japanese textbooks?
One of the direct reasons is that Zhang Ji’s poem is too sadistic. As a down-and-out poet who has experienced setbacks for half his life, the poem "Mooring at Maple Bridge at Night" is a sad aria written by Zhang Ji who was passing through Suzhou. First there was the "moonset and the crows of the crows", then the "Jiang Maple Fishing Fire", the cool environment enveloped them, and then from the Hanshan Temple outside the city, the "midnight bells" came from afar, reaching directly into the passenger ship. A bell ringing in the midst of misery, with its ethereal and distant effect, naturally penetrates the heart.
Such a "heart-torture" style is not only unique among Tang poems, but also suits the aesthetic taste of the Japanese. Japanese literary works are most admired for this miserable and lonely chanting style. Including those popular works in the history of Japanese literature and even classic Japanese movies, they are often full of similar artistic conceptions. And "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge", which achieves this style to the extreme, has naturally touched the heartstrings of generations of Japanese people and attracted much empathetic admiration.
The more important reason is that the Japanese have a strong "cold mountain" sentiment towards China's Tang Dynasty culture for a long time.
In fact, the entire "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" moved the Japanese not only the sadness of loneliness, but also the three words "Hanshan Temple" in the poem. This Hanshan Temple, which the Japanese admire so much that they even resort to copying it from a distance, also hides a figure who is relatively low-key in China but is a household name in Japan: Hanshan.
Hanshan was a poet monk of the Tang Dynasty who came from a family of officials. The founder of Hanshan Temple and the author of 312 poems in "The Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty" advocated the vernacular style of poetry throughout his life, but was not understood by people at the time. Hanshan's works were introduced to Japan, and then triggered rounds of admiration. Compared with other poets of the Tang Dynasty, Hanshan became another kind of "popular person" in Japan. Not only was the poem reprinted, but the Japanese novelist Mori Ogai even "processed" Hanshan's resume and wrote the novel "Hanshan Lost", which became a hot bestseller in Japan in the 20th century. The complex of "Hanshan Temple" has naturally become an increasingly deep-rooted sentiment in the hearts of Japanese people.
Therefore, as a poem praising Hanshan Temple, "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" has continued to soar in popularity and has become an immortal classic of Chinese poetry in the hearts of Japanese people.
If you were Japanese, which Tang poem would you choose?