Questions about "Mr. Fujino"

"Mr. Fujino" is a well-known masterpiece in prose. It is through it that we know Sendai, Sendai Medical College, and the unkempt but extremely serious person who revised the lecture notes for Lu Xun. Mr. Fujino.

Sendai

The main entrance of Sendai Medical College (provided by Gao Shihua)

Sendai is a beautiful city.

For many Chinese, they know Sendai through Lu Xun’s "Mr. Fujino"!

This affectionate and touching memory essay was included in the middle school textbook, making Fujino Genkuro, an ordinary Japanese who is enthusiastic, rigorous and without narrow national prejudice, enter the world of millions of people. In the hearts of millions of Chinese readers. The words in the article are full of his reverence, gratitude and deep memory for this Japanese teacher. "Among the teachers I consider him, he is the one who makes me most grateful and encourages me."

< p>Although Fujino is just a common surname in Japan, the word Mr. Fujino has a specific meaning and has become synonymous with serious and kind Japanese people.

Lu Xun came to Japan in February 1902, and by August 1904, he studied at Hongwen College in Tokyo. In September 1904, Lu Xun came to Sendai and entered the Sendai Medical College to study. In March 1906, Lu Xun suddenly decided to drop out of school, leave Sendai, and return to Tokyo. He only stayed in Sendai for a year and a half, but it left a deep memory in him. Here, he met Mr. Fujino; here, he was discriminated against; here, through the slide show, he saw the numb souls of the Chinese people, and decided to abandon medicine and pursue literature in order to save this suffering and bullied nation. .

Some people say that Shaoxing is the hometown of Zhou Shuren, while Sentai is the hometown of Lu Xun. Indeed, various experiences in Sendai contributed to the birth of the writer Lu Xun.

Matsushima, known as one of Japan's "three scenic spots" (provided by Gao Shihua)

Sendai is the capital of Miyagi Prefecture, 350 kilometers away from Tokyo, with a population of 1 million. The political, economic and cultural center of the entire Northeast region. The four seasons here are distinct, and the clear Hirose River flows through the urban area. The streets and parks in the center of the urban area are lined with trees. It is called the "Forest City". There are many hot spring resorts in the suburbs that make people linger, and the famous pine trees on the seaside. The island is actually an island group with more than 260 small islands dotted on the seashore. The islands are covered with pine trees. The blue sea and green trees are particularly beautiful against the clear sky. It is recognized as one of the most beautiful "three sceneries" in Japan.

Lu Xun also always had memories of Matsushima, "When I lived in Japan, I saw the cherry blossoms in Ueno in the spring, and I went to Matsushima to see the pine trees and snow in the winter." His friend Xu Shoushang, who also studied in Japan, also said, "When he was in Sendai, he and his classmates once swam to Matsushima, and he showed me many pine forest and snow scenes of small islands on the sea."

The name Sendai also comes from China. Her original name was "Chiyo", which has the same pronunciation as "Sendai" in Japanese. One day, someone read "The View of Immortals with the same Title" by the Tang Dynasty poet Han. In the poem, "Five towers were seen for the first time in Xiantai, and the scenery was desolate and rainy", which fascinated him very much, so at his suggestion , taking the meaning of overseas fairy mountains and heavenly towers, "Qiandai" was changed to "Xiandai".

Although Sendai is located in northeastern Japan, because it is located on the seaside, it is not sultry in summer and not very cold in winter, with an average temperature of 12°C. The average temperature in August, the hottest month, is 24℃, and in January, the coldest month, the average temperature is 1.5℃.

But Lu Xun's memory of Sendai in "Mr. Fujino" was not very good, mainly because it was too cold. "Sendai is a town, not big; it gets extremely cold in winter." Sendai at that time was indeed small, with a population of less than 100,000, ranking 11th in Japan.

"Mr. Fujino" also mentioned that "early winter is already quite cold, but there are still many mosquitoes." It will be even colder in late winter, right?

Perhaps, Lu Xun grew up in southern China and lived in Tokyo when he first came to Japan. When he first came to Sendai, where the temperature was always three or four degrees lower than Tokyo, were you not used to it?

In fact, looking at the meteorological records of that year, we can find that the winter in Sendai was not that cold in the past. However, unfortunately, from around 1904 to 1906, when Lu Xun came to study, cold waves hit this area continuously. The temperature became very low in winter, which also caused agricultural production to be poor.

Especially in early 1906, there was a heavy snowfall in Sendai that had not happened in 60 years. Lu Xun had not left Sendai at that time, and he was even more impressed by the coldness of Sendai!

