Colonial Taiwan and the Rise of a Singular Identity

 Colonial Taiwan and the Rise of a Singular Identity

 

In the last century independence movements have propelled people to act against colonial subjugation in places such as Africa, India, and more recently East Timor.  Independence movements of one sort or another have dominated much of the post-colonial and post- Soviet eras. Throughout the first half of the last century there was been a near absence of any formidable independence movement in Taiwan. Although an independence movement unfolded in the second half of the 20^th century during KMT rule, eventually to gain significant ground with the formation of the DPP in an era of political reform, the idea of independence remains on margins of political discussion since the DPP has gone on to tackle more tame issues such as welfare and ‘black gold’.

 An absence of a significant independence movement in Taiwan seems an anomaly given the predominance of foreign rule over Taiwan during the twentieth century, beginning with the Japanese. What are the historical factors in Taiwan’s development, which have resulted in creating an ethos of accommodation and acquiescence among the population of Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period? Furthermore, in more recent times, mainly the 1980s and 1990s, when the KMT rule went from ‘ hard authoritarianism to soft authoritarianism’ giving way to the end of martial law and the democratization process, why has a significant independence movement failed to materialize? In answering the first question I hope to show that the existing political ethos of Taiwan prior to colonial rule was near non-existent as socially Taiwan was made up of diverse groups with no overarching cultural construct. 

  

The treaty signed at Shimonoseki after the close of the Sino-Japanese war gave Japan the right to annex and colonize Taiwan, and lead to the eventual Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula as well. Prior to Japanese colonial rule the Korean peninsula’s cultural and political landscape was extremely different from that of Taiwan. The Korean peninsula had been a unified entity both politically and culturally since the latter half of the seventh century A.D. The Shilla Kingdom concurred its two rivals, Paekche and Korgurio in 663 and 668 respectively, thus unifying the people of the peninsula for what was to become Korea. By the fourteen hundreds Korea was a country distinguishable from China to the north and Japan to the south. It was in the mid- fourteen hundreds that scholars commissioned by the ruler created a phonetic writing system which relieving Korea from the use of Chinese characters, thus further defining Korea as a political and cultural entity. Such as political and cultural unity is historically a stark contrast to the formation found on Taiwan in the lead up to colonization. 

It was not until the sixteen hundreds that significant numbers of Chinese began to migrate to Taiwan. As the Dutch set out to exploit the island for its resources by developing Taiwan into a “full blooded colony”(Long, 9) the Dutch looked to China’s Fujian Province for a labor force, “ To obtain cheap labor the Dutch recruited thousands of tough, quarrelsome but hardworking peasants and fishermen from the impoverished coastal district of Fujian…”(Kerr, 3) Scores of Chinese from the southern province migrated to Taiwan.  By the late sixteen hundred, after Dutch rule gave way the struggles of the late Ming against the encroaching Ch’ing dynasty, Taiwan’s Chinese population had more than doubled to near 100,000.  The growing numbers of Chinese, along with the dispersed population of aborigines, made up a social-political landscape that during the seventeen and eighteen hundreds was quite diverse.

The Chinese population of Taiwan came to consist of mainly Hakka and Hoklo (or Hokkien). These two groups, although being Chinese, possessed divergent lingual dialects as well as dissimilar styles of clothing, building style, and food (Lamley/ Ahern, Gates , 1984). Hill Gates points out that “ Subcultural or ethnic variations among the immigrants were maintained or even accentuated by the discontinuous pattern of settlement and varying ecological adaptation they made in Taiwan” (Gates, 33). The Han settlers, Hakka from Guangdong province and Hokkien from Fujian competed for land in the fertile environment.  Community formations were founded on kinship affiliation, or fabricated kinships or sir names when authentic kinship ties were absent. Settlements were ethnically aligned and primarily based on “place of origins”.  Although Hakka and Hokkien were similar in that they shared features of Han Chinese cultural expressions, the dissimilarities found in each group’s particular variation were more the defining element in Taiwan’s social landscape. Out of the fold of the dominant Chinese center Taiwan existed as a peripheral frontier, where differences were highlighted because of close proximity of varying groups.

