Yokomitsu Riichi and Taiwan：The Birth of Sensationism (Modernism) in East Asia

Abstract

This book discusses the emergence of modernism in colonial Taiwan, with a focus on the work of Yokomitsu Riichi. Through a comprehensive discussion of how Taiwanese writers were influenced by Yokomitsu’s literary theories and techniques, it explores the diverse possibilities of Taiwanese literature during the period of Japanese rule. By comparing Yokomitsu’s work and that of Taiwanese modernist writers, it examines the reception by Taiwanese people of Japanese literature and its construction of subjectivity, and explores the relationship between modernism and colonial literature from a broader perspective. In particular, the author examines the use of abstraction in these texts in detail. At the same time, he discusses Chinese and Korean modernist writers in order to place the development of modernism in colonial Taiwan in a broad context.