At that time, medical colleges were established in Chiba and Kanazawa. However, Lu Xun did not want to associate with those foreign students in Tokyo's smoky environment, so he chose Sendai, which had no Chinese students because of the long distance and cold weather.

Sendai seemed far away at that time. It took 12 hours by train. Now it takes less than two hours to take the Shinkansen from Tokyo.

Wataru Masuda, the Japanese translator and friend of Lu Xun’s works, once asked him, if he could go to Japan again, where would he like to visit? Lu Xun replied that he hoped to visit Maruzen Bookstore in Tokyo. Maruzen was a bookstore that specialized in selling Western books and periodicals. When he was in Tokyo, he often went there and absorbed knowledge of world literature and art. Lu Xun still ordered books and periodicals from Maruzen by mail until his later years.

He also said that he also hoped to visit Sendai. Wataru Masuda speculated, "Sendai is the place where Mr. Xi studied as a student in his youth. Although he only stayed there for a little more than a year and a half, I think the impressions of his youth will still be etched in his heart forever."

Perhaps those mixed memories made Lu Xun unforgettable, which made him put this experience into writing 20 years later and leave it to the world!

School

Many people are probably curious about the nature of Sendai Medical College, the school where Wenhao studied abroad. What level? Although everyone knows that students' knowledge is not necessarily related to the level of the school.

Japan generally refers to this type of school as the old technical school because it has nothing to do with the current technical school. Today's vocational schools require two years of specialized education after high school graduation, while the old vocational schools taught junior high school graduates advanced academics and skills for more than three years.

Japan’s education system has changed a lot, especially before and after World War II. It is very different. It is difficult to explain it by applying the concept of China’s education system.

According to the pre-war education system, primary school lasted 4 years, which was extended to 6 years in 1907; middle school lasted 5 years, which was changed to 4 years in 1941. After graduating from middle school, students can enter higher education institutions (equivalent to university preparatory courses. After graduation, they can enter imperial universities, but there are very few), higher normal schools and vocational schools. When the war ended in 1945, Japan had 309 vocational schools and only 33 colleges and universities. When the new system of universities was established in 1949, it also ended the history of colleges and universities and vocational schools. Colleges and universities became the departments of education or liberal arts departments of new universities, and almost all vocational schools were upgraded to universities. Government technical schools have become the main component of local national universities, and private technical schools have directly become universities. Of course, the upgrade of these specialized schools is not a simple name change, but is achieved based on a long period of accumulated experience in cultivating specialized technical personnel. In other words, these old technical schools are higher than the current level of technical secondary schools in China.

The situation of medical colleges is even more special. At that time, except for the Imperial University, no general universities had been approved to establish medical departments. Therefore, the old medical universities before World War II all developed from medical colleges. Many medical colleges were upgraded to university medical departments or medical universities. At that time, there were only two Imperial universities in Tokyo (1877) and Kyoto (1897).

The lecture theater where Lu Xun attended (provided by Gao Shihua)

Lu Xun went to Japan to study at Hongwen College in Tokyo. This is a private preparatory school specially established for Chinese international students to learn Japanese and basic courses. It lasts for two years and mainly teaches Japanese and general middle school courses. After graduation, you can only enter various technical schools. If you want to enter the Imperial University, you have to attend another higher education institution for three years, plus four years of university, which will take seven years. If you study medicine, you cannot choose an ordinary university because there is no medical department there. Since Lu Xun was paid by the government, the age issue also needs to be considered. Therefore, Lu Xun could only choose a medical school.

In August 1887, the Second High School in Sendai established a medical department, and its graduates could obtain a medical license without taking an exam. In 1901, the Faculty of Medicine became independent and was renamed Sendai Medical College. It was government-owned and still located in the same courtyard as the Second High School, with an auditorium and sports ground. It is mainly designed to train clinicians and is divided into two majors: medicine and pharmacy. Medicine lasts 4 years and pharmacy lasts 3 years. Lu Xun majored in medicine.

Following Tokyo and Kyoto, Tohoku Imperial University was also established in Sendai on June 22, 1907. In 1912, Sendai Medical College became its medical specialty department, and all 18 teachers became teachers of the medical specialty department. This is a transitional stage. In 1915, Sendai Medical College was officially renamed Tohoku Imperial University Medical College. The Medical University is a branch university within the Imperial University, which is equivalent to the later academic department, that is, the department in China. This time, only four teachers from the former medical school became teachers in the new medical school. The others were basically "removed at will", that is, they were removed from their teaching positions according to their own wishes. This choice is probably a last resort, because these people have not received higher medical education, including Mr. Fujino. The newly recruited teachers either have experience of studying abroad, or they are people who graduated from Tokyo or Kyoto Imperial University and have doctoral titles.

