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This paper aims to investigate an alternative relationship between Japan and Taiwan through a group of Japanese writers who had lived in Taiwan during the colonial period and had experienced a mental and physical relocation due to Japan’s defeat in 1945. The relocation shaped a postwar experience and aesthetic distinct from those of Taiwanese writers. However, these Japanese writers have received relatively little attention owing to their ambiguous identity and political position. Through the framework of Taiwanese Hikiage Literature (台灣引揚文學), this dissertation intends to analyze their ambiguity and outline their potential connections with Taiwan. Adopting the Japanese term, Hikiage(引揚), rather than a Chinese term for repatriation(遣返), the study emphasizes the historical specificity of the large-scale population movements to Japan, mostly from other East Asian countries, after 1945. By Park Yu-ha’s (朴裕河) definition, Hikiage Literature is understood as literature written by repatriates who, despite returning to Japan, continued to perceive themselves as outsiders. This sense of detachment played an important role in Japanese repatriates from Taiwan. Their literary works and connections with others were all built on the basis of their experience in Taiwan. To specifically depict this physical and mental relocation from Taiwan to Japan, this dissertation uses the notion of Taiwanese Hikiage Literature. Using biographical analysis and social network analysis, the study first explores the activities of Japanese residents in Taiwan during the early postwar period, including how Nishikawa Mitsuru(西川滿) entered the central Japanese literary world in the early years of repatriation and the significance of Kairan Zasshi (回覽雜誌) published by retained Japanese residents (留用日僑). It then focuses on four writers, including Yoshimura Bin (吉村敏), Mannami Oshie (萬波教), Kobayashi Itsushi (小林井津志), and Ogawara Mitsuhiro (大河原光廣). By exploring their lives and literary works, the study will point out the interconnections between their creations and life experiences in Taiwan, a Japanese colony. Finally, through Kitahara Masayoshi (北原政吉), Honda Harumitsu (本田晴光), and the tanka magazine Tanka Shinsei (短歌新生), the dissertation analyzes how the Japanese repatriates in the postwar era continued and developed their literary networks, which had formed in Taiwan during the colonial period. By examining the postwar experiences of the Japanese repatriates from Taiwan, this study found that the relocation put them into an ambiguous position and constituted their unique experience. Therefore, the dissertation seeks to establish a framework for the study of Taiwanese Hikiage Literature within Taiwanese and modern Japanese literary studies, and to promote a renewed evaluation of these writers and their works.
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