Adoption and Transformation of Japanese Literature in YANG Kuei's Work: The Newspaper Man

YANG Kuei was the most prominent Taiwanese writer in Japan during Taiwan's Japanese colonial period. His work, The Newspaper Man, has won the second award for the year of 1934, ranked by the famous Japanese magazine Bungaku Hyoron (or Literary Review). Up to today, more than seventy years have passed but his works still attract a lot of attention of this literary field. However, because of the historical backdrop where he grew up, his works were deeply influenced by Japanese literature. As a proletarian writer, his works contain a strong shadow of Japanese proletarian literature. But since YANG Kuei has intensive devotion to his hometown Taiwan and his people, his works have unique characteristics different from Japanese proletarian literature. This paper aims to discuss how YANG's works adopt Japanese proletarian literature, and how they transform from it, by examining his work The Newspaper Man. Through this study, we hope to figure out the characteristics and features of YANG Kuei's works.