Taiwanese Intellectuals and Taiwanese Literature in Post

Draft (Do not quote) Taiwanese Literature as a minority literature : Silence in postwar Taiwan The postwar period, of necessity, implies a time of silence : the silence of peace,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 Taiwanese people, 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.

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