Studies of Nishikawa Mitsuru usually split into several camps.  One is the
           nationalistic, nativist point of view of the colonialized subject, which denounces
           and dismisses categorically all literary productions of the colonial writers. This is
           perhaps best represented by writer/critics such as Chen Yingzhen in his article
           “Nishikawa Mitsuru and Taiwanese Literature” (1984).  The other camp also
           takes a nativist position, albeit a positive one which credits Nishikawa’s dedication
           to the recording and valorization of Taiwanese culture.  Zhang Lianze (1979,
           1983) may be the best representative of this camp.  Others, mostly Japanese
           researchers, treat this topic with careful ambiguity, focusing on interpretive
           concepts such as “exotic” and “romantic” in deciphering Nishikawa’s writings. 

                With the passing of Nishikawa in 1999, it is high time to re-evaluate
           Nishikawa’s literary endeavor.  Going beyond the two schools of interpretation
           representing colonial and post-colonial points of view, I would like, in this paper,
           to explore the possibility of a reading that is not bound by these two binary
           positions.  Nishikawa’s oeuvre and the body of criticism in has inspired must, of
           course, be placed in the historical context of the twentieth-century (de)colonization
           process, but attention must also be paid to the course of modernization in East
           Asia as a whole and the postwar/cold war politics of that region. 

                I will first examine the nature of critical standards applied to Nishikawa’s
           writings and ponder the issues of Orientalism, authenticity, and nostalgic
           ethnography. Nishikawa’s literary texts will be examined as a process that
           implicates the ambivalence of the colonial enterprise.  How Nishikawa writes
           about the exotic other(s) also sheds light on the construction of Japanese
           Orientalist discourse.  It is my belief that the historical significance of Nishikawa’s
           work cannot be fully understood without a reflection on the conflicting and
           contradictory nature of the “compassionate Orientalist.”
 
 

               Resident Korean writers take various attitudes towards ethnicity which influence 
      both their writing styles and the Japanese language. In my project, I treat three Resident 
      Korean writers, Ri Kaisei, Kin Kakuei, and Tachihara Masaaki, and analyze their 
      approaches towards the Japanese language. 

              Ri Kaisei, a second-generation Korean immigrant writer, pursues his ethnicity and 
      puts Korean words in Kinuta wo utsu onna (The Woman Who Fulled Clothes, 
      1971) sporadically. On the other hand, Kin Kakuei, a precursor of the third 
      generation, speaks only Japanese and endures drifting between two ethnic poles, one 
      Japanese and the other Korean. Kin, connecting his mental anguish as a stutterer and the
      agony of being a Korean, succeeds in creating the stuttering effect in Kogoerukuchi (The 
      Benumbed Mouth, 1966) in several ways. He uses lots of chemical terms written in 
      katakana (Wender, 2000) and repeats the word "kyoufu (terror)." He also uses "boku (I)" 
      extraordinarily frequently as if he were seeking himself in the text. 

              Tachihara, born of Korean parents, fabricates a birth as the son of a Korean noble 
      man and a Japanese woman. He shows flexibility towards ethnicity and keeps a distance 
      from characters by using a third-person narrator and an objective writing style in 
      Tsurugigasaki (Cliff’s Edge, 1964). Tachihara’s writing is characterized 
      by the repetitive use of the plain past form of verbs, which ends many sentences in "ta." 
      He seems to ignore the monotonous sound. 

              Thus, Resident Korean writers, through facing ethnic identity issues, 
      take unique approaches toward the Japanese language and embrace the potential for 
      transforming it.
 
 

           The presence of transnational writers has rapidly increased in the Japanese
      literary world in the 1990s, such as Mizumura Minae (returning from the U.S. to
      Japan after a 20-year absence), Tawada Yoko (living in Germany since 1982), and
      Yang Ji Lee (born of Korean parents and raised in Japan).  They are what another
      multicultural writer, Levy Hideo, describes, “radical” in their own rights. Tawada
      is the first and only author from Japan who writes in German and Japanese.  Her
      choice of the two languages not only breaks the illusion of homogeneity—one
      nation, one race, and one language—that has been a predominant ideology in both
      Japanese and German societies, but also demonstrates the potential for a writer to
      select language(s) of his/her choice without concern for borders.  Mizumura too
      consciously chooses Japanese over English—the supposedly universal language for
      world literature at the millennium.  Unlike Mizumura and Tawada, Lee has no
      “luxury” of choosing a language for her narrative.  She speaks little of her mother
      tongue, Korean, but necessarily uses Japanese.  Her fiction in Japanese represents
      voices of the “invisible” members of this “homogeneous” society. 

      For these transnational authors, writing is what Walter Benjamin called an act of
      translation. Their bi-cultural vision allows them to function as critics of their own
      writings.  Characterized by heterogeneity, they challenge and make readers
      redefine the (political) concepts of a homogeneous nation, national culture, and
      identity that still operate in many public contexts.