  

On top of this diversity there was little governance of Taiwan by the authority of China, “The direct rule of the government in the administration of Taiwan and the exploitation of its agricultural surplus was minimal.”(Long, 15). Taiwan gaining prefecture status in 1684 and its  130,000 plains aboriginals and Han Chinese settlers were brought into the administrative rule of the Ch’ing court. Taiwan’s previous use as a safe heaven for Koxinga and Ming loyalists made the incorporation by the Ch’ing court of Taiwan a reluctant. The ambition of the Ch’ing government to control the migration of southern Han to Taiwan, in an attempt to lessen the likelihood of rebellion, manifested itself in the establishment of quarantine, and a restriction on family migration. This, according to Lamley, had the ironic result of promoting rebellion and feuding. The restriction on family migration caused the Han population to be predominately male. The effects of such a gender imbalance on Taiwan resulted in a contentious population “ prone to brawling and rebellion” (Rubensten, 113). Contributing to this was the overall weakness of Ch’ing rule. “The direct rule of the government in the administration of Taiwan and the exploitation of its agricultural surplus was minimal.”(Long, 15).    This lack of authority provided for an environment that was often chaotic, with the differing groups coming into conflict with each other, “Feud strife termed ‘armed conflicts (hsieh-tou)…occurred with increasing frequency during the nineteenth century. The conflicts ranged from limited encounters between common surname groups to pitched battles involving whole communities”(Lamley, Skinner 177). It is quite clear that the early development of Taiwan was marked by dissimilar communities and without an overall unity, which may have served as a nesting ground for a quesi-national formation.

In 1910, fifteen years after the Japanese set up colonial rule in Taiwan, Korea was annexed and brought into the Japanese empire as a formal colony. Through much of the early period the Japanese had used martial law, as well as military force to rule the peninsula.  Korean nationalism was a formidable force, “Every attempt was made to check the fires of Korean nationalism.”(Aziz, 15). In 1919 there emerged an independence movement, which culminated in a Declaration of Independence. This  “resulted in further severe measures by the colonial authorities, as a result of which many Koreans had to take shelter abroad…Japanese repression failed, however, to destroy Korean nationalist spirit ”(Aziz, 15).  In Shanghai exiled Koreans set up a “self-styled Korean Provincial Government”. This government in exile was sustained until the after WWII. Looking at Taiwan’s resistance brings to light obvious differences, and may be seen as unique among colonized peoples.

During the colonial era there came into existence a number of organizations, which represented varying degrees of resistance to colonial rule.  These organizations, I hope to show, lacked any identifiable independence ideology. For the most part it was members of an educated elite class, who had been fostered by the colonial economic development, that sought reforms to the administration of Taiwan, attempted to gain equality for Taiwanese in the colony, advocated the preservation and promotion of the unique Taiwanese-Chinese cultural heritage, and tried to obtain political representation at the national level as well as local autonomy. Such a variety of endeavors resulted in there being no unifying goal such as independence from colonial rule as in the Korean resistance case. This multifarious form of resistance, below seen through three of the most prominent movements, namely the Assimilation Society, New Peoples Society, and the League for the Establishment of a Taiwan Parliament, served to maintain a weak political ethos among the Taiwanese. Does this reflect in some way, what came before colonial rule, a disparate frontier mentality with no overarching socio-political construct?

