In Contrast to the Taiwanese Writers, Yang Kui is more concerned with the development of class awareness, of the social identity that transcends nationalistic identity. Near the end of the "The Newspaper Boy" Mr. Yang is asked, "do you like the Japanese?" After thinking about the question for while, Mr. Yang answers that he likes his friend Tanaka better than his own brother. Mr. Yang feels a closer bond with Tanaka, a Japanese newspaper boy in Tokyo, then he does with his elder brother, who is a policeman working for the Japanese officials in Taiwan.

     Thus, it seems as though Yang Kui's work is a curious mixture Japanese proletarian and Taiwanese anti-Japanese later of the period. Perhaps Yang Kui was influenced by his experience in Japan in May unusual manner, distinct from the experience of other Taiwanese writers of the period. Elements of his work seemed to overlap with the interest of some of the Taiwanese student political organizations are rising in Tokyo at the time gains sympathy with the working-class in Tokyo and the farmers exploited by their Japanese overlords in Taiwan coincide with the activities of the leftist faction of the Cultural Association. When Yang left Tokyo to return to Taiwan in
1927, they became heavily involved with the plight of the Taiwanese farmer; at the time, the Cultural Association was involved with helping Taiwanese farmers organize the Formosan Farmers Union (June 1926).

     Perhaps Yang Kui was more heavily influenced by political agitation then were his fellow writers. His stories and weapons of connections between private and public events, allowing the reader to the local society through the framework of a specific individual. Yang's use of autobiographical material here may also have helped in to clarify his personal identity, to cultivate his political consciousness, something that would surface again and again as he continued to write.

     "The Newspaper Boy" succeeds in providing the reader with a clear picture of the working-class society in Japan as well as airing anxieties of some of the Taiwanese farmers. Important issues of class vs. national consciousness are raised here. Literature for Yang, as well as for other Taiwanese writers, served as a vehicle for self-expression as well as for expressing protests.

     While Yang succeeded in presenting many important issues in his work, his execution of "The Newspaper Boy" is not flawless. Yang Kui runs into a problem with all proletarian/revolutionary writers encounter: the problem of "embodying political ideas in believable incidents and live characters."


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