Kuo Mo-jo 郭沫若 Orig. Kuo K'ai-chen 郭開貞 Pen. Ting-t'ang 鼎堂 Shih-t'o 石沱 Tu K'an 杜衎 Mai-k'o Ang 麥克昂 I K'an Jen 易坎人 Kuo Mo-jo (October 1892-), poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, translator, historian, paleographer, Creation Society leader, and Chinese Communist propagandist. After 1949 this versatile intellectual served the People's Republic of China as chairman of the All-China Federation of Writers and Artists and president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A native of Loshan, Szechwan, Kuo Mo-jo was born into a merchant-landlord family. From 1897 to 1905 he received a traditional education in the Chinese classics, designed to prepare him for the civil service examinations. When the examination system was abolished in 1905 and modern schools were established in the prefectural town of Chiating, Kuo Mo-jo studied at one of them from 1906 to 1909. He then went to Chengtu, the provincial capital, to complete his secondary education. In 1914, at the age of 22, he went to Japan and enrolled in the preparatory class for Chinese students at the First Higher School in Tokyo. He soon became acquainted with Chang Tzu-p'ing and Yü Ta-fu (qq.v.), who later joined with him in founding the Ch'uang-tsao she (Creation Society).

In 1915 Kuo enrolled in the pre-medical department of the Sixth Higher School at Okayama. He went to Tokyo in the summer of 1916 to visit a sick friend at an American mission hospital. At the hospital, he met and fell in love with Sato Tomiko, the daughter of a Japanese Protestant minister from Sendai. After Kuo returned to school, they kept up a regular and impassioned correspondence until December, when Sato joined him in Okayama. Because Kuo had submitted to an arranged marriage in the spring of 1912 and was afraid of offending his parents by divorcing his Chinese wife, he and Sato had no formal marriage ceremony. She became his common-law wife and bore him five children.

In addition to his medical work, Kuo Mo-jo studied the writings of the sixteenth-century Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yang-ming and the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. In 1917-18 he became interested in Goethe and Spinoza and proclaimed himself a believer in pantheism, which he saw as an element common to the philosophies of Wang Yang-ming, Tagore, Goethe, and Spinoza. After graduation from the Sixth Higher School in 1918, he entered the medical school of Kyushu Imperial University at Fukuoka.

In the early autumn of 1919 some of Kuo Mo-jo's poems were published in the literary supplement of the Shih-shih hsin-pao {China Times) in Shanghai. His pride in seeing his poems in print for the first time produced an explosion of poetic activity. About this time, he discovered and immersed himself in the poems of Walt Whitman. Kuo Mo-jo's most famous poems were written in this period of frenzied poetic activity of 1920.

In April 1921 Kuo Mo-jo suddenly left school and went to Shanghai with Ch'eng Fang-wu, who had been one of his schoolmates at Okayama. Through Ch'eng's efforts, he obtained a position on the editorial staff of the T'ai-tung Publishing Company. During the next three months he compiled the Nü-shen [goddesses], a collection of his poems which soon brought him fame, and persuaded Chao Xankung, the manager of the T'ai-tung Publishing Company, to undertake the publication of a new literary magazine to be edited by Kuo Mo-jo and his friends. He returned to Japan in July and, together with such friends as Chang Tzu-p'ing, Yü Ta-fu, and T'ien Han (q.v.), formded the Creation Society.

