Yeh Shih-tao

Yeh Shih-tao (; 1925 – 11 December 2008) was a pioneering Taiwanese writer and historian spanning both the Japanese rule and post-war periods, who specialized in the literary history of Taiwan and the lives of ordinary Taiwanese people. His primary focus was on novels and critiques, supplemented by essays and translations, and was considered a seminal figure in Taiwanese literary criticism.

Biography Yeh Shih-tao was born in Tainan, Taiwan, in 1925 at a time when Taiwan was under Japanese rule.

Yeh later served as an adviser of the Teacher Human Rights Advocate Committee in Kaohsiung, and was appointed a national policy adviser to the Chen Shui-bian government. His best known work was likely The Chronicle of Taiwanese Literature, a compilation of Taiwanese historical literature published in 1987. He was one of the earliest Taiwanese writers to overcome language barriers, contributing essays, critiques, and translations to newspapers. During the White Terror period in 1951, he was arrested by the Nationalist government for allegedly harboring “communist agents” and served three years in prison. After his release, he continued his career in education while engaging in literary creation and criticism. After being transferred to Kaohsiung in 1967, where he settled, he died in 2008. In 1987, Yeh Shih-tao completed A History of Taiwan Literature (臺灣文學史綱), actively participating in the construction of Taiwan's literary history.

Yeh Shih-tao believed in constructing a literary historical perspective for Taiwan based on the nativism consciousness in regional literature. In his review of Forty Years of the Taiwanese New Literary Movement, a work by Peng Jui-chin (彭瑞金), he emphasized that Taiwanese literature is part of world literature, not subordinate to any external ruling nationality. A similar statement has also been made about the relationship between Taiwan literature and world literature: “one of the main tasks of modern Taiwan literature to be undertaken is to…… build up a literature with both Taiwan’s unique features and visions eyeing at the world.” Even during the Japanese rule period, Taiwanese literature was not an extension of Japanese literature, and after World War II, Taiwanese literature did not belong to Chinese literature. Therefore, Yeh intentionally built Taiwanese nativist literature, constructing a view of Taiwanese literary history through the societal background, local environment, and the roots and changes in literary inheritance.

Yeh's works of fiction have been translated to a number of languages, among them English, Japanese, Korean, Malay, and Vietnamese. A documentary about the author, Yeh Shih-tao, A Taiwan Man, was released in 2022.