The Man Crawling upon the Earth

◎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.

ZhangWen-huan(張文環),1909-1978,wasborninDaipingChun,inthepresentTaipingCommunity,Meishan,ChiayiCountyTaiwan,HecompletedhissecondaryeducationinOkayamaPrefecture,JapanandwentontostudyliteratureatTōyōUniversity.In1932,heformedaresearchgrouponTaiwaneseliteraturewithotherforeignstudentsinTokyoandlaunchedthemagazineFormosa.Hisstory“Father’sFace”「父の顔」(1943)wasselectedasanoutstandingworkbytheJapanesemagazineChūō-kōron(中央公論).

ZhangmarriedSadakaneNamiko(ZhangFumei)inTokyo.HereturnedtoTaiwanin1937.Inthefollowingyear,hebecametheeditorofTaiwaneseLiterature《台灣文學》.HeattendedtheEastAsiaLiteratureConferenceinTokyoin1942andwasawardedbytheJapaneseImperialAdministrationforNightApe《夜猿》(1942).HisstoryTheCapon《閹雞》wasadaptedforthestagebyLinTuang-qiu(林槫秋)andperformedinTaipeiin1943.

In1944,ZhangmovedtoTaichungandbecamethecounty’sfirstsenator.Afterthe228Incidentof1947,hestoppedwritingfornearly30years.WhilemanagingSunMoonLakeTouristHotel,hecompletedhisnovelTheManCrawlingupontheEarth《地に這うもの》,whichwaspublishedinJapanin1975.

PassingawayinhissleepfromheartfailureinFebruary,1978,attheageofseventy,helefthisnovelALampontheHorizon《地平線の燈》unfinished.

Photographs

Acknowledgement

About the Author

Translator’s Introduction

Family Trees

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Zhang Wen-huan Chronology

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.”

Xiu-ying knew that Kei-min had worked up such fury that he could not hold himself back any longer. Now if he killed her adoptive father, all was to vanish like water bubbles.

“Let’s go. Yes, go. Let’s go to the police station.”

The carrier, Wang Ming-tung, heard this and saw Kei-min’s tension slacken. He seemed to draw back and cautiously be the first to leave.

“How can the argument be settled? If we don’t go, we won’t be able to know what is going to happen.”

Xiu-ying consoled Kei-min. Unaware, with her left hand, she held him. Quickly she spoke to him,

“Things have come to this situation. We have no choice,” she said.

After her remarks, his shivering tension brought back his feeling. The incident seemed to be like this. If we don’t go, it cannot be settled thoroughly. It was not the time now to consider the face of his adoptive father.

The sedan carrier was worried that he would be unable to withstand an attack from the back from Kei-min while walking. He turned around and said,

“Chi-da Ma-ki O,” using his Japanese name, “my goal is not to kill you two. Man to man, we go to the police station for the talk.”

“If so, give back Xiu-ying’s underwear.”

“So we go to the police station. That’s why I took the underwear.”

“Fine. We go.”

The sedan carrier was walking ahead with the other two behind. He gloated and snickered in his mind. Now it was going to be accomplished if everything worked out. Suppose they broke their word and did not go to the police office. Only having the girl’s underwear as evidence was one-sided support and it might not work out. It would not make sense for the police officer to do an investigation just because the daughter lost a piece of underwear. He should beat them if the two went with him together. After all, this carrier was an impetuous fool. Nevertheless, the flat-face woman Xiu-ying appeared crafty. He sandwiched the underwear under his left arm, and his right hand, as expected, still held his knife as he nimbly walked up the slope of the parapet ditch. When she looked at the back of her adoptive father, she had never felt such thorough hatred for him in her whole life. She had called him father for more than twenty years. Furthermore, they were living under one roof, and she had been working as a maid for over the past long twenty years. Today, just for his own advantage, without a thought for her, he had exposed her shameful condition to the public. Now seeing through his evil intention, she was utterly disgusted. Her face turned pale, and her lips shivered whitened with wrath. Here and now killing the carrier, and the two of them committing suicide to die for love would have to be rather satisfying. However, the face of A-Lan flickered up in her mind. She would definitely not let A-Min kill him. Walking closer to him she tightly held his hand which she felt was also shaking. But the sight of her underwear sandwiched under her father’s arm made her unbearably full of hate.

The three with gloomy and serious looks appeared walking through the village street. Silly, dull onlookers immediately flocked to stir up a disturbance and followed them toward the front of the police station. The first to arrive was the sedan carrier, then Kei-min, and next Xiu-ying, who looked pale with dead white lips and raised eyebrows. Under the villagers’ eyes the three people on display seemed unaware of the looks of the crowd as they remained fairly calm. One had the prey to deal with as a last resort; the other two were in a flaring rage.

The police station was still open. At the post there were three police officers, one being Constable Director Josida, another a Taiwanese constable, and another a Japanese constable. The three officers were gathered together talking to each other. When the three commoners filed into the office, one after the other, Constable Josida’s serious talk like the tip of a rice ear was unexpectedly snapped shut in a second. Obviously, he was not happy to be stopped and frowned. But the other two officers immediately realized what had happened as they turned around. The Taiwanese constable rose from his chair to walk toward the sedan carrier and Kei-min and took away the knives they were holding in their hands. In a small village nothing could be kept from the police. The sedan carrier bowed deeply and saluted to the highest-ranking officer Constable Josida, who stared fixedly at him as he listened to the accusation of adultery.

“Sir, Chi da Ma-ki O slept with my daughter. He has done a mischievous thing.”

“Wang Ming-tung, is this girl your daughter, or your daughter-in-law, or the mistress of your son Wang Ren-de?”

The sedan carrier was tongue-tied, and his throat clogged up. At this moment he was seized with panic and flustered.

“Dau…daughter-in-law.”

“If she is a daughter-in-law, does your son hold her every day?”

“No, sir.”