Abstrakt
Japanese writer Hayama Yoshiki's 葉山嘉樹1925 short story "Imbaifu" 淫売婦 (The Prostitute) has become one of the symbols of proletarian literature in Japan and East Asia. Scholars have already noted that during the 1930s, not only Japanese but also Taiwanese and Korean writers created numerous adaptations of this story such as the Taiwanese Liang-shi-sheng's 琅石生 1935 "Yami" 闇 (Darkness).
However, the impact of proletarian literature, let alone of Hayama's short story, on the literary scene in Manchukuo, has not been addressed yet. This paper presents some preliminary findings on proletarian fiction in Manchukuo.
It analyzes Jue Qing's 爵青 1936 short story "Jieji yu chuanshang" 街妓与船上 (On a Boat and Hooker) and Yuan Xi's 袁犀 1938 "Shi tian" 十天 (Ten Days) and compares them with the Japanese source text, "Imbaifu," and the Taiwanese version. It opens space for further investigation of questions of class and colonial oppression in East Asian proletarian literature.