Taiwanese Literature during Japanese Rule

In the spring of 1895, Taiwan’s literary fate entered an entirely new chapter amid the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. If Taiwanese literature under Qing rule slowly gestated within the matrix of traditional Chinese culture, then the fifty years of Japanese rule were a process in which Taiwanese literature, under the forceful impact of Western modernity, was compelled to transform, fracture, and then find its position again amid contradiction.

This was the most complex, contradictory, and dramatic era in the history of Taiwanese literature. The colonizer’s language became a tool through which the colonized expressed resistance; the new literary concepts brought by the oppressor inspired the national awakening of the oppressed; the deepest forms of cultural identity often emerged from the fiercest cultural conflicts. Over these fifty years, Taiwanese literature underwent multiple transitions: from the classical to the modern, from literary Chinese to vernacular writing, and from Chinese to Japanese. Ultimately, amid multiple cultural tensions, it found its own distinctive voice.

The 1895 Cession of Taiwan: A Historical Rupture in Literature

In 1895, while the echoes of the First Sino-Japanese War had yet to fade, the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki pushed Taiwan onto another historical trajectory. For Taiwan’s literati, political upheaval was also a fundamental turning point in literary fate.

The Tragic Cry of Anti-Japanese Literature

“The sorrow of spring is hard to dispel; I force myself to look at the mountains. Past events startle the heart, and tears are about to fall. Four million people weep as one: on this day last year, Taiwan was ceded.” These lines, written by the poet Qiu Fengjia in “Spring Sorrow,” fully express the grief, indignation, and helplessness of Taiwanese intellectuals facing the fate of cession.

During the year of 1895, Taiwan saw the emergence of a large body of anti-Japanese literary works. These works were often poems, expressing resistance to Japanese rule and longing for the ancestral homeland. Although Lian Ya-tang’s preface to General History of Taiwan was completed later, its spiritual origins can be traced to this period. The lament that “Taiwan has, indeed, no history” embodied the cultural self-consciousness of intellectuals who sought to establish a history and a discourse for Taiwan.

Yet many more literati chose to “move inland,” returning to the mainland. This large-scale loss of cultural talent produced a temporary rupture in the development of Taiwanese literature. Those who remained in Taiwan either gradually fell silent under Japan’s cultural policies, or struggled painfully amid conflicts between tradition and modernity, the local and the foreign.

The Debate between New and Old Literature: The Baptism of Modernity

Zhang Wojun: Pioneer of the New Literature Movement

In 1924, an article titled “A Letter to the Youth of Taiwan” was published in Taiwan Minpao. Its author was Zhang Wojun, who had just returned to Taiwan from Beijing. The article sharply criticized Taiwan’s traditional poetry and prose as “hopelessly stale” and advocated learning from the New Literature promoted by Hu Shih and others, using vernacular Chinese for literary creation.

Zhang Wojun’s views sparked intense debate. Traditional literati represented by Lian Ya-tang firmly opposed them, arguing that vernacular writing was “shallow and tasteless” and would damage the depth of Chinese culture. The New Literature faction led by Zhang Wojun, by contrast, believed that only vernacular writing could express the thoughts and feelings of modern people and allow literature truly to reach the public.

The significance of this debate far exceeded literature itself. In effect, it was a fundamental discussion about the future direction of Taiwanese culture: Should Taiwan hold fast to tradition, or embrace modernity? Should it maintain elite culture, or move toward popular culture? Should it insist on the “national language” (Chinese), or accept the “national language” (Japanese)?

Taiwan Minpao: Cradle of New Literature

Founded in 1923, Taiwan Minpao¹ was the core platform of the New Literature movement. This newspaper not only published political news and current affairs, but also provided a venue for Taiwan’s new literature. Many early works by writers who later became well known were published in this newspaper.

The literary pages of Taiwan Minpao displayed clear features of the period: on one hand, they published new poetry, fiction, and prose written in the vernacular; on the other, they retained space for traditional poetry, reflecting the transitional character of old and new forms appearing side by side. Notably, the newspaper began to focus on Taiwan’s local social realities, paving the way for realist literature.

Lai He: Father of Taiwanese New Literature

Lai He (1894-1943) is widely recognized as a representative Taiwanese writer of the Japanese colonial period². A rural physician from Changhua, he established the first milestones of Taiwanese New Literature through his literary works and is honored as the “Father of Taiwanese New Literature.”

Literary Enlightenment and National Awakening

Lai He’s literary creation was inseparable from his political awakening. In 1921, he participated in the activities of the Taiwan Cultural Association and began paying attention to Taiwan’s social problems. In 1925, he published the prose piece “Untitled” and the new poem “Sacrifice under Awakening: To the Comrades of the Erlin Incident,” formally entering the field of New Literature.