Between 1922 and 1924 Kuo Mo-jo and his associates founded and edited the Ch'uang-tsao chi-k'an (Creation Quarterly), the Ch'uang-tsao chou-k'an (Creation Weekly), and the Ch'uang-tsao jih-pao (Creation Daily). Through these magazines they helped popularize the concepts of romanticism and "art for art's sake" in China. By the autumn of 1923, however, personal friction within the society had begun to shake its foundations. The last issue of the Creation Weekly, published in May 1924, marked the end of the original Creation Society. During this period, in addition to producing literary works of his own and editing Creation Society publications, Kuo Mo-jo translated Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and part of Faust, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the first book of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and a number of poems by English and German Romantic poets. He also translated classical Chinese poetry into pai-hua [the vernacular]. From 1921 to 1924 Kuo Mo-jo made a number of trips between Fukuoka and Shanghai. During the academic year he continued his medical studies at Kyushu Imperial University and produced a constant stream of material for the various publications of the Creation Society. He spent the summers working for the T'ai-tung Publishing Company in Shanghai. After graduation from medical school in April 1923, he moved his family to Shanghai. However, his wife and children were unhappy in China, and his wife became angry when he refused to practice medicine. In February 1924 she insisted on returning to Japan with the children, whether he came with them or not. Kuo Mo-jo saw them off and promised to join them in Japan as soon as he had wound up the affairs of the Creation Society.

Kuo Mo-jo returned to Japan in April 1924 and began to translate Social Organization and Social Revolution, by the Japanese Marxist Kawakami Hajime, into Chinese. By the end of May he had announced his conversion to Marxism-Leninism. He did not reject romanticism, but projected it into the future as being characteristic of the Communist Utopia to come. In July and August he translated Turgenev's Virgin Soil into Chinese. He later claimed that these two works caused him to decide to return to China and devote himself to the task of furthering the social revolution. This determination may well have been reinforced by the offer of a position on the liberal arts faculty of Wuchang Normal College. However, when a civil war between the rulers of Chekiang and Kiangsu broke out in late August, Kuo Mo-jo decided to postpone his return to China until the hostilities ended. He then wrote his most famous novel, Lo-yeh [fallen leaves], a work in epistolary form which commemorates "the first few months of his love affair with Sato Tomiko. In mid-November 1924 Kuo Mo-jo and his family went to Shanghai and established residence in the International Settlement. Since 1921 he had been associated with the Chung-hua hsueh-i she [Chinese association of arts and sciences], and since 1923 he had served as one of the two managing editors of its journal, Hsueh-i. He also was associated with the Ku-chün she [lone force association], a smaller organization composed mainly of members of the Chung-hua hsueh-i she who worked in the editorial offices of the Commercial Press. It was headed by Ho Kung-kan, who had given Kuo Mo-jo the book by Kawakami Hajime that had helped effect his conversion to Marxism. The Ku-chün she supported moderate reforms and the restoration of constitutional law. Kuo Mo-jo was accepted as a member because he had many friends in the organization and because he had persuaded the T'ai-tung Publishing Company to publish the organization's magazine, Ku-chün. In Shanghai, Kuo Mo-jo endeavored to persuade the other members of the Ku-chün that China should adopt a policy of state capitalism, which was what he understood the New Economic Policy of the Soviet Union to be. The Chung-hua hsueh-i she soon appointed Kuo Mo-jo to the planning committee for the establishment of the Hsueh-i ta-hsueh, or Arts and Sciences College, and promised him the post of chairman of the department of literature when the college opened in the autumn of 1925.

In the spring of 1925 Kuo Mo-jo wrote a number of poems and translated Gerhart Hauptmann's novel Der Ketzer von Soana, John Galsworthy's drama Strife, and several plays of J. ]M. Synge. Beginning in April, he gave two lectures a week at Ta Hsia University on the theory of literature. The lecture series came to an end with the May Thirtieth Incident. Kuo Mo-jo devoted much of his time during the summer to the national movement of protest that resulted from this incident. His dedication to Marxism-Leninism, especially the Leninist theory of imperialism, and his devotion to literature as a political weapon both increased. The rebirth of the Creation Society was marked by the appearance in September 1925 of a new fortnightly review entitled Hung-shui [the flood]. The editing of this magazine and of the Ch'uang-tsao yueh-k'an (Creation Monthly), which began publication in March 1926, was largely the work of the so-called junior Creationists - including Chou Ch'üan-p'ing, Ching Yinyü, and Ni I-te - but they were supported and advised by such members of the original Creation Society as Kuo Mo-jo and Ch'eng Fang-wu. During the fall term of 1925 Kuo Mo-jo taught at the newly established Arts and Sciences College. However, the new institution was not a successful venture, and Kuo Mo-jo resigned in December after engaging in a heated dispute with a prominent member of the board of directors. That winter, Kuo Mo-jo was introduced to Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai (q.v.), who went to Canton shortly after their meeting. In February 1926 Kuo Mo-jo was invited to become chairman of the department of literature at Sun Yat-sen University in Canton. He later learned that the offer had been made at the suggestion of Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai. He accepted the post on the condition that Yu Ta-fu and Wang Ta-ch'ing be given positions at the university. His terms were accepted, and the three men set out for Canton on 18 March, arriving there on 23 March.

