Herder and ZHOU Zuo-ren

This article examines many important terms on folklore and national literature in ZHOU Zuo-ren's writings.It attempts to investigate how these German terms entered ZHOU's writings during his stay in Japan.This article suggests that ZHOU Zuo-ren learned these terms and their relevant knowledge from his Japanese experience.More particular,ZHOU Zuo-ren has learned about Herder mainly based on his intellectual resources in Japan.He accepted Herder's idea on collecting folklores and transformed Herder's practice in this respect into China.This article continues to study why ZHOU Zuo-ren accepted Herder's ideas of folklore.It argues that ZHOU Zuo-ren was actually interested in Herder's cultural nationalism,since ZHOU has touched upon many important issues in Herder's cultural nationalism.