台湾同性愛文学における『日本』― 邱妙津と李琴峰を中心 ― = “Japan” in Taiwanese Homosexual Literature: Focusing on Qiu Miaojin and Li Kotomi

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Since the enactment of the “Same-Sex Marriage Law” in 2019, which legally recognizes marriage between same-sex partners, Taiwan has garnered worldwide attention as a pioneer in the liberation of sexual minorities. Overcoming the challenges of Japanese imperial colonial rule and the martial law governance of the Chinese Nationalist Party, Taiwanese society now leads Asia in human rights issues. This has drawn the interest of East Asian countries, where Confucian family ethics remain strong, in how Taiwan has confronted the heteronormative system intertwined with patriarchal ideology.
In 2021, the Taiwanese novelist Li Kotomi, who depicts life in Shinjuku's Ni-chome district, was awarded the 165th Akutagawa Prize. This event symbolized the growing interest of Japanese society in the human rights issues of sexual minorities in Taiwan. Taiwanese queer literature has been translated into various languages, including English, Japanese, and Korean, and is read globally as avant-garde literature. However, during the 1990s, when the movement for the liberation of sexual minorities in Taiwan was flourishing, Japanese literary writers were admired by Taiwanese authors. “Japan” was always an exciting entity that provoked the formation of identity and the desire for creation.
In the literature of Qiu Miaojin, a novelist who published a novel in 1994 and later committed suicide in Paris, the frequent references to the names and works of Haruki Murakami, Osamu Dazai, and Yukio Mishima strongly illustrate the internal connections between “Japan” and Taiwanese homosexual literature.
This paper focuses on Qiu Miaojin, a representative queer writer of 1990s Taiwanese literature, and Li Kotomi, an active figure in world literature in the 21st century. By highlighting the commonalities in their works, this study aims to outline the contours of Taiwanese LGBTQ literature.