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

Representing Empire: Japanese Colonial Literature in Taiwan and Manchuria. By Ying Xiong. Brill, Leiden, 2014. xxviii, 375 pages. €148.00, cloth; €37.00, paper.

Ying Xiong’s expertly researched and handsomely illustrated Representing Empire: Japanese Colonial Literature in Taiwan and Manchuria analyzes Japanese-language colonial literature written by Japanese expatriate writers in Taiwan and Manchuria. This volume is a significant contribution to the growing body of scholarship on East Asian literatures that examines these corpuses in broader transnational and comparative focus. In particular, Representing Empire centers on the formation of identity and its literary reconfigurations in Taiwan and Manchuria during the 1930s and 1940s through the prism of two Japanese writers—Nishikawa Mitsuru (1908–99) and Ōuchi Takeo (1907–80)—and their literary and scholarly circles. Xiong’s volume thereby explores interplays among imperialism, nationalism, and pan-Asianism during the Japanese colonial period, demonstrating how twentieth-century Japanese nationalism was shaped by imperialism and pan-Asianism.

In her preface, Xiong rightly critiques dominant narratives of modern Japanese literature for their excessive narrowness and especially their striking inability to incorporate writers and texts that do not fall neatly within Japanese national borders. Instead, building on the work of Faye Kleeman, Kimberley Kono, and other scholars of Japanese colonial literature, Representing Empire addresses “Japanese colonial writers’ exploration of Asian cultural resources” (p. xix), arguing that “Japanese-language colonial literature produced in former colonial settings reveals how Japanese modern history was a history of interacting with other Asian countries in which various institutions, educational processes, and publication networks in Tokyo and the colonies all participated in the production of colonial knowledge that rationalized the colonial order” (p. xix). This is of course a familiar argument. Representing Empire is innovative in its close attention to Nishikawa and Ōuchi who, although not entirely neglected in extant scholarship, have not been given the same attention as Japanese canonical writers such as Natsume Sōseki, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, and Kawabata Yasunari. From the beginning, Xiong is clear that Japanese nationalism initially had very different manifestations in Taiwan and Manchukuo but that after 1937, the idea of “making subjects of the Japanese empire” prevailed in both sites.

Framed by an introduction on “The Colonial History of Taiwan and Manchuria” and a conclusion on “Japanese Nationalism and Its Discontents,” Representing Empire is divided into three substantial sections. While the opening chapter demonstrates the importance of ideas of nation in the building of the Japanese empire, providing a broad overview of scholarship on Japanese imperialism from a variety of fields, part 1—“Exoticising the Other, Reinventing the Self”—centers on Nishikawa and his “ambivalent identification with the Japanese empire in the specific colonial setting of Taiwan” (p. xxvi). Xiong begins with a detailed look at Nishikawa’s early poetry (chapter 1), providing expert close readings and demonstrating how Nishikawa used his literary activities in Taiwan to earn prestige in Japan (p. 58). Representing Empire contrasts Nishikawa’s depictions of Taiwan with those of temporary visitors from Japan, including literary giant Satō Haruo. Xiong emphasizes the deep intertextual nature of much of Nishikawa’s work, not only its inclusion of Taiwanese local effects but also its echoes of Chinese poetry, Chinese folklore, and Buddhism, as well as the Min dialect, among others.

Chapter 2, “Local Discovered,” moves from Nishikawa’s poetry to his writings on Taiwanese folklore. Most interesting is the discussion on the fundamental differences between Nishikawa’s writings and the orthodox folkloric study supported by the imperial administration. The third chapter, “National Lineage Reinvented,” turns to Nishikawa’s engagement with Taiwanese history and in particular his historical novel Sekikanki (The red fort, 1940), which unlike his earlier works strives to present “a complete picture of the Japanese empire” (p. 128). Xiong concludes her discussion of Nishikawa by noting that his desire to be connected with metropolitan Japan was duly compensated by literary prizes and commercial success and that ultimately Nishikawa “controlled a network that not only spanned the literary market in Taiwan, but also connected metropolitan Japan with colonial Taiwan” (p. 141).

Part 2, titled “Pan...