마음의 전쟁― 식민지 대만의 전쟁기억과 ‘조국’ 상상

Abstract

I intend to investigate the war memory of the colonial Taiwanese people based on Hsiao, ChinTui's short novel The Doll of Fat that describes the Taiwanese young volunteer army during the Kominka, the late period of Japanese occupation. The presence of Taiwanese young volunteer army was not only the result of the Japanization, but also due to the Japanese martial statement, which claims to protect Asia against the western imperialist countries. However, under differential treatment and contempt, the growing dissatisfaction and indignation among Taiwanese youth has become an invisible power against the Japanese martial statement. The Taiwanese youth’s faith in the martial statement was gradually shaken by the constantly suffering from unequal treatment in the army, and by the fear of death under hostilities. I named it “a war at heart”. Following the plot development in the short novel, this article tracks the mental state of the characters. By focusing on the variation of their state of mind and the Taiwan-Korea friendship plot in the story, one can observe the consequent transformation of their national identity and the “Motherland” imagination; and further, to ponder over the war experience of those Taiwanese mobilized to fight and the historical significance of their memory.