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Taiwanese Literature as a minority literature : Silence in postwar

The postwar period, of necessity, implies a time of silence : the silence of peace, the silence of shame, the silence of the victim and the silence of the guilty. In postwar France, for example, many intellectuals had to fall silent because they collaborated with the nazi government. But very rapidly, those who were not too much implicated began again to talk as if nothing had happened 1. In the other parts of the world, in the Pacific, the end of the war did not reveal the same reality but it was the same shame. Taiwan was also condemned to silence but for other reasons. The colonization of Taïwan ceased with the defeat of Japan in 1945. In Taiwan there was the silence of shame for those who were too close to japanese government, but there was also the silence due to the language shift from japanese to chinese. This silence mostly touched Taiwanese intellectuals, and above all writers. They were suddenly reduced to silence and due to this fact replaced by Chinese intellectuals arriving from China. How did Taiwanese writers face or accept this situation ? We will first analyse this particular situation and the fact that the works of Taiwanese writers suddenly disappeared from the literary scene and this, for many decades. This silence also reflects a shift between two dominant languages, japanese and chinese which both took the place of the proper languages of the , it means taiwanese dialects. Thus, taiwanese literature seems to possess the three characteristics of minority literature as Deleuze and Guattari have defined in their essay Kafka, for a minority literature : 1.« A minority literature is not written in a minority language but it is rather a

1 Cecile Wajsbrot, « Le roman en fuite » in Paris 1944-1954, Artistes, intellectuels, publics : la culture comme enjeu, Autrement, 1995, p.63 literature written by a minority in a major language » ; 2. Everything is political ; 3 everything has a collective value. 2 What was the reaction, the strategy of Taiwanese writers when faced with the impossibility of writing in japanese, a language they were obliged to learn and in which they had to write until the end of the war ? We will see through different cases that the choice of a language as a mode of expression never departs from an ideological or a political choice. We will then conclude with the question of Taiwanese literature as minority literature.

1. The situation of Taiwanese intellectuals faced with the arrival of their chinese « colleagues »

a.The silence in japanese

During the colonization, The japanese government slowly imposed the japanese language on the Taiwanese population. After a while, Taiwanese intellectuals were eager to enter japanese schools and to go to Japan to study in universities where they were sure to acquire a high level of education, but also where they could be much more closed to the cultures of the West. Japan was more linked to the rest of the world than Taiwan, which was still rural, like China, and many important works with new ideas had already been translated into japanese. In Taiwan, many japanese intellectuals were also open to taiwanese participation in different cultural and literary fields. They often shared the same ideal of humanism and compassion for the poor coming from the socialist ideas which pervade the world at this time. Using japanese language, Taiwanese intellectuals were able to build their own identity and to defend taiwanese language. It is only at the end, during the Kominka period, when Taiwan was also implicated with the war, that the use of chinese language was forbidden, in 1937. But even during this period, when there were only newspapers and magazines in japanese, the space left by the chinese sections were dedicated to cultural and aesthetic sections which still gave

2 Gilles Deleuze et Felix Guattari, Kafka for a minority literature, Kafka pour une litterature mineure, Editions de Minuit, 1975, p-29-31. opportunities to taiwanese intellectuals to write.3 From 1937 to 1946, nine years of quasi silence, during which Taiwanese writers still could express themselves but only in japanese, (with still some exceptions in chinese), and under the eye of the censorship. At that time, we can say that Taiwanese intellectuals were no more permited to express their own ideas wether in chinese or in japanese. It is also at this very moment (almost the last two decades of the colonization) when Taiwanese people were the most linked to japanese language, corresponding to the end of the war, that the chinese government imposed the sudden shift of language from japanese to chinese : « Whereas forty years after the inception of japanese rule, literary chinese was still being used in mass media, the KMT language policy was much stricter : little more than a year after occupying Taiwan, they had prohibited the use of Japanese in newspapers and magazines. » said Fuji Shôzô.4 Taiwanese intellectuals almost ceased to express their demand for identity during the last years of the war but after the war they were condemned to a longer and deeper silence.

b. The silence in chinese We will first come back to the article of Michelle Yeh « On our destitute Dinner table »5 which opened our eyes to the phenomena of the silence of Taiwanese writers, and in which she quoted Lin Hengtai 林亨泰 taking his generation as « the translingual generation » « kuayue yuyan de yidai » 跨越語言的一代6. It refers to the writers who needed a full ten years to acquire enough proficiency in chinese to write and publish in that language. The others, those who gave up writing and those who continued to write in japanese but could not publish in Taiwan were called by Michele Yeh « the silenced generation ». In my opinion, this « silenced generation » covers also the writers who need ten years to learn chinese before being able to express themselves without difficulty. Could not we say that of Yang Kui 楊逵 who found time to learn chinese only in jail, where he was condemned to twelve years of imprisonnement for political reasons after 28/2 Incident ?

