This is evident at the end of "The Newspaper Boy," when the young Taiwanese protagonists becomes involved with Mr. Ito, a labor group leader. Mr. Ito informs Mr. Yang that:

The majority of laborers in Japan are like Mr.Tanaka. They are all very polite to others, and they do not have superiority complexes. Japanese workers are against the Japanese government policies battle press Taiwanese people...

Mr. Yang responds to this by describing the situation in his hometown. :

I told Ito about the way the Sugar Company had forced us to sell our land. After listening carefully to what I told them, his face flushed red and he excitedly said, "fine. All right. We need to join hands for the struggle. Those who cause misery are the same people that cause our misery. They are lower common enemies."

These passages are extremely similar not only to some of the improbable scenes incorporated into Japanese proletarian literature, but to the propaganda-laden works produced in mainland China before, gearing, and after the Cultural Revolution.

     Yang's writing is most effective in the first part of the story, where he depicts Mr. Yang and Mr. Tanaka's growing friendship in the setting of Tokyo's economic depression. He succeeds in describing the brutal situation in Taiwan by describing specific people with real motions to illustrate the Japanese government's policies regarding the sugar cane industry. But towards the end of the story the pace accelerates at a rapid rate, important figures such as a Tanaka disappear into the background, and the story line
loses its realistic edge. Once Yang moves away from describing specific people, the sharp focus of the beginning of the story fades, in the story becomes less and less. Mr. Yang becomes a generic Exploited Taiwanese Worker, Mr.Ito Becomes a Generic Japanese Labor Organizer, and the newspaper bas along with the Japanese shirt company in Taiwan are front of as the dark evil forces.

     To Yang's description of the development of the proletarian consciousness cloaked in sentimentality is not strong enough to tie together the important issues raised in the story. The story hands with the day identification of the Taiwanese with the Japanese working class, indicating that the boundaries between nationalities have been transcended.


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