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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how the Taiwan-born writer Yang Kui entered Japanese-language literature from the late 1920s and how his work was received. Focusing on The Newspaper Delivery Man, it questions his identification as a “Southern” writer, the “South” being a literary and political construct.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the emergence of the Taiwan-born writer Yang Kui on the Japanese-language literary scene from the late 1920s onward, with particular attention to the conditions of his reception within proletarian literary circles and beyond. Writing in Japanese while moving between colonial Taiwan and metropolitan Japan, Yang Kui occupied an ambivalent position that rendered him both visible and marginal within the literary field of early Shōwa Japan.

The analysis focuses primarily on The Newspaper Delivery Man, Yang Kui’s most famous work of the period, which draws on his experiences of labor, poverty, and student life in Tokyo. The text was largely read through the interpretive framework of proletarian literature. At the same time, however, this reception was also mediated by Yang Kui’s status as a Taiwanese writer. His work was read simultaneously as proletarian literature and as an expression of colonial difference.

The paper argues that Yang Kui was frequently identified as a Taiwanese writer, a label that was shaped by imperial spatial imaginaries, colonial hierarchies, and expectations of alterity. This identification intersected with contemporary debates on colonial literature, proletarian internationalism, and the limits of literary universalism within the Japanese empire. Attention is also given to Yang Kui’s own positioning. While he actively engaged with proletarian literary movements and shared many of their political commitments, his writings suggest a strategic negotiation of literary affiliation.

By examining both reception and self-positioning, this paper reconsiders the “South” as a historically contingent and relational construct produced at the intersection of literary institutions and imperial power. Through the case of Yang Kui, it sheds light on the persistent role of colonial difference in shaping literary value and visibility in interwar Japan, even within proletarian circles.