Lai He’s representative work Boisterous Festivities (1926) is regarded as Taiwan’s first vernacular short story in the true sense. Set against the background of a temple festival, the story depicts the life of the Taiwanese people while skillfully interweaving criticism of Japanese rule. Its language is vivid and lively, using a large number of Taiwanese Hokkien expressions, and it pioneered the localization of Taiwanese literature.

The Foundation of Realism

Lai He’s literary writing consistently focused on social reality, especially the hardships faced by people at the bottom of society. His short story “A Steelyard” depicts the injustice suffered by the peddler Qin Decan as a result of reforms to weights and measures, profoundly exposing the absurdity and cruelty of colonial rule.

This realist tendency established a far-reaching tradition in Taiwanese literature. At the core of this tradition was literature’s intervention in reality, its reflection of the people’s suffering, and its enlightenment of the public, rather than the self-display of technique. This tradition later influenced a large group of writers including Yang Kui and Lü Heruo, making social realism one of the central lines of Taiwanese literature.

Linguistic Experimentation and Innovation

Lai He’s experiments in language were pioneering in significance. His works made extensive use of Taiwanese Hokkien vocabulary and modes of expression, at times even using Chinese characters as phonetic transcriptions of Taiwanese. These attempts generated considerable controversy at the time, but they established the direction of localization in the language of Taiwanese literature.

Through linguistic experimentation, Lai He found an appropriate way to express Taiwanese experience. His literary language preserved the literary quality of Chinese while incorporating the vitality of Taiwanese speech, creating a form of modern Chinese with local color.

The Rise of Left-Wing Literature

Yang Kui: Standard-Bearer of Proletarian Literature

Yang Kui (1906-1985) was an important representative of Taiwanese left-wing literature. In his youth he studied in Japan, where he encountered Marxist thought and theories of proletarian literature. After returning to Taiwan, he devoted himself to creating and promoting socialist literature.

Yang Kui’s representative work The Newspaper Boy is the first story in Taiwanese literary history to take a worker as its protagonist. The work portrays the tragic experience of a young newspaper delivery boy and deeply exposes the injustices of capitalist society. Its language is plain yet powerful, its characterization vivid, and it embodies the aesthetic features of proletarian literature.

In 1935, Yang Kui founded the magazine Taiwan New Literature, one of Taiwan’s important pure literary journals³. The magazine not only published works by local writers, but also translated many foreign left-wing literary works, providing Taiwanese literature with an international perspective.

Zhang Shenqie and Taiwan Literature and Art

In 1934, the magazine Taiwan Literature and Art was founded. Its initiator, Zhang Shenqie, proposed an editorial policy of “no distinction by doctrine, no division by faction,” broadly uniting Taiwan’s literary forces. The magazine became one of the most influential literary publications in Taiwanese literary history.

Taiwan Literature and Art was characterized by inclusiveness and plurality. It published works by left-wing writers as well as modernist creations; it included both Chinese-language writing and Japanese-language works; it paid attention to Taiwan’s local context while also looking toward world literature. This open attitude expanded the possibilities for the diversified development of Taiwanese literature.

Literary Struggles during the Kominka Period

The Rise of Japanese-Language Literature

After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Japan promoted the “Kominka movement” in Taiwan, banning the public use of Chinese writing and forcibly implementing Japanese-language education. Against this background, a group of local writers emerged in Taiwan who wrote in Japanese.

These writers faced an extremely complex cultural situation. On one hand, they had to write in the language of the colonizer; on the other, they hoped to preserve concern for Taiwan’s local culture in their works. This contradiction produced a distinctive literary tension and also gave rise to a number of outstanding works.

Lü Heruo: An Artist across Languages

Lü Heruo (1914-1951) was a representative writer of this period⁴. His novel Oxcart depicts the decline of rural Taiwan with meticulous brushwork, presenting the helplessness and struggle of farmers under the impact of modernization. Although written in Japanese, the work’s spiritual core remained deeply rooted in Taiwanese soil.

Lü Heruo’s writing embodied the cultural strategy of colonial writers: outwardly complying with colonial policy while, in reality, using literary metaphor and symbolism to express the protection of local culture. This method of “indirect writing” later continued as a durable thread in Taiwanese literature.

Zhang Wenhuan: A Literary Stalwart

Zhang Wenhuan (1909-1978) was another notable writer of Japanese-language literature. His novel The Capon uses the story of a rooster being castrated as an allegory for the fate of Taiwanese people under colonial rule. This use of symbolism both evaded political censorship and conveyed profound political meaning.

In 1941, Zhang Wenhuan founded the magazine Taiwan Literature, the core literary journal of the Kominka period⁵. Although the magazine used Japanese, it continued to uphold a local Taiwanese literary position and provided a precious venue for Taiwanese writers to publish.

