An Analysis of Tsushima Yuko's Amari ni yabanna : a Rondo of Life and Death

Abstract

It has been told that in the Musha Incident of 1930, desperate native Taiwanese living under the oppression of the Japanese occupation in Taichung killed a number of Japanese residing there. Tsushima Yuko's long novel, Amarini yabanna (So Barbaric, 2008), builds on this incident, as well as on a well-known Taiwanese legend. The novel tells of the history in which a person (the protagonist of the novel) of a particular nationality and ethnicity aspires to find universal values. One notable theme is the differences of attitudes towards life and death between Akihiko, a sociologist who studied with French sociologist Emile Durkheim, and who teaches French at Taihoku High School, and his Taiwanese wife, nicknamed Meecha. This paper investigates Meecha's view of life and death as a cycle, and the significance it carries in the novel.