In July 1926, just before the Northern Expedition was launched, Kuo Mo-jo was appointed to the staff of Teng Yen-ta (q.v.) as chief of the propaganda section of the National Revolutionary Army's general political department. He had been recommended for the post by Teng Yen-ta's secretary, Sun Ping-wen. Kuo Mo-jo left Canton at the end of July and arrived in the Wuchang area on 1 September. Eight days later, Teng Yen-ta ordered him to proceed to Hankow and set up headquarters for the general political department. From 9 September until the fall of Wuchang on 10 October Kuo Mo-jo was virtually in charge of the department. On 12 October its offices were moved to Wuchang. The following month, Kuo Mo-jo was promoted to vice chairman of the general political department and was sent to Nanchang, the field headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek, to establish a department office. This assignment put Kuo Mo-jo in a delicate position: he supported the policies of the Wuhan leaders, but he was working in Nanchang for Chiang Kai-shek at a time when the split between the Wuhan leaders and the Nanchang leaders was imminent. On 1 March 1927 Chiang Kai-shek appointed him chairman of the political department of the Generalissimo's field headquarters, but stipulated that the appointment should be kept secret until Nanking and Shanghai had fallen. Before accepting the post, Kuo Mo-jo secretly sent a telegram to Wuhan and received orders to accept Chiang's offer. On 16 March, he and his department set out for the front. He went as far as Anking, Anhwei, waited until Chiang left the city, and then sent the staff of the political department to Wuhan. He returned to Nanchang on 30 March and moved into the home of Chu Teh, where he spent an entire day writing a vitriolic attack on Chiang Kai-shek in which he called Chiang a reactionary counterrevolutionary and demanded that he be executed. The publication of this essay may well have been a cause of Chiang's 12 April purge of Communists. Kuo Mo-jo returned to Wuhan in mid-April. From 10 to 13 June 1927 he participated in the unsuccessful Chengchow conference between the Wuhan leaders and Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.). Soon afterwards, he became chief of the political department of the Second Front Army, which was commanded by Chang Fa-k'uei (q.v.). After the Nanchang uprising of 1 August {see Yeh T'ing), later celebrated as the birth of the Chinese Communist army, the leaders of the insurrection published a list of the members of their revolutionary committee which included Kuo Mo-jo and Chang Fa-k'uei, both of whom were in Kiukiang. On 3 August, Chang Fa-k'uei asked Kuo Mo-jo to disband the political department and to become his private secretary. Kuo Mo-jo agreed to the first request, but asked permission to go to Nanchang. Chang agreed to let him go if he would have Chang's name removed from the membership list of the revolutionary committee. Kuo Mo-jo arrived in Nanchang on 4 August and became chairman of the political department of the revolutionary committee. In the meantime, Chang Fa-k'uei had rallied his forces to suppress the insurgents. On 5 August, Kuo Mo-jo and the Communist forces withdrew from Xanchang and headed south. He participated in an unsuccessful uprising at Swatow in September and hid in the hills during the first three weeks of October. After reaching Shanghai, he rejoined his family and went into hiding in the International Settlement.

