Literature, Modernity, and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction, 1980-1990.

• Author: Kleeman, Faye Yuan
• Position: Book review

Literature, Modernity, and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction, 1980-1990. By MARGARET HILLBRAND. Chinese Studies, vol. 11. Leiden: BRILL, 2007. Pp. 357. $134.

Cultural interaction between China and Japan is ancient, with Japan borrowing important elements of its cultural repertoire, like writing, politics, and religion, from China, then becoming the source of Western ideas as Japan modernized first. Taiwan's modern history is even more closely interwoven with that of Japan, the fifty years of colonial occupation being followed by another half century of close economic and cultural relations. Moreover, both the modern treatment of this history and a variety of current disputes keep these issues simmering, with periodic outbursts concerning textbooks, or shrines, or disputed islands.

It is surprising, then, that so few works have chosen to address directly the two literary traditions in a comparative framework. What comparative work there is tends to seek out patterns of "influence," what the author of the present book calls "literary sleuthing." Hillbrand criticizes this approach, which "tracks influences and traces parallels" (p. 35) and, in the process, inevitably reinforces and reaffirms the inequitable textual dynamic, seeing one tradition as fons et origo of the other. She seeks instead to replace this asymmetrical comparative framework with an interdisciplinary and interregional approach that is appropriate for contemporary East Asian literary production.

In the current work, Hillbrand transcends this dynamic by focusing on literary interactions between Japan and Taiwan, especially fiction written between 1960 and 1990. In fact, China (and its dominant Confucian ethical-political system) provides an important backdrop for much of the discussion in the book, but the author makes a good case for this more limited geographic focus, arguing that the turn away from a Sinci past in search of new mentors is a characteristic element of literary modernity in both countries. Hillbrand succinctly reviews the historical and social background of postwar East Asia, addressing the intricate cold war geopolitical entanglement of China, the United States, Japan, and Taiwan without getting bogged down in the complex and at times contentious questions of history, politics, and ideology that surround this period.

Chapter one is an extended discussion that outlines the scope of the inquiry and establishes a methodological framework...