3 Kawahara Isao, « The State of Taiwanese Culture and Taiwanese new literature in 1937 » in Liao Ping-hui and David Der-Wei Wang, Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, 1875- 1945,New York Columbia University Press,2006, p.122. 4 Fuji Shôzô, « The formation of taiwanese identity and the cultural policy of various outside regimes » op.cit. p.74. 5 Michelle Yeh, « On our Destitute Dinner Table : Modern Poetry Quaterly in the 1950’s in David Der-Wei Wang & Carlos Rojas ed. Writing Taiwan, Durham &London : Duke University Press, 2007, p.124. 6« Kuayue yuyan de yidai shiren men » in Kikuharu Takahashi, « Shigaku » Japan, 1967. And, on the contrary, those who went on writing in japanese were not completly silenced even if they could not publish in Taiwan, they still had the possibility to express themselves and to write for the future. More important than these categorizations, what Michele Yeh reveals is patently obvious : «Because of the linguistic barrier and the political turmoil of the postwar years, the literary scene in the 1950s was dominated by émigré writers ».7 Only those who wrote in chinese were allowed to publish in Taiwan under the rule of KMT. It was not that chinese intellectuals —most of them were good and honest poets— rejected native writers, but said Michele Yeh that « the émigrés linguistic skills clearly provided a valuable form of cultural capital which put them in an advantageous position ». This remark requires more investigation. Michele Yeh puts her finger on a very important issue : what does it mean when people of one country cannot write and publish in their own country because they do not have the « linguistic skills » and the « cultural capital » ? It just means that they are backwards, that they have no education, not enough intellectual ability. This is not at all the case of Taiwanese writers. This argument has no basis. Taiwanese intellectuals had a very good education level at that time, perhaps higher than their chinese colleagues, they were maybe much more opened-minded. This cannot be verified but it was in these terms that Wu Choliu (Wu Zhuoliu) 吳濁流wrote an article in order to defend the japanese language in Taiwan 8: « A disarmed Japan can fulfill an important role in introducing culture. Almost all the world’s literature has been translated into japanese. As long as one has a knowledge of japanese, one will come into contact with the culture of all countries ». He asked for the preservation of the japanese language during a period of transition. But of course he was not listened to. There were also some Taiwanese writers who had the opportunity to contribuate to literary magazines, we will see later on in which way. Much more puzzling, when we think about this sudden absence of Taiwanese writers, is this last remark of Michelle Yeh : « The fact that this inequality was never mentionned only reaffirms the workings of the literary field, in which language was not an issue of contention. »

7 Michelle Yeh, « On our Destitute Dinner Table : Modern Poetry Quaterly in the 1950’s in David Der-Wei Wang & Carlos Rojas ed. Writing Taiwan, Durham &London : Duke University Press, 2007p.125. 8 « My humble opinion concerning the abolition of japanese ». « Nichibun ni taisuru kanken »,Xin xin n°7 (october 1946). For what reason was the inequality between Chinese and Taiwanese writers kept silenced? What does it mean that language is not « an issue of contention » ? Does it mean that writers are not concerned with language ? That language is not a literary issue? It sounds very strange and contradictory to the rest of the article of Michelle Yeh focusing on the debate organized by émigrés writers between new poetry written in vernacular chinese and old poetry written in classical chinese. In this way, chinese intellectuals were completly involved in linguistics debates but for them it was not a question of bilinguism, but still the question of the shift from classical chinese to modern chinese, an issue which emerged almost thirty years before and which was not resolved after the war, in China and then again in Taiwan. But was it the problem of Taiwanese writers ? Not anymore because they wrote in japanese. In Taiwan, this shift has already been accomplished in the twenties in a very different way, because, if we can make a very short summary, new poetry in modern chinese was very close to modern poetry in japanese9. In fact, the japanese language did not know the cleavage between classical and modern language. Free from this burden, japanese writers in the 1920’s renewed literature completly, which was open to new ideas coming from Europe and Russia.10 Obsessed by the battle against classical chinese, and obliged to write in very strict limites because the cultural field was controled by the Nationalist regime, chinese writers maybe had no possibility to look back to the previous works written by Taiwanese. Japanese was a real barrier for Chinese intellectuals but we still have to learn about their attitude when confronted with Native writers. We will stay involved with the linguistic question and analyse some cases of reactions to the sudden linguistic shift from japanese to chinese.

