Early Twentieth-Century Intra–East Asian Literary Contact Nebulae: Censored Japanese Literature in Chinese and Korean

Abstract

This article analyzes interactions among the early twentieth-century Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese literary worlds. The author first develops a general conceptualization of intra–East Asian literary contact nebulae. These were the ambiguous spaces, both physical and creative, where imperial Japanese, semicolonial Chinese, and colonial Korean and Taiwanese writers interacted with one another and transculturated (i.e., discussed, translated, and intertextualized) one another's writings. Among the most intriguing literary contact nebulae are Chinese and Korean transculturations of censored Japanese literature. The second half of the article explores two key examples of this phenomenon: colonial Korean translation and intertextualization of the Japanese writer Nakano Shigeharu's poem “Ame no furu Shinagawa eki” (Shinagawa Station in the Rain, February 1929) and wartime Chinese translation and intertextualization of the Japanese writer Ishikawa Tatsuzō's novella “Ikiteiru heitai” (Living Soldiers, March 1938). These transculturations embody multifaceted amalgams of (semi)colonial literary collaboration, acquiescence, and resistance vis-à-vis metropolitan imperial and cultural authority.