Mr. Fujino left Sendai to work at the Charity Hospital in Tokyo and studied otology and rhinology. In 1919, he returned to his hometown of Fukui Prefecture and opened his own clinic. He died on August 11, 1945, at the end of World War II, at the age of 72.

Teachers and students

Mr. Fujino was born in a family of doctors in Awara Town, Fukui Prefecture on July 1, 1874. He graduated from Nagoya Aichi Medical College in 1896 and went to Tokyo Imperial University. He further studied anatomy, taught at Sendai Medical College in 1901, and was promoted to professor of anatomy in 1904. When Lu Xun entered Sendai Medical College, he was very enthusiastic and caring about Lu Xun and gave him a lot of help. Mr. Fujino often corrected Lu Xun's lecture notes. Lu Xun said: "I handed over the lecture notes I copied, and he accepted them. He returned them to me on the second or third day, and said that from then on, he would give them to him once a week. When I took them down and opened them, I was very satisfied. I was surprised, but also felt uneasy and grateful. It turned out that my lecture notes had been revised with red pen from beginning to end. Not only had many omissions been added, but also the grammatical errors had been corrected one by one. He continued until he finished teaching the subjects he was responsible for: osteology, vascular science, and neurology.”

Due to Lu Xun’s hard work and Mr. Fujino’s help, his first-year score was among the 142 classmates. Ranked 68th, which is considered mid-range. Lu Xun's achievements aroused the jealousy of some Japanese students who were prejudiced against the Chinese. Some students once made a fuss and sent anonymous letters, slandering that Mr. Fujino leaked the anatomy test questions to Lu Xun in the lecture notes, so Lu Xun could have such achievements. score. Lu Xun felt deeply ashamed, "China is a weak country, so of course the Chinese are imbeciles. If the score is above 60, it is not their own ability."

But Lu Xun’s anatomy score in the first grade averaged 59.3 points and failed, which shows that Mr. Fujino did not take care of him.

I once bound the lecture notes corrected by Mr. Fujino into three thick volumes and kept them as a permanent souvenir. Unfortunately, when I moved here seven years ago, a box was destroyed and half of it was lost. It happened that this handout was also lost in the box. I asked the transportation bureau to look for it, but there was no reply. "In fact, these notes were later recovered, and were found in Shaoxing in 1951, consisting of 6 copies and 954 pages, namely "Mai Guan". "Science", "Organic Chemistry", "Fentology", "Histology", "Pathology", "Anatomy". The most detailed corrections made by Mr. Fujino were the "Vascular Science" that he taught personally, and even the class notes for which he was not responsible were corrected. These six notebooks are now collected in the Lu Xun Museum in Beijing.

I was very shocked when I saw the copies of these notes. Mr. Fujino took the trouble to make many corrections with red pen. Since textbooks and reference books were few and expensive at that time, class notes were very important. Maybe Mr. Fujino was worried that Lu Xun would mislead his students when he returned to China after graduation and used wrong notes to teach, so he made very careful corrections. Lu Xun felt, "His enthusiastic hope for me and tireless teachings are, in a small way, for China, in the hope that China will have new medicine; in a big way, they are for academics, in the hope of new medical traditions. Go to China." It's really good.

Lu Xun was so moved by these meticulous concerns that he later hung Mr. Fujino’s photo on the east wall of his residence in Beijing, opposite his desk. "Whenever I am tired at night and want to be lazy, I look up and catch a glimpse of his dark and thin face in the light, as if he is about to say something in a measured tone, which suddenly makes me realize my conscience and increases my courage.

"

In 1934, Japan's Iwanami Bookstore was preparing to publish "Selected Works of Lu Xun" co-translated by Masuda Wataru and Sato Haruo. The translator asked Lu Xun to comment on the selected articles. Lu Xun wrote back: "I think it should be published. There is not a single entry left. There is only one article "Mr. Fujino", please translate it and add it. "

In a letter to Japanese friends in the same year, he also mentioned Mr. Fujino, "Mr. Fujino was an anatomy professor at Sendai Medical College about thirty years ago, and his real name is his. The school has now become a university. Three or four years ago I asked a friend to find out, but he was no longer there. Whether he is still alive or not is unknown. If he were still alive, he would be about seventy years old. "

In June 1935, the Japanese translation of "Selected Works of Lu Xun" was published, and the prose "Mr. Fujino" met Japanese readers for the first time.