2. Taiwanese writers and the choice between the chinese and the japanese language. With the defeat of Japan and the arrival of the Chinese government, the Taiwanese people had to suddenly shift from one dominant and major language —japanese— to another —chinese. For the people, an official language imposed by a government simply took the place of another. In private, they still prefered, even if forbidden, to speak their own dialect.

9 It would be too long to go into details. See the books previously mentionned. 10 Cécile Sakai, Kawabata, le clair-obscu, Kawabata Yasunari, « Note sur les nouvelles tendances des nouveaux écrivains » 1925, PUF, 2001. For intellectuals, for writers, they were suddenly deprived of their tool of expression, of a language in which they used to defend their rights and their identity until the war. Taiwanese literature as a minority literature existed at this time until the 2/28 Incident and the period of . After this, there was a long and deep silence for all this generation of writers. They shared the same destiny than those who wrote with the consciounsness of belonging to a minority literature : « It always finishes like this, the lines of flight of language : silence, interruption, endless, or worst. » (« et çà se termine toujours comme çà les lignes de fuite du langage : le silence, l’interrompu, l’interminable, ou pire encore. »)11 Through three different choices, which all are at the same time linguistic choice, political choice and life choice, we will refer to the three characteristics defined by Deleuze and Guattari for minority literature : «minority literature is written in a major language : « everything is political », « everything has a collective value. » So, what could we say about the choice of language in 1945 ? Actually we could say that taiwanese writers had no choice. There was no period of transition. Taiwanese writers had to write in chinese if they wanted to be read. Japanese had become not only the language of the colonizer but also the language of the enemy. In fact, there were five possibilities : 1. to stop writing 2. to write in japanese and to translate it in chinese 3. to continue to write only in japanese 4. to learn chinese and to write in chinese 5. to write in one’s own dialect We will see that those five possibilities were all mixed up.

a. The choice of the chinese language First we would say that it was the good and the only choice if you wanted to publish but in a second time, we understand easily that a linguistic choice cannot be separated from an ideological or a political choice. For those who chose chinese, it seems that this choice was linked with their collective and social consciousness and for some with a socialist ideal. It does not imply that under Japanese rule, those who wrote in japanese did not share the same ideas, as I have explained above. But at this time, it was a reason for a

11 Gilles Deleuze&Félix Guattari, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure,Les Editions de Minuit,1975, p.49 shift of language because Japan represented the oppressing colonial governement and China a possibility of the recognition of taiwanese identity, equality and perhaps also social improvement, it was of course without taking into account that China was divided between the Communist party and the Nationalist party. If we just mention the case of Lu Heruo 呂赫若((1914-1950 ?), it will become very obvious. Lü Heruo wrote novels in japanese before the end of the war, among which his famous novel Oxcar Gyusha 牛車 in 193512. He studied music and theater in Japan, and then, coming back to Taiwan, he wrote about the taiwanese peasant society, he was already very critical of the japanese colonial government. After the war, he clearly became a leftist : he founded his own printing office and printed secret documents and a newspaper the Guangmingbao 光明報. Lü Heruo was the most enthousiastic taiwanese writer for writing in chinese. In 1946, he had already written directly in chinese a shortstory published in Xing xing 星星 magazine , in Zhengjingbao 政經報Zhanzheng de gushi 戰爭的故事 and Dongye in february 1947 冬夜13. But because of his political activities he died mysteriously during the White Terror in 1950. Lü Heruo espoused the chinese language in order to liberate taiwanese people from oppression. He certainly hoped that the Communists would also « liberate » Taiwan and he was eager to welcome them. The choice of chinese language was not the choice of but the choice of chinese communism. Chong Lihe 鐘理和(1915-1960) was also a precocious writer in chinese because he went to China before the war in order to marry a woman who had the same name as him, which was a taboo at this time. He wrote in chinese and published a novel in Beijing in 1945. But just as Lü Heruo, it was not good for him to be a pioneer, because this book was the only fiction he published during his lifetime. For what reason ? He always wrote in chinese, why did he find no possibility to publish ? Because he wrote about poor people in taiwanese society ?14 A time which promoted anti-communist or nostalgic literature was not a time for writing that kind of fiction.

