Taiwan Literature English Translation Series (No.38): Special Issue on Yang K'uei

Yang K'uei (1906-1985), the first Taiwanese writer recognized in the literary circles of Japan during the period of Japanese rule, referred to himself as a “humanitarian socialist.” He was a pragmatic author who used his literary works to pursue the realization of his ideals, while throwing himself into the farmers and laborers movement as well as promotion of social, political and cultural reforms.

For this special issue on Yang K’uei, we thank Professor Yang Tsui (Yang K’uei’s granddaughter) for her recommendation of works, from which we selected eight stories with particular consideration to both the theme and the literary quality of the works, as well as to which works are most representative of Yang K’uei’ fiction. Among them, “Behind the Increases of Production” and “Clay Dolls” are translated from the Japanese texts into English for the first time. The translation of “Mother Goose Gets Married,” published earlier in Journal No. 20, January 2007, was based on the Chinese texts, and in this issue we have purposely provided a new version based on the Japanese texts. Since Yang K’uei’s works have often been revised by the author, we have responded to the critic Chang Heng-hao’s appeal to “keep its true features,” as stated in his article, “Cun qi zhenmao—tan ‘Songbaofu’ yiben jiqi yanshen wenti.” [Keep Its True Features— On Translations of ‘Newspaper Carrier’ and the Issues Derived.] For reference convenience, we have reprinted the translation of “The Newspaper Carrier” published in the journal, which was carefully translated from the original text by Robert Backus. This version is hopefully close to the original features and will provide a reference point for a comparative study of the different versions of Yang K’uei’s works in Japanese, Chinese, and English.