Faces of Literature is a photography project featuring Taiwanese writers’ portraits hosted by the preparatory unit of the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, known as the Institute of Cultural Heritage Preservation at the time, between 1998 and 2001. For this project, documentary photographer Lin Po-liang took photos of a total of 23 Taiwanese writers. At this exhibition we will show the photos of nine such writers born during the Japanese Rule. They are: Wu Yung-fu, Chung Chao-cheng, Wang Chang-hsiung, Tu Pan Fang-ke, Yeh Shih-tao, Liao Ching-hsiu, Cheng Ching-wen, Chen Huo-chuan, and Chen Chien-wu.

Exactly because the writers were born in that period, due to change of a political regime and oppression against the language used by the previous regime, the writers were forced to use Chinese instead of Japanese when they wrote, making them a “cross-language generation.” The writers needed to learn a new language from the start, so as to cross that giant linguistic gap. Yeh Shih-tao, for instance,  learned Chinese by reciting dictionaries and practicing after Dream of the Red Chamber – a tough though practical way to acquire a new language. The writing logic and the cultural mindset of each language are significantly different, and this affected the writers’ lives significantly. Nevertheless, step by step, they leveraged their passion for literature, breaking free from the restraints cast upon them by others, and eventually started to write again.

It should be noted that, while facing the same circumstances after the war, each writer had different cross-language experiences previously. The writers who immersed in Japanese-speaking environs must spend more effort to switch to Chinese, because their linguistic gap was much wider. It took them much longer time to make the transition. Nevertheless, these writers were still equally passionate about literature. In their writings, one can find the writers’ zealous effort and their thoughts on life. The writers all strove to turn the weight of a new language into momentum for writing. In literature, they were able to find peace for their solitary minds. What a unique, heavy phenomenon in the history of literature in Taiwan.