RICHARD WING TO NG

This essay addresses the problem of cultural rupture and the reconstruction of a "common language" in the late exile literature of Chinese writer Tao Jingsun. After fleeing the political terror of Taiwan for postwar Japan, Tao faced the collapse of the Sino-Japanese intellectual foundation and the complex legacy of his own historical entanglement with Japanese imperialism. This essay reads Tao’s final Japanese writings—specifically his posthumous collection Testament to Japan—by examining his literary practice as the "performance of an exile." This performance operates through a strict non-belonging stance, a fluid oscillation between solemn classical Chinese vocabulary and mundane everyday language, and a calculated use of humor and satire. By employing a strategic "nostalgia for the Meiji era" not as imperial regression but as a critical apparatus, Tao attempts to revive the dialogic openness that preceded Japan's imperial expansion. By showing how Tao shifts the focus from macro-political grand narratives to the micro-ethics of daily life and interpersonal communication in his final fiction, this essay aims to shed light on the tactics of literary intervention by individuals who exist between rigid national identities, thereby providing insight into how a shared cultural vocabulary can be recreated in the aftermath of historical trauma.