Representing Empire: Japanese Colonial Literature in Taiwan and Manchuria by Ying Xiong (review)

Representing Empire is an ambitious study, the scope of which spans the five decades of Japanese colonialism, from 1895 until 1945, and the entire geographical expanse of Japan’s vast empire. Yet despite the colossal breadth and sheer length of Ying Xiong’s study, the premise of the book is as straightforward as it is convincing: considering the complexities of Japanese imperialism and the vicissitudes of the historical and political forces that shaped its existence, only a comparative analysis of representative case studies of cultural key players within the colonial apparatus can offer a holistic picture of the cultural dimension of Japanese colonialism and can help us grasp the human dimensions of colonialism. In this regard, Representing Empire succeeds beautifully. By analyzing and then juxtaposing the work of the Taiwan-based writer and amateur anthropologist Nishikawa Mitsuru (西川満, 1908–1999) and that of Manchuria-based writer and translator Ōuchi Takao (大内隆雄, 1907–1980), Ying Xiong’s monograph contributes immensely to our understanding of knowledge production across the Japanese empire. Drawing on a wealth of highly original Japanese and Chinese primary sources—such as colonial literary journals that published literary criticism of local works or Japanese translations of Chinese literature—her study will be of great use to scholars in Chinese as well as Japanese literary or social studies. By carefully placing her work in dialogue with recent scholarship on Japanese imperialism produced by Japan scholars and China scholars working in different disciplines and writing in English, Chinese, and Japanese, Ying Xiong not only transcends conventional disciplinary boundaries, but more importantly helps overcome linguistic limitations that many of us with a working knowledge in one Asian language might face when embarking on comparative Sino–Japanese research.

Representing Empire consists of three parts, each of which is divided into three chapters. In her preface and extensive introduction, Ying Xiong first positions her work in relation to other important literary or cultural studies of Japanese colonialism, such as Karen Thornber’s Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (2009) and Prasenjit Duara’s Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (2003), before providing a detailed historic overview of the development of Japan’s colonial empire and the differences and similarities between Japanese and European imperialism. For example, while in British India race was a signifier to legitimize colonialism, Xiong writes, the constellation of race of colonial subjects was far more complex in the Japanese Empire. While Japan at times employed a rhetoric of racial unification to justify colonialism as a way to resist western imperialism, it nevertheless also depended on the rule of colonial differences, definitions of which constantly shifted in response to political needs (pp. 30–32). In addition, Xiong in the introduction comments on the complexities of modern Japanese nationalism, its interplay with pan-Asianism, and shifting notions of national character and nationality. Precisely because of the absence of “a unitary discourse of nationalism that dominated the entire history of Japan’s empire building” (p. 41), these concepts were highly contested and thus resurface in different contexts throughout her entire study. Finally, Xiong introduces the reader to Nishikawa Mitsuru and Ōuchi Takao, the two key individuals whose respective cultural work in Taiwan and Manchuria form the core of the case studies that are explored separately in parts 1 and 2, and then comparatively in part 3.

Part 1, “Exoticising the Other, Reinventing the Self,” chronicles the various literary activities of Nishikawa in Taiwan. Nishikawa, the son of a wealthy Japanese coal-mining entrepreneur in Taiwan, grew up among the colonial elite of Taipei, but briefly returned to Tokyo to study French literature. Chapter 1, “National Literature and Beyond,” illustrates how Nishikawa began to play a pivotal role in shaping the literary landscape of colonial Taiwan upon returning from Tokyo in 1933, both as editor and contributor to various literary journals as well as a publisher who owned his...