Translingual Bodies: Constructing the Modern Child in Early Colonial Taiwan’s National Language (Kokugo) Readers (1900–1913)

Children’s literature from colonial Taiwan has long been marginalised by post-war political and linguistic conditions, leaving its literary significance insufficiently examined. This article investigates the first edition of the National Language (Kokugo) Readers (National Language (Kokugo) Readers is used at first mention for clarity. Thereafter I use the shortened form Kokugo Readers throughout for consistency and readability) for kōgakkō, the government school for local Taiwanese pupils, treating them as early works of modern children’s literature whose pedagogical design and translingual textuality shaped children’s literary formation in early twentieth-century Taiwan. While existing scholarship approaches the Readers as instruments of Japanese colonial governance, focusing on schooling, language policy, and the inculcation of Japanese imperial norms, their literary textures, such as languages in use, narrative structures, and the interplay between text and illustration—have rarely been analysed. Little attention has been paid to how these features cultivate children’s narrative imagination or model ways of representing everyday life. Departing from policy-centred approaches, this article draws on Lydia Liu’s concept of ‘translingual practice’ and examines how Japanese prose, classical Sinitic elements, and locally situated elements were mediated and juxtaposed within the Readers’ narrative and illustrative content. This paper argues that the first edition of Kokugo Readers for kōgakkō functioned as a translingual site where modern childhood is produced, not through equivalent exchange, but through the persistent negotiation between text and image, and the forced negotiation between host and guest language and the translingual body.