About This Issue
When people mention “Taiwanese literature,” the first associations or expectations that often come to mind are how “Taiwanese” these works are, and how much they reflect local culture and identity. Naturally, literature created by local writers tends to focus on local people, places, and events. Yet, on the other hand, Taiwan has long been shaped by maritime culture, carrying in its spirit qualities of fluidity, diversity, openness, and inclusivity. Because of this, Taiwanese literature, while attentive to the local, frequently casts its gaze toward the “distant.”
The notion of “the distant” implies something that is not here, something outside yet not within, something unfamiliar—and sometimes, precisely because of this, it invites imagination. Literary creation relies not only on the writer’s imagination but also on the vitality inherent in the work itself, which often crosses boundaries and grows in unexpected ways. In content, literature often longs for or depicts the distant; in form, it sometimes breaks free of existing frameworks, reaching outward toward it.
Today, advanced technology and ubiquitous information flow make reaching the distant seem ordinary and effortless. In earlier times, however, various real-world constraints made such journeys—whether literal, imaginative, or intellectual—far from trivial. Fortunately, even during the Japanese colonial period, Taiwanese literature already provides abundant examples of how “literature” and “the distant” interact. From this perspective, we have curated the special feature for this issue:
Hsu Pei-jung’s When New “Literature” Arrives analyzes literary trends and conceptual frameworks, while Lu Na’s Circumnavigating the World Through Novels examines the content of literary works. Liu Yi-chen’s Taiwan’s “My Way” a Century Ago and Chang Shih-chin’s Here Is the Distant focus on poetry: the former traces the development of Japanese waka in Taiwan, while the latter recounts how the Japanese poet Tada Toshirō established a poetic “paradise” oriented toward the distant.
When it comes to literature, language remains a fundamental concern. Cheng Ching-hung’s How Far Is It From “My Hand” to “My Voice” and Lü Mei-chin’s The Trajectory of Esperanto in Taiwanese Literature introduce remarkable linguistic experiments that thrived outside the mainstream. As for Taiwan during the Japanese era and its relationship with other colonial “distants,” Tsai Pei-chun’s How to Write Manchuria? and Chen An-wen’s The Southern Frontier of the Imperial Literary World offer invaluable insights. And beyond concepts, language, and subject matter, writers themselves are indispensable: Hsu Chen-ling’s He Is a Citizen of the World and Hung Ming-tao’s Imaginings of the Distant depict the longing for the distant found in the works of Liu Na-ou and Yeh Shih-tao.
Additionally, the literary creations in this issue respond to the theme of “the distant”: Su Chi’s The End of Love and the Freedom of the Distant reflects on a historical elopement, while Li Lu’s Prisoner portrays the psyche of Taiwanese soldiers far away in Southeast Asia during wartime, echoing contemporary Taiwanese drama Ting Hai Yong. Finally, we are grateful to documentary filmmaker Huang Ya-li for generously providing meticulously gathered historical materials, including the first public presentation of translated poetry selections by Rao Zheng-taro and Ito Masako.
We hope this issue offers readers a guide to the distant—across time, space, psychology, and thought—opening pathways to the many “distant” horizons that literature can illuminate.
ISBN 9772518947245 07
