The Man Crawling upon the Earth

　　The Man Crawling upon the Earth is a story set in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation. The five-year old boy Chen Kei-min is adopted into a mountain village shopkeeper's family.

　　◎Zhang Wen-huan is one of the foremost writers of Taiwanese literature during the Japanese colonial period. The Man Crawling upon the Earth is a novel he wrote in Japanese after a 30-year hiatus.

　　◎The Man Crawling upon the Earth is a story set in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation. The five-year old boy Chen Kei-min is adopted into a mountain village shopkeeper's family.

　　◎With humor and humanistic understanding, the author Zhang Wen-huan pictures the people’s traditional way of life marked by annual festivities.

 

作者簡介

Zhang Wen-huan 張文環

　　Zhang Wen-huan (張文環), 1909-1978, was born in Daiping Chun, in the present Taiping Community, Meishan, Chiayi County Taiwan, He completed his secondary education in Okayama Prefecture, Japan and went on to study literature at Tōyō University. In 1932, he formed a research group on Taiwanese literature with other foreign students in Tokyo and launched the magazine Formosa. His story “Father’s Face” 「父の顔」(1943) was selected as an outstanding work by the Japanese magazine Chūō-kōron (中央公論).

　　Zhang married Sadakane Namiko (Zhang Fumei) in Tokyo. He returned to Taiwan in 1937. In the following year, he became the editor of Taiwanese Literature 《台灣文學》. He attended the East Asia Literature Conference in Tokyo in 1942 and was awarded by the Japanese Imperial Administration for Night Ape 《夜猿》(1942). His story The Capon 《閹雞》was adapted for the stage by Lin Tuang-qiu (林槫秋) and performed in Taipei in 1943.

　　In 1944, Zhang moved to Taichung and became the county’s first senator. After the 228 Incident of 1947, he stopped writing for nearly 30 years. While managing Sun Moon Lake Tourist Hotel, he completed his novel The Man Crawling upon the Earth 《地に這うもの》, which was published in Japan in 1975.

　　Passing away in his sleep from heart failure in February, 1978, at the age of seventy, he left his novel A Lamp on the Horizon 《地平線の燈》unfinished.
 

opponent. The aim of the sedan carrier was to catch the two of them, but at the sight of them already dressed, oh, crap, he cried out in his mind. He noticed he had snatched only A-Xiu’s underwear. At that moment, Kei-min’s ferocious rage scared him.
 
“Come!” In a provocative tone, the sedan carrier scowled at Kei-min.
 
Kei-min’s head was slightly nodding, moving his steps forward little by little. The sedan carrier stepped back, and staring at him, he was watching for a chance to take advantage of his opponent.
 
“A-Min, there is no need to kill him. Let him do what he wants.”
 
Xiu-ying ran to grasp Kei-min by his clothes. She knew her adoptive father had not come to kill them. But Kei-min could not contain his anger. As he spotted her underwear still grasped in his left hand, he swept his sharp stare like metal wire across the carrier’s face.
 
“Put down the underwear!” roared Kei-min furiously.
 
“Go to the police station where I will give it back to you.”