ABSTRACT
East Asian literary modernism (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) spans much of the twentieth century, flourishing in the 1920s to 1930s. Like their counterparts in other regions, East Asian modernist texts tend to be somewhat fragmented, characterized by experiments with language and style that signal rupture from established forms. They also regularly grapple with psychological investigation, and with the erotic and exotic as they penetrate contemporary, even chaotic, ‘modern’ urban milieus replete with cutting-edge architecture, consumer goods, and media phenomena (especially cinema, popular music, and the modern girl/boy), technology, and transportation. Many East Asian modernist texts feature young, uprooted, self-conscious individuals with fractured subjectivity caught up in history, especially Japanese imperialism. 1 East Asian literary modernism often overlapped with realist and leftist creative output, many writers adopting a variety of styles in their careers and even within particular works.