The first organization to appear was the Assimilation Society, which grew out of a meeting between Lin Hsien-t’ang a well known landowner’s son, and Count Itagaki, the initiator of the Liberal Party of Japan as well as an important political figure in Japan. Lin Hsien-t’ang had been advised during several meetings with Chinese intellectuals to seek reforms within the Imperial order by influencing Japan’s more liberal leaning politicians and intellectuals, for China was in no condition to offer assistance in any struggles the Taiwanese may have in resisting colonial rule. This imperative to work within the administration of colonial rule for reforms set the tone for all subsequent opposition movements by the Taiwan. The Society sought harmony between the Japanese citizenry and the Taiwanese on Taiwan by advocating equality between the two aggregates in regards to culture, race and economic opportunity.  From the Japanese perspective this was part of Japan’s pan Asian ideology, advocated by the more liberal leaning elements in Japan, which sought union among Asians under the aegis of superior Japan, in opposition to the encroaching western imperialism. The legalization of interracial marriage and equal economic opportunity were major positions. Membership, at 3,198, consisted of Taiwanese professionals, as well as 41 Japanese (Chen). It road on the popularity of Itagaki, and when the figurehead of the Society left Taiwan the organization faltered under the pressure from the Japanese controlled press and the administration of the than governor-general Sakuma. The majority of the Japanese living and working in Taiwan during the colonial period were not susceptible to joining or agreeing with any movement that would jeopardize their privileged positions, and it was the colonial administration, of the earlier more harsh and authoritative governor-generals, which fiercely protected such a status quo that privileged the Japanese.  It was in 1919, after the sudden death of General Akashi, then the 7^th governor-general, that the recently elected liberal Premier Hara appointed the first civilian governor-general. This took place in a newly liberal and more democratic Japan.             

In 1920 Taiwanese students in Japan created the New Peoples Society. This was to be the next significant movement, which took advantage of the considerable freedoms in the Imperial capital. It was able to solicit Lin Hsien-t’ang to become its leader.  Influenced by the ideal of self-determination for colonial subjects put forth by Woodrow Wilson in January the eight of 1918, as well as the increased liberal political climate in Japan, which had begun debating about suffrage for the Japanese population, a population that was growing increasingly uneven in regards to wealth and opportunity due to rapid urbanization, they sought recognition of the inequities of the conditions for Taiwanese in the colony in hopes of fostering political activism to reform the colonial administration. A key component to such an intent was the publication of a magazine entitled Formosan Youth, which, printed in both Japanese and Chinese, went on to become a newspaper that remained in circulation until the 1937, and offered the only means of expression for the Taiwanese. 

  

An area of contention amongst the liberals and the conservatives in Japan’s Parliament was the Japanese constitution and whether or not it should apply fully to the native citizenry of the colonies. This was one issue that the New Peoples Society became involved in. It was an issue that was contingent to a law in Taiwan that allowed the governor-general unlimited power in dealing with the Taiwanese population. This was Law number 63, which had been implemented as a provision during the early years of colonization, and was to only last a few years, but on account of the governor-general the law was renewed religiously whenever it was due to expire. By taking issue with the Law number 63 they hoped to bring “extension of the Japanese laws to the island, with the result of that the governor-general would be made more accountable to the Imperial Diet vis a vis the Japanese public..”( Chen, 482 ), for the Japanese residence were exempt from a number of rules, such as the Ho Ko Ordinance which made entire neighborhood responsible for crimes committed. The abolition of the law was seen as a means to ceasing discriminations against the Taiwanese by the colonial authority, and thereby bringing interracial equality to Taiwan. Some members of the Society saw this as being similar to the integrationist ideas advocated by the Assimilation Society and Itagaki. Therefore, a split in the Society occurred with a Lin Ch’eng-lu arguing that there had been a failure in recognizing the differences in culture between the Japanese and the Taiwanese. Lin proposed that a legislature be created, which would represent Taiwan and balance the authority of the colonial authority.

