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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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