Literary reception of Japan and the Japanese in the prose of the Far Eastern émigré community in the 1920s-40s

The paper presents the results of a study of the literary reception of images of perception of Japan and the Japanese in the prose of the Far Eastern émigré community in the 1920s-40s. The aim of the study is, in the context of the socio-political, cultural-historical, and ethno-psychological situation of the Japanese presence in Harbin in the 1920s-40s, to identify the main directions of the literary reception of images of perception of Japan and the Japanese in the prose of the Far Eastern émigré community taking into account the ideological-thematic and genre-stylistic content of the works. Scientific novelty lies in introducing into scientific use previously unexplored texts reflecting the originality of the literary reception of Japan, the Japanese, and ideas about “Japaneseness” in the consciousness of the Far Eastern émigré community; in examining the poetics of “Japanese texts” of Far Eastern prose writers through the prism of the “myth of Japan” enshrined in Russian culture at the beginning of the century; in clarifying the imagological paradigm of the study of images of foreign culture perception, based on the socio-political, socio- and ethno-cultural context of the life of Russian refugees in China in the 1920s-40s. The results showed that the most productive period for the reception of Japan and the Japanese in the prose of the Far Eastern émigré community was 1920-1932, when the Japanese presence in the cultural and everyday life of Harbin was latent and produced an interest in understanding the Japanese ethnic tradition, beliefs, and everyday realities. The subsequent pressure of the socio-political demand of the Manchukuo period leads to the degradation of imagological interest in Japan and Japanese culture in the prose of the Far Eastern émigré community.