In November 1927 Kuo Mo-jo made plans to revive the Creation Society. He hoped to secure the cooperation of Lu Hsün (Chou Shu-jen, q.v.) in reestablishing the Creation Weekly and persuaded his friends Cheng Po-ch'i and Chiang Kuang-tz'u to discuss the matter with Lu Hsün. Tentative agreement was reached, but the matter was dropped when Ch'eng Fang-wu returned from Japan with a group of young radicals who opposed the idea of cooperating with Lu Hsün. In January 1928 the young men began to publish several new magazines in which they called for the creation of a proletarian literature and attacked Lu Hsün as being too conservative.

Kuo Mo-jo could not remain in Shanghai indefinitely, for the National Government had put a price on his head. At the end of 1927 he made arrangements to go to the Soviet Union with his family, but he was stricken with typhoid fever and was hospitalized for a month. He then decided to go to Japan, a decision which was approved by the Chinese Communist party. Such prominent Communists as Chou En-lai visited him at home during his recuperation. On 24 February 1928 Kuo Mo-jo and his family left Shanghai for Japan on separate ships. For the next ten years Kuo Mo-jo and his family lived in Ichikawa, a suburb to the east of Tokyo. He devoted most of his time to the study of ancient Chinese history and paleography. In 1930 he published the controversial Chung-kuo ku-tai she-hui yen-chiu, a Marxist interpretation of ancient Chinese history. The following year he published Chia-ku wen-tzu yen-chiu [studies of oracle-bone inscriptions]. He also made important contributions to the study of bronze inscriptions. During his ten years in Japan he wrote about fifteen scholarly works, seven autobiographical works, and a number of scholarly articles, short stories, and comments on topical issues. He translated three novels by Upton Sinclair, a German history of archaeology, Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and The German Ideology, and part of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

In June 1936 Kuo Mo-jo joined the Writers' Association [see Chou Yang). In the following months he played a significant role in the controversy over the slogan ''Literature for National Defense." In October 1936 he was listed as one of the twenty-one signatories of the proclamation of unity which ended the controversy. In November 1936 Yü Ta-fu went to Tokyo, where he resumed his friendship with Kuo Mo-jo. Yü agreed to try to pave the way for Kuo Mo-jo's return to China, and in the spring of 1937 he persuaded such prominent men as Chang Ch'ün, Ch'ien Ta-chün, Shao Li-tzu, and Ho Lien to intercede with Chiang Kai-shek on Kuo Mo-jo's behalf. In May, Yü informed Kuo Mo-jo that he could return to China. On 27 July, he landed in Shanghai. His wife and children remained in Japan.

In August 1937 Kuo Mo-jo's name was removed from the list of enemies of the National Government. He began writing anti-Japanese propaganda and helped found the Chiu-wang jih-pao [salvation daily], an influential left-wing newspaper. At the end of September, he went to Nanking, where he was received by Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang asked him to remain in Nanking and offere
him a position. Kuo Mo-jo refused Chiang's offer, but promised that he would continue to write anti-Japanese propaganda. He then returned to Shanghai. On 12 November 1937 Shanghai fell to the Japanese, and Kuo Mo-jo went into hiding in the French concession. On 27 November, he escaped aboard a French ship bound for Hong Kong. Among his fellow passengers were Ho Hsiang-ning and Tsou T'ao-fen (qq.v.). In mid-December, he went from Hong Kong to Canton in search of financial backing for the Chiu-wang jih-pao. Tseng Yang-fu, the mayor of Canton, and Wu T'ieh-ch'eng, the governor of Kwangtung, refused to help him, but Yü Han-mou (q.v.) offered his support. The newspaper resumed publication on 1 January 1938.

