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Title |
The Adjustment of Realism: An Analysis of Japanese Character in Ishikawa Tatsuzo and Yang Kui’s Writings from the 1930s to 1945 |
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Author |
Lo, Shih-Yun |
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Project Assistant Professor, Center for General Education, Chihlee University of Technology |
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Abstract |
As the scope of the war expanded, the Japanese Empire launched a cultural cooperative movement against colonial writers. Cultural people from Japan, colonial Taiwan, and Korea were mobilized by the authorities to promote the Great East Asia War. Ishikawa Tatsuzo, a Japanese member of the “Pen Forces”, reported his literary work “The Living Soldier” (生きてゐる兵隊) in the battlefield. This novel was banned for over-exposing the negative impression of war. It is a special example in war literature; on the other hand, the Royal Society of Taiwanese Literature (台灣文學奉公會) selected Taiwanese and Japanese writers to visit various production sites in Taiwan in 1944, and according theirs’s actual experiences to write about the attitude of industrial warriors. Yang Kui’s “Behind the Increases of Production” shows the violence of colonialism on personal consciousness, and it also has controversy over whether or not to disobey the national policy. In this context, this article discusses the similarities and differences of Ishikawa Tatsuzo and Yang Kui’s literary works from the 1930s to 1945. The discussion structure is divided into two parts; The first part is the acceptance and evaluation of Ishikawa Tatsuzo in the 1930s Taiwanese literary circles, and compares the written texts of Ishikawa Tatsuzo and Yang Kui on Japanese immigrants; the second part is discussion about the living environment and humanity of the two writers’ wartime writing. Therefore, we can balance the writing strategies of Taiwanese and Japanese left-wing writers in the context of imperial culture from the 1930s to 1945. |
