In a conversation with Yang K'uei, Lung Ying-tsung, after censuring the Taiwanese critics, said that he had created Ch'en Yu-san as a negative character and the older brother of Ts'ui-o as a likeable, positive character. See the July 10, 1937 issue of Nihon gakugei shinbun (Japanese Arts and Literature News).

     The year 1937, when the "The Town with the Papayas"was published, was also the year in which Japan launched its full-scale invasion and occupation of China.  In Taiwan in this year, the prohibition against writing in Chinese was issued; Shinto shrines were increased as Chinese temples were reduced in number, and the prohibition against staging Chinese opera was issued.  Familiar folk practices were eliminated from the lives of the Taiwanese.  Instead, a large increase in the number of special political police and the shrill sloganeering of the movement for transforming colonials into imperial subjects hovered over the heads of the six million island people.  It may be said that Lung Ying-tsung's "everlasting sleep in the cold ground"had already begun.  "Even in such a nihilistic reality as this, one must not lose sight of elements that leave us seeds of hope somewhere." In such words did Lung Ying-tsung express his innermost thoughts.

     The Chinese critic Hu Feng included Yang K'uei's "The Newsboy"in his anthology, Jo-hsiao min-tsu hsiao-shuo hsüan (Selected Short Stories of Small and Weak Peoples), which was published in Shanghai.  But in Japan, work that properly evaluates the writings of those authors in historical perspective has not yet been done.  That those concerned with literature in Japan should become conscious of that obligation and take a hard look at those scars is one of the fundamental tasks for considering the state of literature from now on in Asia and Africa.  This note is nothing more than a step in the direction of realizing what I believe needs to be done for that purpose.  Should we not reconsider as our own scars the pain those authors felt under Japanese domination, which they could express only in the Japanese language!

     Supplementary Note:  The activities of those writers during the war is briefly touched upon in "III: Taiwan Literature Under Conditions of Decisive Battle." What happened to them after the war is very difficult to determine.  After the war, Yang K'uei was active in such publications as the Ta-kung pao (Impartial News) and Hsin-sheng-bao fu-k'an (Supplement to the New Life News), but after the February 28 Incident he was suspected of leading the Normal School Strike and was arrested together with his wife.  Released after a time, he was again arrested in 1949 and was incarcerated in the prison for political criminals on Huo-shao Island.

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