Taiwanese New Literature

As introduced by the Taiwan Yearbook 2006:

During the 1920s, the Taiwanese New Literature (TNL) movement began as part of a larger cultural reform movement driven by sociopolitical resistance to Japanese colonial rule. The first events of the Taiwanese New Culture movement took place in 1920, when a number of Taiwanese expatriates in Tokyo organized the New People Association, which was followed by establishment of the student-based Taiwanese Youth Association. These two organizations published Taiwanese Youth to propagate progressive ideas and voice opinions about the current state of affairs in Taiwan.

The zeal for cultural reform soon spread to Taiwan and was carried on by the Taiwanese Cultural Association (1921-1931). Intellectuals sought to transform the masses through popular education and cultural enlightenment. Lai He (1893-1943), regarded as the "father of Taiwan's New Literature," Chen Syu-gu, and Cai Ciou-tong were active members of the association and expressed nationalist sentiments in their literary works. Between 1924 and 1926, the New-versus-Old Literary Debate broke out, which led to the TNL movement. In this debate, new literary concepts -- mainly those centered on the advantages or disadvantages of adopting vernacular language as a new literary medium and the social functions of literature in a modern age -- were introduced, criticized, and defended.

Consciousness of this new reality manifested itself in two consecutive literary debates in 1931 and 1932 -- the Nativist Literary Debate and the Taiwanese Language Debate -- which represented a turning point in the TNL movement. The Nativist Literary Debate testified to the prominent leftist presence in Taiwan's literary circles, with its chief advocate, Huang Shih-huei, suggesting that writers target their creative works at the working class masses. He forcefully argued that Taiwanese writers should only write in their own language about things in their own homeland. Advocates of nativist literature envisioned a distinctive "Taiwanese consciousness".

This Taiwanese consciousness was the core spirit of Guo Ciou-sheng's campaign for the Taiwanese language. The Taiwanese Language Debate, which used the literary journal Nan Yin ("Southern Voice") as its major forum, revealed the anxieties and ambivalent feelings of a colonized people in their attempts to develop a national language. The fact that many words in Taiwan's spoken language (Holo Taiwanese) were believed not to have corresponding Chinese characters made the development of a new writing system an enormous project, which was beyond the reach of private groups. It is said that Lai He, after extensively using the Holo Taiwanese language to write his short story "A Letter of Criticism from a Comrade" (1935), was so frustrated with the experiment that he completely stopped writing fiction in the New Literature style. Despite this failure, however, the Taiwanese Language Debate should be regarded as a significant turning point in the TNL movement.

Various literary organizations were formed and new literary journals mushroomed. The new literary form made impressive progress over the next decade. The first generation of Taiwanese writers struggled to break away from the past and usher in progressive social visions. Writers born slightly later (such as Yang Kuei, 1906; Wong Nao, 1908; Jhang Wun-huan, 1909; Long Ying-zong, 1911; and Lyu He-ruo, 1914) demonstrated a more hybrid cultural identity. With regard to Japan's colonial laws, for example, they tended to present both good and bad aspects, suggesting that they held more realistic views about the contemporary judicial system despite certain discriminatory practices.

Following the 1937 outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the colonial government in Taiwan initiated an intensive Japanization program and banned Chinese-language sections in newspapers and magazines. Second-generation TNL writers of the 1940s responded by confronting oppressive relationships within the colonial structure. They championed realism, and consciously shifted to more detailed depictions of local customs, rural life, and folk traditions of Taiwanese origin in order to register their resentment of the Japanization program.

In artistic terms, the modern literary form of the TNL movement represented a significant departure from classical traditions, but this evolution was brought to an abrupt cessation at the end of the Second World War when Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China. Relocation of the Nationalist government to Taiwan a few years later ushered in an entirely new era. Thus, many TNL writers never developed to their fullest potential, and the movement ended before any genuinely masterful works of art could emerge. Post-1949 Literature in Taiwan