Darryl Sterk, trans. Scales of Injustice: The Complete Fiction of Lōa Hô

Darryl Sterk, trans. Scales of Injustice: The Complete Fiction of Lōa Hô. Honford Star, 2018.

I just finished reading this today after starting it a few months ago, which means my memory of some of the earlier stories is shaky. (One of the advantages and disadvantages of reading a collection of short stories is that you can put it down and dip into it from time to time.) So for that reason, I'm not going to write a review of the book. Besides, there are quite a few good reviews of the book already, such as those of 

• Willow Heath (who praises both Lōa Hô's stories and Sterk's translations)
• Tony Malone (who, on the other hand, finds the book "rather academic" and suggests that Lōa Hô "is more important for his role as an influence on Taiwanese literature than for any real genius in his writing")
• Liz Wan (who points out that Sterk's technique of sometimes translating into colloquial English and sometimes retaining Japanese and Taiwanese [in romanized form] in the stories gives the reader the sense of what the stories read like in the original; as she puts it, "some parts are smooth, whereas reading others feels like walking with a piece of chewing gum stuck to the shoes")
• T F Rhoden (who notes "Lōa Hô’s playful reproduction of local and artisan-specific dialect in the face of an alien bureaucracy")
• Vivian Szu-Chin Chih (who brings up how Sterk handles the challenges of translating the short poems that Lōa Hô sometimes included in his stories, concluding that he does an effective job on giving readers the sense of the original)

I know I'll be coming back to these stories to think about his portrayal of the responses to the work of the Taiwan Cultural Association (台灣文化協會), of which Lōa Hô was a founding member, by various members of society. For instance, some of the gangsters ("eels") in “Three Unofficial Accounts from the Romance of the Slippery Eels" (1931) consider the "cultured individuals" of the TCA to be rather cowardly; as one eel puts it, "Yeah, I seen this guy at the podium, spittle flying. But the police just have to say 'cease and desist' and he dutifully climbs down from the stage. That’s how brave he is" (141). Another "eel" says, "You lot! Who knows how many people who do not accept their lot in life you’ve hurt by getting their hopes up when you can’t change nuthin'" (141). 

However, in another story, entitled "Disgrace?!" (1931), a dumpling seller agrees that while the TCA members "yak and yak, and there’s always someone who wants to go and listen" to their speeches, the TCA speakers are brave. He points out that during a speech, "three and a half sentences in, he [a Tokkō from the Special Higher Police] shouts 'Cease and desist!' And if they keep yaking [sic] they'll get dragged off the stage and beaten up. But these guys aren’t afraid of nothing" (124). But Lōa Hô gives a nuanced picture of the Taiwan Cultural Association members, ending the story with a description of a doctor who, despite being a member of the TCA, is "one of the cringers." After the police break up a play at a local temple, one of the officers barges into the doctor's clinic, and the doctor's conversation with him is held up for critique by both the townspeople and, perhaps, the author:

"Working a bit late, today, are you? Been busy lately?" (Said the doctor.)

"Ha ha! Protest if you think it's unjust. If a keibu, a superintendent, is no use to you, you'll have to go to as high as a keishikan, a senior commissioner!" (Said the officer.)

"All right. When I do, shall I commend you for meritorious service? How much more of a travel honorarium do you need?"

"Manma--as it is, no need. Let me tell you something, I've come to a realization: that I'm going to get murdered at your place by one of the rowdies outside."

"I guarantee your safety."

"We didn't just use savage means tonight, but also civil."

"I can also guarantee you'll rise through the ranks."

"Ha ha ha!"

After the officer came out someone went in to ask the doctor what had happened. But the doctor said nothing, just smiled bitterly and helplessly.

Criticism erupted out of the crowd on the street.

"For the police to be able to abuse their authority and then go and act big in front of a man who likes to talk about justice and humanity must really be satisfying, like nothing else."

"Is he proud, that the officer paid him a personal visit?"

It's a disgrace, a great disgrace. Are the people who talk about justice really so helpless when the bullies lord it over everyone? (128-9)

The last paragraph seems to be in the narrator's voice, since there are no quotation marks. Is this meant to reflect Lōa Hô's own frustration with the lack of effectiveness of the TCA? Other stories seem to reflect his feeling that the Association was not accomplishing much (especially after its split into two factions in 1927), and in the introduction to the book, Pei-yin Lin suggests that Lōa Hô's turn back to poetry after 1935 reflected his "low morale" and "sense of isolation" (xix). 

The other voices in the passages I've quoted might also reflect the feelings of the general public about the TCA. Another story, "Going to the Meeting" (undated, possibly 1926) also gives some sense of both the public's and possibly Lōa Hô's own feelings about the Association. The narrator takes a train trip to Wufeng (where Lin Hsien-t'ang, a founder of the TCA, lived) to attend a meeting of the Association. On the way, he overhears conversations between a Japanese man and his Taiwanese counterpart and between a farmer and his friend that reflect the public's ambivalent feelings about the accomplishments of the Association. To the Japanese man's questions about the TCA, the Taiwanese man suggests that many Taiwanese intellectuals "find the members of the association annoying and avoid them" (203). He also suggests that the Association is ineffective because "[t]hey are capitalist intellectuals ... [who] may not have had any profound insight, which detracts from their capacity for active resistance. They'll just hold meetings and give speeches from time to time, that's it" (204). (Sterk suggests that the speaker sounds like a socialist here.)

The second conversation, between the farmer and his friend, centers on the farmer's inability to fight against the government's takeover of the land he plowed for 3 years and the rent they are charging him for the land. When his friend suggests going to the TCA, the farmer responds sarcastically that the Lin family enriched themselves by stealing from the tenant farmers for generations. He obviously didn't expect that the TCA would do anything. Even his friend says, "Rather than striving on behalf of the Taiwanese people, they could be a little less domineering to their tenant farmers, that would be enough" (206)--to which the farmer sarcastically replies, "O-mî-tô-hút" (阿彌陀佛), suggesting this wouldn't happen without divine intervention. This conversation points out a problem Lōa Hô saw (and, he suggests, some everyday Taiwanese saw) with the ethos of the Association, or at least of some of its founding members: their own hands were not necessarily that clean. 

Anyway, the stories do provide perspectives on the TCA that might be useful to me, ones that I hadn't read elsewhere (yet).