Short story
The Newspaper Carrier
新聞配達夫
Yang Kui · 1934
Synopsis
Driven from Taiwan by his family's poverty, their village having been turned upside down by the arrival of a Japanese sugar refinery, young Yang leaves for Tokyo and finds a job delivering newspapers. The conditions are iniquitous: after twenty days he is dismissed and his employer keeps his deposit. Drawing on the author's experience, the narrative sets workers' exploitation alongside Japan's colonial domination of Taiwan, and shows a solidarity among workers that goes beyond nations.
Context
The text began to appear as a serial in 1932 in the Taiwan Shin Minpō, but the censors banned its second half. The complete, revised version appeared in October 1934 in Tokyo in the review Bungaku Hyōron, which awarded it the second prize of its competition, without awarding a first prize: it was the first time a Taiwanese writer had been distinguished by the literary world of the metropole. Marked by Japanese proletarian literature, the story was translated into Chinese by Hu Feng and appeared in Shanghai in 1936.
Who it is for
For discovering Japanese-language Taiwanese literature, born under colonisation, readable in French in an anthology.
Prizes and reception
The jury, on which Chūjō Yuriko sat, hailed a direct and sincere narrative, while finding its writing clumsy.
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