12 in 文學評論magazine 13 « Taiwan wenhua » february 1947 14 about this question see for exemple Ying Fenghuang, « The Literary development of Zhong Lihe and Postcolnial Discourse in Taiwan », in David Der-Wei Wang & Carlos Rojas, ed. Writing Taiwan, Duke University Press, Durham&London, 2007, p.140-155. Lu Ching-long who wrote his thesis15 about Chong Lihe gave an interesting testimony of what is it exactly for a Taiwanese to learn chinese and to write in chinese : Chong Lihe first learned chinese through the Sanszijing 三字經and the Xishi xianwen 昔時現文, also thanks to chu-yin fu hao and finally reading new . First he wrote in japanese and then translated it into chinese. After having learned enough chinese to be able to write directly in japanese, he translated mentally the japanese sentence before writing it in chinese, what one may call it « mental translation ». Finally, at the end of the process, he thought and wrote directly in chinese. About taiwanese writings in chinese, Lu Ching-long made an important remark : « Their work was written in a sober style and at the same time they tried to employ taiwanese dialect. » They wrote a langage without observing conventions, just as foreigner would do. The vocabulary is not so rich and the syntax maybe is not always correct. But they used the language in the good way, because they were more free from conventions, more creative, far from classical chinese, they could deepen the language. They also chose a simple language, in this way they could « go further into the deterritorialization, by dint of soberness, and if the vocabulary is dried up they could make it vibrate with intensity » (« Opter pour une langue pauvre, aller toujours plus loin dans la déterritorialisation à force de sobriété puisque le vocabulaire est desséché le faire vibrer en intensité. »)16 Those two writers felt in harmony with the chinese language, as the language of the poor, they found in proletarian themes the sens of literature. But literature was too much linked with action at this time and they finally had to face not a shift of language but silence. Under japanese government it was already the same situation, Taiwanese writers also wrote minority literature and even writing wether in chinese or in japanese, they also wrote in a poor language, full of dialectical expressions, using words they themselves created. But it was the real work of a writer, who had to renew the language and the literature of his country, even if he had to write in a majority language.

b.The choice of japanese only

15 Lu Ching-long Chung Li-He : sa vie, son œuvre 鐘理和，生平和作品之研究Paris VII, 1988. 16 Gilles Deleuze&Félix Guattari, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure, Les Editions de Minuit,1975, p.35. There are many cases of writers who continued to write in japanese. Some of them were devoted to japanese culture (as Zhou Jinpo 周金波) other combined political reasons with aesthical ones ( as Huang Lingzhi). We will only mention Qiu Yonghan 丘永漢 (or Qiu Bingnan). During the war he studied economy in Japan and he began to write in japanese about taiwanese identity. After the war he participated in Taiwan independence movement and was obliged after 28/2 Incident to flee to Hong-Kong. After a period of resistance, between Japan and Hong-Kong, he gave up writing in 1956.17 In Yuduzhe shouji 偷渡者手記18, the main character You Tiande 游天德wanted to emigrate to Japan, he explained to the judge his reasons, one of them was that after the war he realized that he had become a man « who had received a japanese education » . He said : « Under japanese government, he belonged to a different minzu to Japanese people, but now did not he already belong to another minzu than the Chinese one ? » In another story « Jiancha guan » 檢察官 19 also written after the war, the main character, on the contrary, still want to live in Taiwan in order to become an accomplished Taiwanese (« wanmei de Taiwanren) but is killed during 28/2 Incident. As these stories show, Qiu Yonghan was very implicated with identity questions. He chose the japanese language not because he was devoted to japanese culture but because under the japanese regime he realized what it was to be Taiwanese. Engaged in the independence movement he had no other choice than to go into exile. To live in Japan after the war was for him a real exile, because he did not pass for a japanese citizen anymore. Writing in japanese about the taiwanese situation became a non-sens for him and that was the reason why he stopped writing. In fact, no japanese reader at this time was interested in stories about colonial Japan and in stories which had no japanese characters. Nobody wanted to look back to the past. Japan was also condemned to silence, the silence of shame and of the atomic bomb. In fact, QiuYonghan was condemned to a double silence : First by the KMT governement, as an opposant to the chinese regime and as an independentist. Secondly by Japan’s oblivion of the past and the absence of interest for his ancient colony.

