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Title |
A Generation in the Representation of the Taiwan Colony during Wartime: An Example of the Lecture Visit to Taiwan by the Liberal Arts Homefront Movement in 1940 |
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Author |
Yang, Zhi-Jing |
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Graduate Student, Ph. D Program, Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University |
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Abstract |
Starting in 1937, in the midst of the Sino-Japanese war, there appears a phenomenon by which the consciousness of native Japanese writers (excluding those writers already living in the Taiwanese colony for an extended period) towards the Japanese colonization in Taiwan begins to gradually decrease. An example would be the lectures given by visiting literary writers with the Liberal Arts Homefront Movement, independently arranged during wartime. The topic of the lectures given by the five writers (Kan Kikuchi, Ashihei Hino, Masao Kume, Minoru Nakano and Eiji Yoshikawa) concerning the conditions of production of works related to the Taiwan lecture trip, are relevant to the aforementioned phenomenon from the perspective of the writers’ literary view under the wartime regime and the policy of southward advancement—Taiwan base theory, which prospered during this period. This reveals two findings as follows. Firstly, the activity of the literary authors shifted towards a collaborative effort and numerous battlefield literatures, military service related literature, were created by the social situation under wartime rule of that time and the call for a new system. Specifically the writers became more and more concerned about the battlefield conditions, which symbolized the decline of the Taiwan colony in the eyes of those in the Japanese motherland. Secondly, the representation of the decline of the Taiwan colony and the progressively large southward advancement base theory is also relevant to the phenomenon. The idea of the southward advancement policy, Taiwan base theory, narrowed the scope of concern to Taiwan and the breadth of creativity amongst the literati. Therefore Taiwan only touched lightly upon their non-native related work as the military base/way point for the southward advancement, and it could not be easily adapted to the subject matter the work described. |
