When the "I"of the story says,   "When I was in Taiwan, I always thought all Japanese were bad, but Mr. Tanaka is really a very kind person," Itô is made to say, "You're right. Most Japanese workers are good people like Mr. Tanaka . . . .   Come, let's join hands! It's all the same kind of people who make you people suffer and us too." These words in the mouths of "I" and Itô certify the high level of political consciousness at which Yang K'uei had arrived. (It is worth noting that about four years later, when writing down his random thoughts under the title Yuketsu (Blood Transfusion) he mentioned the degeneration of literature and advocated reportage as a necessary blood transfusion from the masses in order to rejuvenate literature.)

     Let us shift our attention now to Lü He-jo's "The Oxcart." This work is a short story that depicts the wretched life of the family of Yang T'ien-ting, an oxcart driver.  When his livelihood was taken away from him by the advent of bike-trailers and trucks for delivering  goods, the Yang family, now largely unable to find work, could not stop quarreling because they were so poor.  His wife, Ah-mei, left the children at home and went out to work in a pineapple cannery, but eventually things got so bad that she had to sell her body in prostitution, so life just became more miserable with each passing day.  Direct criticism of Japanese colonial rule does not appear in this story, but an indirect expression of it occurs in such passages as: "Everything from the old Ch'ing dynasty-none of it's any good in this Japanese era . . . .  Japanese things are nothing to sneeze at." "The farmers thought that all the conveniences of civilization came uniquely from Japan." Yang thought he would change occupation by saving up enough for the deposit needed to become a tenant farmer.  However, even if he changed occupation, that did not alter the fact that he was hemmed in by wall after wall of other troubles besides his problems with the carting business.  The fact that in Taiwan semi-feudal high rents for tenancy entangled small farmers in a miserable situation is evident from the rate of tenancy rents alone, which ranged from fifty to sixty percent of the harvest.  Added to this high tenancy rent was the heavy burden of the deposit;  and on top of that, tenancy contracts were arranged verbally to the advantage of the landlord and renewed on a yearly basis.  All this unconditionally allowed landlords to increase their profits unfairly.  In addition, intermediary exploiters existed parasitically between landlord and tenant farmer.  Large colonial landholdings appeared in Taiwan especially in connection with sugar production, and an example of how land was appropriated for them was described in "The Newsboy,"as I mentioned earlier.  As far as colonial control extended, wherever one might go, there was no window open for the mass of the common Taiwanese people.  It is not surprising to find people like Old Lin, one of Yang's fellow oxcart drivers, who had been sent to prison for stealing. "It just seems stupid.

  Prev   |2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11