     The stories written during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan are similar in many ways to the proletarian literature popular in Japan during the 1920's. Taiwanese students studying in Japan were no doubt profoundly influenced by the turbulent socio-economic and political changes that were taking place not only in Japan, but all over the world. Since the Japanese officials sought to keep the colony of Taiwan isolated from the rest of the world (restricting travel to and from mainland China and other foreign countries), Japan represented the key to the outside world for many young Taiwanese.

     Yang Kui's first work of fiction, "The Newspaper Boy," is a largely autobiographical account of his experience in Japan during the 1920's. In order to analyze the social and political changes that may have influenced his work, it is necessary to trace the history of Taiwan under Japanese rule, and examine the atmosphere surrounding the intellectual development in Taiwan after twenty-five years of the Japanese occupation.

     The first Sino-Japanese War (1894) drew to a close in the spring of 1895. As stated in the Shimonoseki Peace Treaty, China agreed to cede the island of Taiwan as well as the Penghu Islands to Japanese control. The Japanese took over the Penghu Islands without incident but when they arrived in Taiwan they were greeted with fierce resistance. A makeshift island government, the Taiwan Republic, had been created in an attempt to attract Western support and to foster a local resistance movement. Support for the republic never materialized from the West nor from Beijing, but throughout the island, bands of aborigines and other loosely organized groups of rebels consistently resisted Japanese takeover through guerrilla warfare. Nearly a decade passed before the Japanese proceeded to lead Taiwan through drastic socio-economic changes during the next few decades, the nature of Taiwanese resistance to Japanese rule also changed. As more and more Taiwanese were educated through the Japanese "Meiji" style educational system implemented as part of the colonization process, the new generation of Japanese educated Taiwanese began to resist, rather than identify with or idealize their Japanese rulers.

     In the early 1920's, the political climate throughout East Asia was marked by a period of unrest, as students and intellectuals in mainland China, Korea, and Japan were exposed to the nationalistic and ideological currents set in motion by World War I. University students studying in Japan (including Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese) were moved by democratic ideals emanating from the West as well as by some of the political institutions and practices of Japan itself.

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