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Date 2021-04-28

Title

The Widows House: the Japanese Language Literature and Soseki's “ Kokoro”(Heart)

Author

Lee, Yu-Hui

Full-Time Chinese Language Instructor, Faculty of Economy, Ritsumeikan University

Abstract

This article is seeking to make clear how Japanese language literature by writers born in Taiwan or Korea under the colonization of Japan is related to Japanese modern literature. It is usually stated from a historical or political opinion but is little concerned with the representation within texts. For it, I will first try to compare the works by the Taiwanese with a one by the Korean and find similar themes. Such a theme is that a colonized hero goes to Japan native land to receive a higher education and rents a room from a Japanese family that has no father, just a mother and a daughter. He always falls for the daughter but feels a complex as colonized people. This is very interesting because it is also an important motive of Japanese modern literature especially the work of Soseki: “Kokoro”, etc. In comparison with “Kokoro”, Taiwanese and Korean heroes have been accepted and expected as a replacement of the fathers who were officers and died in the war, but they all decided to leave in the end. After analysis, the reason why they have to leave even if in fact they desire to stay there is connected with that it is hard to take the lead place of a father in a widow’s house. In other words, the widow’s house just represents a Japan that tries to cheat them into being Japanese because of language, but on the other hand sets them apart because they do not have Japanese blood. With this representation, we can also come to a new conclusion that the widow’s house of “Kokoro” is meaningful.

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Bulletin of Taiwanese Literature
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