National Border on the Tip of Tongue: The Limit of Cosmopolitan Citizenship in Count Down to Five Seconds of Crescent Moon

This chapter explores the effects of cosmopolitanism on racialized immigrants in the context of Taiwan and Japan. Using the two female characters, a Taiwan-born Japanese lesbian citizen and a Japan-born Taiwanese straight-identifying citizen, in Li Kotomi’s novella Count Down to Five Seconds of Crescent Moon (2019/2021), this chapter argues that the practice of cosmopolitanism should not be necessarily considered as empowering; instead, it must take into account broader factors such as immigration policies or national discourses in the cosmopolitan subjects’ host nations. The chapter provides two examples of the practice of cosmopolitanism, the speech of secondary language and the consumption of foreign cuisine, to demonstrate that the embodied effects of characters’ cosmopolitan practices can be both connective and restraining. It introduces the concept “minor transnationalism” proposed by Lionnet and Shih (2005) to accentuate the connectivity generated across the minoritized immigrant characters.