In the summer of 1936, Masuda Wataru rushed to Shanghai from Tokyo to visit the sick Lu Xun. Mr. Lu Xun asked with great concern if there was any news about Mr. Fujino. When Masuda Wataru answered that his investigation had not yet yielded any results, he sighed sadly: "Mr. Fujino is probably gone." He's no longer alive. "

In 1935, Mr. Fujino's eldest son Fujino Tsuneya saw the Japanese translation of "The Selected Works of Lu Xun" from his Mandarin and Chinese teacher at Fukui Junior High School, Suga Yoshiharu, and heard Mr. Suga say " The article "Mr. Fujino" may have been about his father. From this, Mr. Fujino learned that Zhou Shuren, who was once an overseas student, had become the writer Lu Xun, and wrote the things in Sendai into his prose. At that time, Mr. Fujino also visited Fujino. Sir, I heard him talk about the situation in Sendai. Unfortunately, Mr. Suga passed away soon, and the details of this visit were not published publicly. Mr. Lu Xun did not know that Mr. Fujino was still alive until his death.

Lu Xun passed away. Later in 1937, Japan's "Literary Guide" published an article by Mr. Fujino in memory of Lu Xun. Mr. Fujino wrote: "He probably came to my house to say goodbye. When was the last meeting, he forgot it until his death. It is really gratifying to have my photo hanging in the room. In the above situation, I can’t remember what the photo looked like and when I gave it to him. If we were graduates, we would take commemorative photos together, but I never took a photo with Zhou Jun. How did he get my photo? Maybe his wife gave it to him. Having said that, I would also like to see what I looked like at that time. Respecting me as your only mentor feels amazing to me. As I said before, I only showed him the notes."

As for why he treated Lu Xun like that, he also explained, "When I was a boy, Mr. Nosaka, who was from the Fukui Domain School, taught Chinese On the one hand, he respects China's sages, but at the same time, he always has the feeling that he should value the Chinese people, so Zhou Jun thinks this is particularly kind and rare. If Zhou Jun talks about me as his mentor in the novel because of this, it would be great if he had read this earlier. Even till death, Mr. Zhou still wants to know the news about me. If there is any news, how will I like it? Unfortunately, nothing has worked out so far. Living in seclusion in such a countryside, I was a layman on outside matters, especially literature, so I didn’t know anything. ”

It can be seen from Mr. Fujino’s words that he did not feel that he had done anything great for Lu Xun. This is probably due to Mr. Fujino’s modesty and the teacher’s care for the students. This is a very important thing. It's normal. But against the historical backdrop of Japan increasingly looking down on and discriminating against China after the Sino-Japanese War of 1891-1899, Japanese teachers' care for Chinese students seems extraordinary and precious. In the article "Mr. Fujino" written twenty years later, Lu Xun's impression of Mr. Fujino was still so affectionate, respectful, and full of gratitude.

Some people think that "Mr. Fujino" "is a song." "A passionate poem full of patriotism", and some people think that it "eulogizes the traditional friendship between the Chinese and Japanese people". In fact, it has nothing to do with it. This is just an ordinary Chinese student's response to a respectable ordinary Japanese. It's just the teacher's affectionate memory. And Mr. Fujino's reaction was normal. He didn't seem to have a deep impression of Lu Xun. Maybe it was because he was already old and his memory of many things from thirty years ago was blurred. He may feel that these are the responsibilities of a teacher, right? He is a serious person, a Japanese student who graduated from Sendai Medical College recalled, “Because he is thoroughly serious and rigorous, students often stay away from him.

"

Lu Xun admired the seriousness of the Japanese very much, "China can exclude all Japan, but only that seriousness can hardly exclude them." No matter what happens, that must be learned. "Lu Xun's bitter medicine, we still need it today!

On the morning of September 25, 2007, his bronze statue transported from Mr. Fujino's hometown was placed in the Lu Xun Museum in Beijing. Mr. Fujino I finally set foot in a country with thousands of admirers. I hope that not only his bronze statue will be brought here, but also his serious spirit will take root and blossom in the land of China.

Lu Xun said. However, although Mr. Fujino's "name is not known to many people," he is "great in his eyes and heart." Now, although Mr. Fujino has become a household name in China, he is still great because of him. Have a noble soul