Leo Ching
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520225510
- eISBN:
- 9780520925755
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520225510.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In 1895 Japan acquired Taiwan as its first formal colony after a resounding victory in the Sino-Japanese war. For the next fifty years, Japanese rule devastated and transformed the entire ...
More
In 1895 Japan acquired Taiwan as its first formal colony after a resounding victory in the Sino-Japanese war. For the next fifty years, Japanese rule devastated and transformed the entire socioeconomic and political fabric of Taiwanese society. This book examines the formation of Taiwanese political and cultural identities under the dominant Japanese colonial discourse of assimilation (dôka) and imperialization (kôminka) from the early 1920s to the end of the Japanese Empire in 1945. It analyzes the ways in which the Taiwanese struggled, negotiated, and collaborated with Japanese colonialism during the cultural practices of assimilation and imperialization. The book chronicles a historiography of colonial identity formations that delineates the shift from a collective and heterogeneous political horizon into a personal and inner struggle of “becoming Japanese.” Representing Japanese colonialism in Taiwan as a topography of multiple associations and identifications made possible through the triangulation of imperialist Japan, nationalist China, and colonial Taiwan, the author demonstrates the irreducible tension and contradiction inherent in the formations and transformations of colonial identities. Throughout the colonial period, Taiwanese elites imagined and constructed China as a discursive space where various forms of cultural identification and national affiliation were projected. Bridging history and literary studies, the book rethinks the history of Japanese rule in Taiwan by expanding its approach to colonial discourses.Less
In 1895 Japan acquired Taiwan as its first formal colony after a resounding victory in the Sino-Japanese war. For the next fifty years, Japanese rule devastated and transformed the entire socioeconomic and political fabric of Taiwanese society. This book examines the formation of Taiwanese political and cultural identities under the dominant Japanese colonial discourse of assimilation (dôka) and imperialization (kôminka) from the early 1920s to the end of the Japanese Empire in 1945. It analyzes the ways in which the Taiwanese struggled, negotiated, and collaborated with Japanese colonialism during the cultural practices of assimilation and imperialization. The book chronicles a historiography of colonial identity formations that delineates the shift from a collective and heterogeneous political horizon into a personal and inner struggle of “becoming Japanese.” Representing Japanese colonialism in Taiwan as a topography of multiple associations and identifications made possible through the triangulation of imperialist Japan, nationalist China, and colonial Taiwan, the author demonstrates the irreducible tension and contradiction inherent in the formations and transformations of colonial identities. Throughout the colonial period, Taiwanese elites imagined and constructed China as a discursive space where various forms of cultural identification and national affiliation were projected. Bridging history and literary studies, the book rethinks the history of Japanese rule in Taiwan by expanding its approach to colonial discourses.
Leo T. S. Ching
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520225510
- eISBN:
- 9780520925755
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520225510.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
“Imperialization” or kôminka is not the only “conviction” in becoming Japanese through “faith” in the Emperor, but the externalization of colonial ideology was remarkably demonstrated by the opening ...
More
“Imperialization” or kôminka is not the only “conviction” in becoming Japanese through “faith” in the Emperor, but the externalization of colonial ideology was remarkably demonstrated by the opening epigraphs. The author argues with the interrogation into the ideology kôminka necessarily exposing the colonial myth of dôka or “assimilation” that allegedly preceded and made possible the arrival of kôminka. In the study of Japanese colonialism, kôminka was an extension of dôka on a linear and consistent trajectory of Japanese colonial policy. The author also argues that dôka, as a colonial ideology, represented a generalized field of the colonial project which defined a coherent philosophy or systematic policy.Less
“Imperialization” or kôminka is not the only “conviction” in becoming Japanese through “faith” in the Emperor, but the externalization of colonial ideology was remarkably demonstrated by the opening epigraphs. The author argues with the interrogation into the ideology kôminka necessarily exposing the colonial myth of dôka or “assimilation” that allegedly preceded and made possible the arrival of kôminka. In the study of Japanese colonialism, kôminka was an extension of dôka on a linear and consistent trajectory of Japanese colonial policy. The author also argues that dôka, as a colonial ideology, represented a generalized field of the colonial project which defined a coherent philosophy or systematic policy.
