Sū Mànshū 蘇曼殊 (1884–1918), birth name Sū Xuányíng 蘇玄瑛, courtesy name Zǐgǔ 子谷, religious name Mànshū 曼殊 (Sanskrit: Mañjuśrī), was a poet, novelist, translator, and Buddhist monk of mixed Sino-Japanese ancestry. Born in Yokohama, Japan, to a Chinese merchant father (Sū Jiélíng 蘇傑靈) and a Japanese mother (or, by another account, a Japanese aunt serving as concubine), his illegitimate status and ambiguous parentage profoundly shaped his literary self-presentation as a wanderer between two worlds.
Sū was ordained as a Buddhist monk on multiple occasions — including in Guangdōng — though his monastic discipline was famously lax. He was acquainted with the revolutionary circles around Sūn Yātīng 孫逸仙 (Sun Yat-sen) and contributed to nationalist journals in the early Republican period. As a literary figure he was celebrated both for his classical-style poetry (jūesī 絕詩), noted for their elegiac beauty and romantic longing, and for his five short autobiographical novels of which Duàn Hóng Líng Yàn Jì 斷鴻零雁記 (KR4k0103) is the most celebrated.
His translations include selections from Byron’s poetry into Chinese and fragments from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, as well as a translation of Robinson Crusoe. He died in Shanghai in May 1918, aged 34. CBDB dates: birth 1884 (Guāngxù 10), death 1918 (Republic of China year 7).