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Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on how the imagination of Irish literature traversed geographical boundaries as well as to show how Kikuchi Kan adapted Lady Gregory's play and how Liang Qi-chao's adopted the political narratives to represent the colonial Taiwan.

Paper long abstract:

When literary critic and writer Kikuchi Kan participated in the fourth movement of The New Trends, or "shin shichō," the great majority of the works he published in the shin shichō journals were plays which were influenced by Irish dramatic works, especially plays from the Abbey Theatre. Critics have noted elements of Lady Gregory's "The Goal Gate" in "The Son of the Rebel" (Boto no ko), published in the first issue of the journal Shin shichō in February 1916. However, "The Son of the Rebel" transposed the stage of "The Goal Gate" from the Irish countryside to colonial Taiwan, which had been paced under Japanese colonial rule in 1895 when Japan defeated China. Kikuchi focused on the Incident of Tabani in colonial Taiwan in 1915 in his play, in contrast to the Irish rebellion against England's rule in "The Goal Gate." Along similar lines, the Chinese thinker Liang Qi-chao, who went into exile in Japan when he failed to reform as well as to modernize China in the late Qing period, also drew on the Irish independence movement to suggest a possible direction for the future of Taiwan under Japanese colonialization. This transpired when Lim Hien-tong, leader of the social and nationalist movement in colonial Taiwan, visited him to require the suggestions for leading the nationalist movement to fight against the Japanese colonial regime in Nara, Japan. Liang's idea on the Irish experience is seen to be inspired from the genre of political narratives called seiji shōsetsu.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on how the imagination of Irish literature traversed geographical boundaries as well as to show how Kikuchi Kan adapted Lady Gregory's play to represent the Incident of Tabani in colonial Taiwan. Finally, I examine how Liang Qi-chao adopted the Irish experience from the Japanese political narratives to encourage Taiwanese to create their own "Formosa experience."