Aesthetic Features of Colonial Literature

Literary Expression of Double Consciousness

Taiwanese literature during Japanese rule had a pronounced feature of “double consciousness.” Writers had to face the reality of colonial rule while maintaining identification with local culture; they had to learn the techniques of modern literature while insisting on the standpoint of national literature. This complex cultural situation generated a distinctive literary aesthetics.

This double consciousness appeared on many levels: the choice of language (Chinese or Japanese), the selection of subject matter (reality or tradition), the grasp of stance (resistance or cooperation), and the determination of style (local or international). It was through these complex choices that Taiwanese literature gradually formed its own characteristics.

The Deepening of Realism

Realism was the mainstream of Taiwanese literature during Japanese rule. This realism carried strong social criticism and national consciousness, going far beyond simple descriptions of daily life. Through literary works, writers exposed the injustices of colonial rule, reflected the suffering of the people, and expressed the pursuit of social justice.

A defining feature of this realist literature was its close linking of individual fate and national fate. The bankruptcy of a farmer often suggested the decline of an entire agricultural society; the struggle of an intellectual often reflected the predicament of an entire people. This combination of grand narrative and individual narrative provided Taiwanese literature with rich expressive space.

Localized Literary Language

Despite repeated shifts in language, Taiwanese literature during Japanese rule persistently searched for a literary language suited to expressing Taiwanese experience. Whether Lai He’s Taiwanese-inflected writing, Yang Kui’s popularized Chinese, or Lü Heruo’s “Taiwanese-style Japanese,” all reflected writers’ sustained exploration of the localization of literary language.

The significance of this exploration lay not only in finding tools of expression, but also in establishing the linguistic characteristics of Taiwanese literature. What should the language of Taiwanese literature look like? How could it embody local characteristics while preserving literary quality? Exploration of these questions provided valuable experience for the development of postwar Taiwanese literature.

A Historical Turning Point

On August 15, 1945, with the Japanese emperor’s announcement of surrender, Taiwan’s era of Japanese rule formally came to an end. For Taiwanese literature, this was both the conclusion of one era and the beginning of another.

The fifty years of Japanese rule left Taiwanese literature with a layered legacy: the establishment of modern literary concepts, the awakening of local consciousness, an embrace of multiculturalism, and the foundation of a realist tradition. All of these became cornerstones for the development of postwar Taiwanese literature⁶.

At the same time, this period also exposed certain problems in the development of Taiwanese literature: confusion over linguistic identity, ambiguity in cultural identity, and the complexity of political positions. These issues persisted after the war and reappeared in new forms under different historical conditions.

Conclusion: Blooming in the Cracks

Taiwanese literature during Japanese rule was a flower blooming in the cracks. It was caught between tradition and modernity, between the local and the foreign, between resistance and cooperation. It was precisely amid these complex tensions that Taiwanese literature found its own voice and established its own character.

Lai He’s physician’s pen, Yang Kui’s fighting voice, Lü Heruo’s artistic beauty, and Zhang Wenhuan’s steadfast will: these different literary faces together formed the rich landscape of Taiwanese literature during Japanese rule. Through their own writing, they proved that even under the most difficult historical conditions, literature could still hold to its ideals and express the voice of a people.

Taiwanese literature of this period provided substantive accumulation for later development. Its realist tradition, local consciousness, spirit of resistance, and cultural inclusiveness all left lasting marks on postwar Taiwanese literature. As Lai He wrote in a poem, “A brave person should fight for righteousness.” This literary courage and ideal remain among the most precious assets of Taiwanese literature today.

Further Reading

• The Taiwan Travelogue — Yang Shuang-zi’s 2020 pseudo-translated novel, turning a 1938-39 journey along Taiwan’s north-south railway during Japanese rule into a story of food and power between two women; internationally recognized by both the 2024 National Book Award and the 2026 International Booker Prize
• Postwar Taiwanese Literature — How the Japanese-period line of Lai He, Lü Heruo, and Zhang Wenhuan continued after the linguistic rupture of 1945: Yeh Shih-tao’s blank page, modernism, the nativist literature debate, and women’s awakening
• Taiwanese Literature after the Lifting of Martial Law — The pluralistic explosion after the lifting of martial law in 1987
• Contemporary Taiwanese Literature — Twenty-first-century internationalization, Wu Ming-yi, and digital literature
• History of Taiwanese Literature — The overall trajectory from Dutch rule, the Ming-Zheng and Qing periods, and Japanese rule to the contemporary era
• Lin Liang — A foundational figure in postwar children’s literature who crossed the sea from Xiamen to Taiwan, offering a contrast with Japanese-period literature in terms of prewar and postwar language-policy positions

References