Taipei Times
Date: Jan 03, 2017
By: Yang Yuan-ting, Lin Yen-tung and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporters, with staff writer
Academics and writers on Sunday reacted with shock after award-winning author Mika Tanaka admitted
Author Chen Hsuan-ju, also known as Mika Tanaka, holds up a copy of her book Wansei Come Home in Taipei on Oct. 10, 2015. Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
to falsifying her personal history throughout her career.
Tanaka, whose real name is Chen Hsuan-ju (陳宣儒), won the Ministry of Culture’s coveted Golden Tripod Award in 2015 for her non-fiction book, Wansei Back Home (灣生回家), which was made into a documentary by the same name that won commercial success. The award came with a prize of NT$150,000.
At the time, Chen said that her Japanese maternal grandmother was a wansei, a story that she told at numerous promotional events for the book and the documentary.
Wansei is a Japanese-language term used to describe people who are the descendants of Japanese immigrants who came to Taiwan during the Japanese colonial era from 1895 to 1945. [FULL STORY]
