Beyond the Collaborator Resistor Binary: Reinterpreting "Autumn Letter"

Literature from the Taiwanese colonial period has been largely seen through the collaborator resistor binary, which assigns value to resistance for furthering the national project.
My purpose is to see beyond the collaborator resistor binary and rediscover the obscured uncertainty and messy sentiments of this period. Zhu Dianren’s “Autumn Letter” is one such work that has been interpreted along these lines. Classical interpretations read “Autumn Letter” as resistance literature, anti-Japanese and pro-Qing. I propose an alternative reading of “Autumn Letter” that situates it in the greater context of the Japanese empire and thus understands it as an I-novel. Doing this allows one to shift the lens of analysis to focus on the self and reveals that Zhu’s main character Mr. Douwen is a satire of an old Qing scholar, and that Zhu does not support the Qing as a viable cultural model. However, Zhu’s support for Marxist ideology means that he cannot support the Japanese either. This leaves Taiwan with an uncertain future, and Mr. Douwen with carrying the burden of the struggle of his nation, which is not a teleological national goal but a quest for identity when trapped between two imperial powers.