Since the 1920s, Taiwanese intellectuals had moved away from violent resistance into organized and non-violent, cultural, political and social struggles against the Japanese government.
[3] In 1920, Cai Huiru (蔡惠如) et al. founded the Xin Min Society (新民会) in Tokyo in January and published Taiwan Youth (《台湾青年》) magazine in July, in order to promote cultural enlightenment (文化启蒙).
The literature movement was brought into Taiwan as a tool to exercise cultural enlightenment, increase education standards and to awaken the public to stand up against the colonial authority.
The use of modern Chinese could help increase the general literacy and keep connection with mainland China, and it symbolized the erection of the New and the abandon of the Old.
Second, as being positioned as a branch of Chinese literature, the Movement aimed at liberating Taiwan from Japanese colonizers with an intention to return to China.
[4] In 1930, Huang Shihui published the essay ‘Why not promote Taiwan nativist literature’ (怎麼不提倡台灣鄉土文學) in the Wu Ren newspaper (《伍人報》), gaining some debate.
In the next year, Huang and Guo Qiusen published essays ‘Talk about nativist literature again’ (再谈乡土文学) and ‘A proposal to develop Taiwanese vernacular’ (建設‘台湾話文’一提案) respectively in Taiwan News (《台湾新聞》), triggering a large-scale debate on whether it was feasible to use Taiwanese vernacular in writing Taiwan nativist literature.
[3] Huang’s opinion was similar to idea of popularization upheld by the worldwide proletarian literature movement which saw the toiling masses as the main audience of literary creations.
A colonial fact about Taiwan was that the official language was Japanese; modern Chinese could not be taught in the education system.
Guo in his essay illustrated the fact that Japanese, classical and modern Chinese were all difficult to be popularized among the masses, and responded the Huang’s stand by suggesting promoting the use of Taiwanese vernacular in order to eradicate illiteracy and disperse culture.
In 1927, Chen Manying, Lai He and Chen Shaoxin (陈满盈，赖和，陈绍馨) founded the New Student Study Society (新生学会), while overseas students in Japan, Xu Naichang, Yang Yunping, Yang Gui (许乃昌，杨云萍，杨贵) et al. organized the Social Science Study Group (社会科学研究部).
In March 1933, overseas students Zhang Wenhuan, Wu Yongfu, Wang Baiyuan, Liu Jie, Su Weixiong, Shi Xuexi (張文環，巫永福，王白淵，劉捷，蘇維熊，施學習) et al. founded the Taiwan Arts Society (台湾藝術研究会) in Tokyo, and published the Formosa (《福爾摩沙》) magazine.
In October 1933, Guo Qiusen, Liao Hanchen, Huang Deshi, Wang Shilang, Chen Junyu, Lin Kefu (郭秋生，廖漢臣，黄得時，王詩琅，陳君玉，林克夫) et al. founded the Taiwan Literature Association (台湾文藝协会) in Taipei, and published the Starting Force (《先發部隊》) magazine which was later renamed First Line (《第一線》).
[5] The active Taiwanese authors during this period included Lai He, Zhang Wojun, Yang Yunping, Yang Shouyu (楊守愚), Cai Choudong (蔡愁洞), Zhu Dianren, Xu Gu (虛谷), Guo Qiusen, Yang Hua (楊華), Wang Shilang, Zhang Qingtang (張慶堂), Zhang Shenqie (張深切), Huang Deshi, Wu Yongfu, Wu Tianshang (吳天賞), Wang Baiyuan et al.[1] In the late stage of the Japanese colonization, there were a lot of literary works written in Japanese by Taiwanese authors coming into existence.
In 1941, Zhang Wenhuan, Wang Jingquan (王井泉), Huang Deshi et al. left the Literature and Arts of Taiwan (《文艺台湾》) magazine which was controlled by Nishikawa Mitsuru (西川満) and organized the Qi Wen Society (启文社), and they published the Taiwan Literature (《台湾文学》) magazine for eleven volumes.
However, there were still authors like Wu Zhuoliu who risked his life to write ‘The Orphan of Asia’ (亞細亞孤兒), recording the stories of Taiwanese people and sustaining the resistant spirit.
[6] After the period of suppression, another literary movement arose in the 1970s and 1980s, seeking to establish recognition of a distinctly Taiwanese body of literature.