In response to a telegram from Ch'en Ch'eng (q.v.), Kuo Mo-jo went to Hankow in January 1938. Ch'en was organizing the political department of the Military Affairs Commission. He was to be the director, with Chou En-lai and Huang Ch'i-hsiang as his deputies. Kuo Mo-jo was asked to head the literary propaganda section of the department. He retired to Changsha to consider the offer. On 28 February he returned to Hankow, accepted the position, and promised to have his section in operation by 1 April. About this time, he set up house-keeping with Yü Li-ch'ün, the younger sister of a Chinese newspaper correspondent whom he had known in Tokyo. He had met her soon after his return to Shanghai in 1937. In October 1938 Wuhan fell to the Japanese, and the political department was evacuated to Changsha. On 13 November, Kuo Mo-jo witnessed the great fire that destroyed most of the city [see Chang Chih-chung). Because he participated in relief work after this catastrophe he did not rejoin the staff of his section, which had moved to Kweilin, until 3 December. At the end of the month, he and Yü Li-ch'ün flew to Chungking, where they remained until the spring of 1946.

Early in 1939 Kuo Mo-jo's staff was reduced. He was replaced by Huang Shao-ku (q.v.) in the autumn of 1940, when the National Government decided to remove radicals from important posts, and was given a sinecure post as head of a newly created cultural works committee. Thus, he was able to pursue his own interests in comparatively comfortable circumstances until the committee was suppressed on 30 March 1945. In 1942 and 1943 Kuo Mo-jo wrote five historical plays. The most popular of these was Ch'ü Yuan, an imaginative reconstruction and interpretation of the life of the earliest great Chinese poet about whom anything is known. Kuo Mo-jo's fascination with Ch'ü Yuan also manifested itself in scholarly articles and in his translations of Ch'ü Yuan's poems into pai-hua. From 1943 to 1945 he made a critical reevaluation of the intellectual history of ancient China. His Ch'ing-t'ung shih-tai [the bronze age] and Shih p'i-p'an shu [ten critiques], published in 1945, were among his most important and influential works.

In May 1945 Kuo Mo-jo was invited to the anniversary celebration of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to be held in Moscow and Leningrad from 16 to 28 June. He left Chungking on 9 June, but did not arrive in Leningrad until 26 June. He remained in the Soviet Union until 16 August, spending most of his time in Moscow, but also making a brief trip to Stalingrad, Tashkent, and Samarkand. He then flew back to Chungking with the Chinese delegation which had come to Moscow to complete negotiations for the Sino-Soviet friendship treaty which had been signed on 14 August. In January 1946 Kuo Mo-jo participated in the Political Consultative Conference as one of nine non-partisan delegates. On 10 February, he and two other speakers were injured in a riot which took place during a public meeting held to explain the accomplishments of the conference. At the end of June, he participated in the efforts of the so-called third force movement at Nanking to bring about an agreement between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party. When truce negotiations broke down in July, he began to write anti- American propaganda. In 1947 he devoted himself to scholarly writing and to the preparation of new editions of his earlier works. He moved to Hong Kong that winter and began work on a series of autobiographical sketches. On 24 November 1948 he left Hong Kong and went to join the Chinese Communists in Shih-chia-chung, Hopei. On 22 March 1949 the North China Cultural and Art Working Committee and the North China Writers Union held a tea party in Peking for writers and artists. Kuo Mo-jo attended the gathering and proposed the formation of a new national organization of writers and artists. This suggestion received unanimous approval, and a preparatory committee, headed by Kuo Mo-jo, was established. The All-China Congress of Writers and Artists, meeting in Peking in July, established the All-China Federation of Writers and Artists, with Kuo Mo-jo as its chairman. In September, Kuo Mo-jo was elected to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. After the Central People's Government was established, he became a vice president of the Government Administration Council, chairman of the Committee on Cultural and Educational Affairs, and president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. These honors were the well-earned reward of long years of service to the Communist cause. In 1966, however, Kuo Mo-jo reportedly was removed from his posts during the so-called Cultural Revolution. He declared that his works should be burned because he had failed to understand the Thought of Mao Tse-tung.