Hayama Yoshiki’s “The Prostitute” in Taiwanese and Manchukuo Proletarian Literature

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Japanese proletarian literary movement had an enormous impact on East Asian writers, who often translated and adapted Japanese tales. Amongst them, Hayama Yoshiki’s 1925 short story “Inbaifu” (The Prostitute) enjoyed great popularity. This paper focuses on the Taiwanese writer Lang-shi-sheng’s adaptation of “Inbaifu”, the 1935 “Yami” (Darkness), and Manchukuo writer Yuan Xi’s adaptation of the same Japanese source text, the 1938 short story “Shi tian” (Ten Days). By comparing the Taiwanese and Manchukuo stories, this paper suggests that both versions of “Inbaifu” reflect the Japanese debate on proletarian literature that was fashionable in East Asia in the 1930s. However, by resetting the stories in Taiwan and Manchukuo, respectively, the authors created cultural products that defy borders and simple nationalist interpretations.

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