Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972) is one of the few Japanese writers to focus on modern dance, yet his dance-related novels remain relatively underappreciated. In the 1930s, he published several works that featured dancers as central characters. Novels such as ‘Kinju’ (Of Birds and Beasts, 1933), ‘Maihime no Koyomi’ (Days of Dancers, 1935), and ‘Hana no Waltz’ (Waltz of Flowers, 1936), intertwine the lives of real and fictional dancers in Japan and abroad. These works reflect a range of social contexts prevalent during that period. This raises an important question: How did Kawabata conceptualize an “Oriental” modern dance while portraying Japanese modern dancers grappling with multiple identities? His works not only depict the tensions that emerge when individuals strive to express their ethnic identity within the globalized framework of Western dance techniques, but they also underscore the dancer’s “Oriental” perception of the fluidity between the mind and body.

The term Nanyō refers to the Southeast Asian region, including the island nations of the South Pacific. It began to be commonly used in Japanese society from the late 1880s. From this period onward, Japanese writers depicted the Nanyō region through various representations, most of which involved internalizing a uniquely Japanese perspective on the Nanyō based on Western knowledge of the region. Furthermore, the Nanyō images produced in Japan influenced neighboring countries such as Korea and China, where they were utilized in the creation of their own distinctive perceptions of the region. Therefore, a comparative literary approach is essential in examining the literary representations of Nanyō by Asian writers.

Based on this discussion, this study conducts a comparative analysis of the representation of Puputan by Takami Jun, Korean writer Ham Se-deok, and Indonesian writer Haril D. Widjaja. How do Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian writers reproduce and reinterpret Puputan, a historical event in Indonesia, in their literary works? By examining their translation methods of Puputan, this study explores how each writer conceptualized Nanyō and responded literarily to "Asian history." (446 characters)

Khu Eng-Han (1924–2012) is a Japanese-language writer from Taiwan and the first foreign writer to win the Naoki Sanjugo Prize, an important award in the field of Japanese popular literature. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, while still a high school student, he published prose poems depicting Taiwan’s local landscapes and customs in literary magazines in Taiwan. In 1942, he went to Japan for university, returned to Taiwan in 1946, and fled to Hong Kong in 1948 as a political refugee. In 1954, he moved back to Japan and began writing stories about Taiwan. In this presentation, I focus on one of his key works, Koen (1955), examining how this short story relates to the works of Nishikawa Mitsuru published in the 1930s, as well as to Shōji Sōichi's novel Chin-fujin, published in the early 1940s. Additionally, I explore how he integrated his own experiences, including his political activities in Taiwan and observations in Hong Kong-to ultimately craft a unique narrative about Taiwan.