Scientific inquiry seeks not only to understand what is meant by a particular genre (definition) but also to explain its emergence (causes). Genre definitions are problematic, because they suggest literary genres are timeless or essential forms, but, in fact, they are constructed, maintained or abandoned by acting agents within the literary field and arise from specific social, cultural, and historical conditions. These conditions can be compared across contexts to deepen our understanding of the interaction between cultural production and its surrounding environments. The goal of such analysis is not merely to describe when and where a genre appears but to explain why it emerges under particular circumstances.

A systematic comparative approach enables the identification of patterns that recur across different cultural and historical contexts. To achieve this, J.S. Mill’s “Method of Agreement” offers an analytical framework. This presentation examines both the potential and the challenges of this method through a comparative causal analysis of the Bildungsroman in Germany and Japan, combining theory with practical applications to highlight the dynamics of genre formation.

In the late 1980s, the acceleration of globalization brought profound societal transformations to East Asia, catalyzing the emergence of Chinese and Korean New Wave cinema as distinctive responses to these changes. These films offered unique perspectives on national identity in a globalized context by employing "seeing" as a narrative strategy to inscribe historical consciousness and reimagine the agency of the people and Min-jung. Unlike the traditional narrative mode of "speaking," which aligns with Deleuze's concept of movement-image—where intellectuals articulate history and reality on behalf of the people—"seeing" subverts linear logic and records existence in its pure state as a "time-image."

Through a comparative analysis of Chen Kaige’s King of the Children (1987) and Park Kwang-su’s Black Repulic (1990), this study reveals how both films use "seeing" to foreground observation over narration. The cinematic "mechanical eye" captures the act of seeing, transforming the image of the people into a projection of the observer’s psychological landscape. This representation reflects the historical consciousness shaped by the generational experiences of China's "educated youth" and South Korea's democratization movement.

Both films articulate a "hysterical" narrative tied to the failed promises of Western modernization, reflecting shared uncertainties about globalization's trajectory. As China and South Korea entered transitional phases during this period, their envisioned modernities diverged from Eurocentric models, adopting hybrid forms informed by postcolonial and postmodern perspectives. Consequently, their historical narratives bear the marks of disenchantment, characterized by reflexivity and desanctification in their portrayal of national history.

The translation and literary endeavors by missionaries constitute a significant domain in East-West cross-cultural practice from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Joseph de Prémare (1666-1736), a French Jesuit who came to China during the early Qing dynasty, has already become an important subject in comparative literature studies through his seminal translation of The Orphan of Zhao. Beyond translation, Prémare—a specialist in “la poésie chinoise et les caractères”—pioneered original literary creations in both classical and vernacular Chinese. His Dream of a Pilgrim (Mengmeituji, 1709), now recognized as one of the origins of “missionary novels” in China, exemplifies an unparalleled Sino-Western integration style. However, much like the distortion and rejection Prémare endured during his lifetime, this unpublished manuscript has long been overlooked, with its value in bridging Chinese and Western literary traditions scarcely acknowledged. Building upon existing annotations and commentaries, this study adopts a new cultural hybridization perspective to reinterpret Prémare’s work within a cross-cultural context. Inspired by Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and grounded in Jesuit Figurism, this “classical Chinese tale” (chuanqi) intricately weaves together biblical cosmology and medieval dream vision, with abundant motifs and figures drawn from Confucian classics and classical Chinese literature, embodying the typical cultural hybridity of missionary novels. Through intertextual analyses encompassing “pagan” classics, Christian literature, Ming-Qing tales, and other missionary novels, its multiple hybridities in theme, genre, and language can be crystallized into two core dimensions: “allegorism” and “archaism.” This approach reveals its profound yet syncretic literary imagination while reassessing its position in traditional and modern Chinese literature. As a Jesuit Figurist while a proto-Sinologist, Prémare’s “self-conscious hybridization” reveals an important facet of the Jesuit accommodation strategies, underscoring missionaries’ crucial role as cross-cultural mediators.

China and South Korea are two neighboring Asian countries that share many similarities in their modern development. In the 1930s, both China and colonial Korea experienced left-wing literary movements in the arts influenced by socialist ideas, resulting in the formation of the Left Wing Organizations and the Korean Proletarian Artists' Federation (KAPF). During this period, cinema became an art form that combined with new modern technologies, movie theaters were built in large cities and the first audiences appeared. Among them, intellectuals were not only the main audience for movies, but also the ones who introduced and criticized them. With the moving from silent movies to talkies, With the moving from silent movies to talkies, the intellectuals paid attention to the social function of cinema, and the Left League and Kafka sought the path of cinema with ideological tendencies.

This paper aims to compare the development of cinema in the Left Wing Organizations and the KAPF. In terms of previous studies, there are currently no studies that compare the two. In Korea, there is only a comparative study of KAPF and Pro-Kino organizations in Japan (Hyo In Yi, 2012), but there is no comparative study of the Chinese Leftist cinema.

This paper will examine the establishment process, organizational form and ideological orientation, activity development, and film works of the two groups. In the case of KAPF, the organization that can be officially considered to be under the KAPF umbrella was completed after the reorganization in 1930, with the KAPF Film Department and its direct film studio, Cheongbok-kino, and the film <Underground Village> (Kangho Gamjok, 1931). KAPF's five films did not achieve popular success due to Japanese censorship and lack of capacity Nevertheless, KAPF filmmakers continued to try to revive the organization by establishing the Sino-Korean Film Company, Seoul Kino, Dongbang Kino, and the Joseon Film Production Institute, but they were disbanded due to Japanese repression and the dissolution of the KAPF.

Both the Lift-wing and KAPF films led the trend of socialist film criticism around the 1930s and 'Soft and Hard Struggle' in China. In this context, we can also be seen alongside the first film debates in Korea, which began by criticizing the non-plutocratic, petty-bourgeois, and conservative nature of existing bourgeois cinema. The similarities between the Left-wing and KAPF films are that they were both cultural movements aimed at socialist revolution. While both sought to create left-wing popular films, KAPF films emphasized practicality by directing and starring in their own films, while leftist filmmakers chose a collaborative approach by providing scenarios and partnering with talented film companies. These differences stemmed from the differences in their specific environments and the differences in the objective conditions of the film industry, and provide a reference point for the later development of national cinema.

Since the 18th century, the criteria of truth have been dominated by the paradigm of modern science, by the ideal of universality, standardization, and objectivity. Kant as the prominent figure of this movement established that the foundation of truth depends upon the premise of universal human reason, which guarantees our rational judgment to be identical. This concept of truth however renders it difficult for contemporary readers to appreciate classic Chinese epistemology tradition that begins with the Yi易, which values rather the individual’s hermeneutic intuition to deduce human meanings from material things. This article therefore elucidates Zhu Xi’s conception of gewu格物 (investigation of things) as the apex of the Yi tradition, and in what ways it helps us to reflect upon the ideology of modern science. For Zhu Xi, one’s intuition is nor born universal, but should be consciously cultivated in order to understand the workings of thing. True knowledge is not any metaphysical law, but is the capacity to interpret the meaning of things in any concrete situation, and how it is related to a cosmological vision at large.