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Title |
Green Tears: On the Critique of the Sugar Industry in Itō Einosuke's Novel "Flatland Aboriginals" |
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Author |
Liu, Liu ShuChin |
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Professor, Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Tsing Hua University |
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Abstract |
In 1930, Itō Einosuke published the novel "Flatland Aboriginals" in Japan, which inherited critical discourses on the sugar industry from the Taiwanese Cultural Association, Taiwan Farmers' Association, Lai Ho and others. It is the first novel that focuses on the plains indigenous people of Taiwan. This paper provides a brief overview of the story's synopsis and explores its key conflicts and thematic core through a comparison with similar works. Specifically, it examines the intertextuality between "Flatland Aboriginals" and the first Taiwanese farmer-assaulting police story, Lai Ho's "The 'Steelyard,'" as well as Yamabe Katsuko's story about an Atayal assistant patrolman "Aboriginal Laisa." Next, it explores how the author complements the "speaker's voice" of the farmers with the "author's objective narration" to demonstrate the protagonist's indigenous self-awareness in the mixed social space of multiple ethnic groups. Fourth, this paper compares the sources of the novel’s materials by analyzing the Taiwan Daily News, Taiwan Min Pao, Taiwan People Times, and books about the studies on the sugar industry at that time. Finally, the paper compares the differences between the author, the official and the zaibatsu's "theories on the mission to develop Eastern Taiwan" to explain Itō's advocacy for the value of representing Taiwan's plain indigenous people and Japanese agricultural immigrants. |
