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Introduction: Wolf in East Asia

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"Wolf." From the New Mandarin Reading Primer

The wolf is often used as a pejorative figure in ancient Chinese dictionaries or anecdotes. The Chinese idiom “Wolf and Bei committing evil things with each other” [Langbei Weijian] means that when the two creatures appear together, they harm livestock and are detested and expelled by humans. Later, wolves are also seen as brutal and greedy creatures in various media, such as literature and movies. In Japan, the extinction of the Japanese wolves gives this creature a mysterious color; Korean works also focus on the overlap between human and wolf figures.

As the literary era evolves, the image of the wolf has taken on a different interpretation when we look at wartime or fictionalized worlds - the concept of the “lone wolf” gives the wolf the strength and courage to break away from convention and tradition. How has the image of the wolf changed over the past hundred years? What kind of public expectations and changes of the times are reflected in this transition? The use of the imagination of the wolf in literary language is not only the author’s exploration of this mysterious species but also the author’s implicit use of this animal as a bridge to send out thoughts and questions about the human world.