CHU T’ien-hsin, “The Old Capital”
p.135 the bridge at Shijo where he had first met “Chieko’s Naeko” or “Naeko’s Chieko”
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- lovers who seemed to never leave
- You told your daughter that southern China was just like that. When had you ever been in southern China?
The main theme of this book is the idea that “You” as the main character is trying to relive the old life. There were several places where “You” mentioned her memories of these old places, for example, “A price that had remained the same for years”, “You deeply missed the seats, so few that there was usually a long line”. The big picture was that “Your” home Taiwan was experiencing huge changes and “You” cannot go back to many old places again because they have been different. However, these scenes in Japan seemed to be the same from your old memory. The author is making a comparison between these two places.
Summer (past) vs. Winter (present)
Hideo by himself vs. Lovers (couples)
Hideo vs. Narrator
Southern China vs. Taipei vs. Japan
p.141 Maruyama Park
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- Yuanshan – you
- Maruyama – daughter
These several paragraphs are somewhat similar to the previous ones. Even though the author did not mention as many old memories, she still used a very gentle and little sad tone to describe the view “You” had been to. She is using these views as the images of old lives. They are as beautiful and memorable as your teenager.
Maruyama Park (daughter) vs. Yuanshan Park (narrator)
p.179 The parents I have now love me very much. I don’t have any desire to look for my real mother and father.
- why would you be willing to sit at the Seirō-ji for a whole afternoon doing nothing, while you couldn’t wait to flee the Temple of Benevolence, which you had to walk by every day?
These paragraphs are again, talking about the old memories of “You”. It started with the story of the little room “A” rent outside college and how you used it as your dating place. When “You” walked across it ten years later, it had changed tremendously. Another ten years passing by and the house was pulled down. The author was using this story to describe how things all get ugly and painful as people growing up. Old time cannot be restored ever again.
Parent vs. Biological Parent
Kyoto vs. Taipei
Chieko vs. Naeko
A (Past, means forgot about Taipei ) vs. Narrator (Japan)
CHUA and YAMAMOTO, “Review – The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata”
“The Old Capital” was published in 1962, which was an elegiac meditation on the cultural heritage of Kyoto and it was one of the works that earned the Nobel Prize in Literature. The English version of “The Old Capital” has several omissions and questionable translations. For example, the translator ignores the original’s mention that the protagonist has “reached a marriageable age.” The main character, Chieko, who was a paradigm of ancient Kyoto, was living in Kyoto, which had been Japan’s capital before Tokyo. And she raised by a kimono wholesaler after her parents abandoned her when she was a baby. At Kyoto’s Gion Festival, she meets the mountain girl Naeko, who reveals that they are twins. Chieko represented the past identity, and her twin sister, Nieko, who represented the future identity. Meanwhile, the young weaver Hideo starts falling for both of the sisters.
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- Old Captial (Kyoto) —— Chieko —— Past identity
- New Captial (Tokyo)—— Twin Sister —— Future identity
Lingchei CHEN, “Mapping Identity in a Postcolonial City”
Taiwan was colonized by Japan from 1895-1945 and with the exodus of Guomingdang nationalists of 1949 added a mixed cultural closure to the Taiwan society. Heavy on its development of capitalism after the 60s, Taiwan experienced its time under Western influences. It was discussed in the article that Taiwan was subject to three major influences from outside forces, American and its western customs, Japan, and Mainland China. With the forceful cultural invasion from different social forces, Taiwan generations that are born in the past two century experienced a certain degree of historical discontinuity and cultural displacement that caused a long struggle of identity confusion.
As the article stated, Zhu constantly struck in the cultural hybridity between her past and present, so the identity as a Chinese mainlander and Taiwanese’s offspring. Zhu used the binaries between Kyoto and Tokyo, Chieko and Nieko, and A and the narrator herself to show the intertwined dual cultures that created her. In her Old Capital, we see Zhu’s efforts in trying to create a coherent culture, through the narrator. Her concern of building a coherent culture and escaping from the burden of colonization rooted from the lack of a coherent and continuous historical heritage that herself experienced from the colonization and the different cultural forces. Zhu essentially tried to build an imagined past connecting to the present by presenting Kyoto, her symbol of history and antiquity.
The article also spent time discussing the political atmosphere in Taiwan, including the introduction of Li Denghui who was the very first chairman of Taiwan who was actually born in Taiwan and the DDP.
In Zhu’s Old Capital, while expressing a degree of nostalgia that is resulted from the displacement that the narrator was experiencing, it also showed much criticism against Taiwan. For instance, when talking about Southern China and the similar bridge the narrator saw in Kyoto, the story mentioned how Taiwan’s river was always filthy and full of human wastes. This refers to the rapid destruction of Taipei’s natural environment by both the KMT government and native Taiwanese politicians.
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