17 Takahashi Kikuharu, Taiwan de ribenyu wenxue, , ,Qianheng chubanshe, 1998, p.158-167. 18 « Taishu bungei », 1954, 1. 19 « Bungakukai », 1955,8. In 1994, when his works were published again in Japan, Qiu Yonghan felt no interst in it : « I have no interest in talking again about the stories of the past ».20 Both japanese and chinese governments had killed him as a writer. In this case, the japanese language was linked with a political choice, not very far from the ideal of Lu Heruo, except that he was not communist. But even if he saved his life in exile, his writings had no readers. Qiu Yonghan is a good example of minority literature as « everything is politics » but we could say that of almost all taiwanese writers, poets ans novelists, before the arrival of in the island. The two stories mentionned above particulary talked about the life of Qiu Yonghan himself and about his doubts and questions concerning taiwanese identity and citizenship : is he a japanese citizen ? a chinese, a taiwanese one ? As minority literature, he expressed through individual experience a political dimension shared by every Taiwanese. It was almost impossible at that time to write a story which was not directly « connected » to politics as Deleuze said, which means that even if you do not talk about politics, it is in its very nature, political. At the same time, literature has a collective dimension, every moment of the life of an individual concerns all the people.

c. The choice of japanese translated into chinese21

Yang Qianhe 楊千鶴, is a woman writer born in 1921 in Taipei. She was educated un japanese, she began to work as a journalist in a japanese newspaper in Taiwan, where she took some feminist positions which were not well accepted by the government. She began to write short-stories in japanese which were published in magazines22. After the war she stopped writing for a very long time, about forty years. In 1989 she began again to have some literary activities and in 1993 she published her autobiography in japanese, which was translated into chinese in 199923. Her autobiography, titled « Life’s prism » Jinsei no purizumu ( Rensheng de sanlengjing 人生之三稜鏡) is interesting for us because she gave her attention to the question of language, and she very clearly explained why she still

20 ibidem. p.167. 21 the question of the translation is very important, see. : Li Youhui, Ribenyu wenxue yu Taiwan, Qianheng, 2002, p.183-211. 22 Yang Qianhe, Huakai shijie, Taipei, Nantian, 2001. 23 Yang Qianhe, Rensheng de sanlengjing, Taipei, Nantian, 1999. chose japanese to write it, more than forty years after the arrival of chinese government in Taiwan. The question of language appears at the very beginning of her autobiography. She mentioned it as one of the two more important events of her life : « the second world war and she shift from japanese to chinese. »24 She gives the same importance to the war and to the shift of language because she was already a writer at that time, and her profession as journalist was also completly connected to language. This shift means for her, both the end of her job as a way to earn money, and the end of her activity of creation as a writer. She adds that she wrote about herself as a « Taiwanese woman who was not japanese » : In this way she clearly distinguished her choice of japanese language from the choice of japanese identity. The shift of language which had many consequences in her life was not for her a political regret. She clearly chose the taiwanese citizenship. She also asked the very relevant question : « Why do I write in japanese, a language I do not use in everyday life ? » This question concerns the time when she decided to write her autobiography, at this time she lived in the United States since 1977. Her everyday life maybe was a mix of english and taiwanese dialect. She had no use of japanese. In this situation what was her reason for writing in japanese ? : « Because I lived at a period when Taiwan was a japanese colony. I had to bear this wound of history which cannot be healed nor disappear. But in recent times, I lived in a new nation set up by the Taiwanese people. I did my best to learn the chinese language but I did not succeed in, I have only the choice of using the japanese language which made taiwanese people suffer » : 只好仍用刺痛台灣人舊的日語來寫 This last sentence is very moving, and very accurate. She chose the language in which she had suffered but she needed to use it because is was the language of her experience. In this way, Yang Qianhe confronts the question of minority literature as Deleuze has defined it, which is « a literature you have no possibility to write in but which you are obliged to write in ». She expresses what is really the choice of a dominant language ( the chinese language could have been as well the language of suffering for her or for the next generation) the language of creation is not a « language of paper » in which you are forced to write, but a language in which you have feelings, historical experience, political struggle and memories from childhood.

