This study combines contemporary literary theory, Chinese history, comparative literature, and cultural studies to analyse the historical interactions between China, Japan, and the West in terms of 'translingual practice.' By this term, the author refers to the process by which new words, meanings, discourses, and modes of representation arose, circulated, and acquired legitimacy in early modern China as it came into contact with European and Japanese languages and literatures. In reexamining the rise of modern Chinese literature in this context, the book asks three central questions: How did 'modernity' and 'the West' become legitimised in May Fourth literary discourse? What happened to native agency in this complex process of legitimation? How did the Chinese national culture imagine and interpret its own moment of unfolding?