Analysis of the Marginalisation of Taiwan and Hong Kong Literature through a Case Study on Japanese Literature

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe first raised the idea ‘world literature’ in the early 19 th century. He pre-supposed the universality of literary form and content. While Edward Said draws our attention to the hierarchical relationship between different language users, his emphasis on ideological function enables a further study in the power relationship among same and similar language users.

As a matter of fact, the current official written language of Taiwan and Hong Kong has determined their marginal literary positions. Due to the language origin, the population size of language users and the location of literary development throughout the history, the geographical absolute advantage enables mainland China to sustain a central position of Chinese literature through writing grand literary history and subordinating local literatures.

To pragmatically discuss this issue, this paper will juxtapose the context of Taiwan literature and Hong Kong literature with that of Japanese literature which successfully got rid of the Han cultural influence. It aims at figuring out whether the marginalisation of Taiwan and Hong Kong literature is irreversible due to their less-changeable language setting, whether international awards (like Nobel Prize) and cultural propaganda are necessary to de-subordinate their position, and to what extent the success of Japanese literature can be modelised for Hong Kong and Taiwanese writers to tactically imitate.