24 Ibidem. p.5 Lin Hengtai also expressed himself about this suffering and for him the shift from one language to another has a deep historical meaning : he had first to stride over the sufferings endured under colonial regime, and secondly, after the war, he had again to stride over the dark and sad days of 2/28 Incident and White Terror25. Language is linked with personnal sufferings and with history. As personnal experience, language also reveals the experience of being treated as a beast : 非生即死的生命賭注猶如困獸一般 which is also a characteristic of minority literature as a necessity to accept, before going beyond, one’s inferiority condition in order to deepen one ‘s literature and one’s language,

The other reason why Yang Qianhe, forty years later, chose the japanese language is that « she felt repulsion for the chinese regime ». 26 When KMT arrived in Taiwan, she lost her job, afterwards her husband encountered problems with the government and was arrested. For many years, her life and that of her family was in turmoil. In her chronology, it is amazing to see that between August 1954, corresponding to the liberation of her husband Lin Jiaxiong, and 196627, nothing is mentionned as if nothing has happened. Silence had finally reached her. Before the war, Yang Qianhe was a very active woman, who dared to complain about inequality between Japanese and Taiwanese, who helped native women to defend their rights, and wrote many short-stories all published in magazines. But under the chinese regime she became an housewife with no more ambition than to educate her children. Besides, this long silence of about ten years was not used for learning chinese but for memorising the japanese language. In fact, for her as for other Taiwanese writers the silence did not cover ten years of learning a new language, it lasted the rest of her life.

In conclusion, minority literature is a literature in which one uses language as a weapon against the use of language « as an exercice of power ». It is also the last sphere where a small nation might survive. Literature is essential because it is bound to the people and to the individual, to experiences and to feelings, but also as an experience of language itself which is not considered as an artificial language, but as a mean of action

25 Wo xun xiandai shi de yuandian , Changhua xian li wenhua zhong chuban, 1994. 26 op.cit p.10 27 ibidem. p.35. and reaction. As Kafka wrote in his diary28 : « We talked about their works and we thought about their action ». It is thanks to writers’s action that literature is important but it is in literature that their actions become enduring. Taiwanese writers have linked their life to literature. Literature became a political means, a space in which they could express their social consciousness, a consciousness which was exactly what the Nationalist Party from China wanted to nip in the bud. Literature under japanese rule was a very important way of conveying collective values as Deleuze wrote : « With no active collective consciouness in outside life, literature is positivly entrusted with the function of collective and even revolutionnary enonciation »29 But under the Nationalist party there was no place anymore for minority literature. Silence was imposed as a means to oppress Taiwanese identity and collective consciousness, it was not only a necessary shift of language as a linguistic tool. The consequence of the shift of language was not limited to the postwar generation, but it reached the second generation of Taiwanese writers who did not know their forefathers. After the war, Taiwanese minority literature was oppressed by chinese majority literature but afterwards the chinese literature of émigrés writers itself became also a minority literature in comparison with the literature of China. We might say that the fact that Taiwan experienced two languages in literature and that Taiwanese literature is now different to Chinese literature prove that language do not belong to a nation. It is not because you write in japanese that you are a part of — Taiwanese literature was not considered as japanese literature— and in the same way, it is not because Taiwanese writers write in chinese that Taiwanese literature is a part of Chinese literature. As Gertrude Stein says in her beautiful essay : « People are what their language is, and their language is what they are, how they are, and how their land and their water, their lakerivers, oceans, inner seas are, all things that imply that they have a language which suits them and not another. »30

28 Franz Kafka, Journal, 25 décembre 1911, Grasset, biblio, 1954 p.181 29 Gilles Deleuze&Félix Guattari, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure, Les Editions de Minuit,1975 p.31 30 traduction française de R.L Istre, in Langage et literature américaine l’Arbalète, 1944.