When the Japanese Diet kept the law with a the compromise that the laws of Japan be applied to the Taiwanese ‘as much as possible’, the Society saw that the idea of Lin Ch’eng-lu to establish a Taiwanese parliament was the only remaining option to fight for, hence the creation of The League for the Establishment of a Taiwanese Parliament. In 1923, the League for the Establishment of a Taiwan Parliament was initiated, and gained much support from elements within the New Peoples Society, and was to become the most salient of movements in Taiwan during the colonial period. Its intent was to gain signatures to a petition, to be submitted to the Japanese Diet, and was in effort to establish a Taiwanese Parliament within the Japanese Empire. The points which it made was the duplicity in regards to the power of executive and legislative which the governor-general was able to exercise going beyond the separation of such powers that the Japanese constitution protects. It also took issue with the fact that the Imperial Diet could not enact laws that catered to Taiwan’s specific state. They sought Taiwanese inclusion in decisions regarding fiscal management, and representation in the at the national in Tokyo. These demands were no different from the voices of general suffrage by the Japanese people, and the organizers were clear to emphasis their loyalty to the Imperial order and denied any secessionist intents.  Without success it made fifteen petitions to the Imperial Diet between 1921 and 1934. 

The Japanese government did all it could to diminish the effects of the movement. In 1923, a visit to Taiwan by Hirohito can be seen as “pageantry that aimed to pacify the growing agitation in the colony through symbolic extension of the imperial goodwill”(Ching, 103).  In the 1930s the Japanese began to intensify the assimilation of the Taiwanese to the Imperial order, as well as to the Japanese culture and society through education. The implementation of Kominka, or imperialization, marked the last stage in the Imperial governments approach to colonial subjects in Taiwan, and it may be viewed as a compromise to the relenting demands for self-rule by the Taiwanese, but it also served to tighten support for the Imperial order for the war effort. This project saw the demise of many regulations that served to maintain the boundaries between the Taiwanese and the Japanese. One example being the legal blocks to Japanese and Taiwanese mixed marriages, which were lifted. By 1935 the granting of elections to governmental assemblies in the colony was given by Imperial edict. These assemblies were set up to facilitate budget proposals at the local level, although they “falling far short of the Home Rule ideal of island wide elective body…” with representation in Tokyo. Voting began to take a hold of the population of Taiwanese and the relations between the Japanese and the Taiwanese began to improve. Shortly after the inauguration of the elective assemblies the Home Rule movement was disbanded as the “Formosans on their part were becoming familiar with the devices of political campaigns and electioneering…” (Kerr, 171). 

The Home Rule movement died out as election took hold of the political aspirations of the Taiwanese. This points directly to a lack of a movement for actual national independence. During the Colonial period the movement for self-government was significant, but the League for the Establishment of a Taiwan Parliament diverged greatly from the national movements for independence such was found in Korea. We see that it sought to achieve representation of Taiwan as an equal at the national Imperial level. The movement also argued for Taiwanese to fill the government posts in Taiwan at all levels.  Where as Koreans demanded self determination the Taiwan’s sought self-representation. Steven Phillips states in his article “Between Assimilation and Independence” that the Home Rule Movement was an “attempt to maximize the island’s autonomy within a larger political entity.” (Phillips/Rubinsein, 276)

It is important to note that the image of Korea as a national entity was clearly seen by the outside world. In 1943 the Cairo Declaration, which gave Taiwan to the Nationalist government in China, “provided that Korea ‘in due course shall become free and independent.”(Aziz, 16) Taiwan was not seen as an exclusive national polity, which may lead us to question such omnipotent western decision making bodies.

During retrocession the 228 Incident was a significant cord struck in the unfolding of the post war orchestration directed at the re-incorporation of Taiwan into the Nationalist Chinese Republic. The incident itself lacked any defining nationalist traits as there was no unity in command and the “islanders never sought pitched battles with the mainland troops because their efforts were essentially reformist” (Phillips/Rubinstein, 295). The resulting clash was one of cultures. A hybrid of what Thomas Gold refers to as “Japanese colonial experience and frontier Chinese” was juxtaposed with that of Chinese troops from the civil war ravaged and semi-feudal China. This clash bought a great carnage to the population of Taiwan and devastated the elite and the intellectuals as the republican troops exerted control. By the time the KMT fully retreated from the Mainland to Taiwan, a rigid control and martial law had been put in place. What came to be referred to as the “white terror” checked the fermentation of any resistance throughout much of the first two decades of KMT Rule.

As overt measure were implemented in efforts to keep any protest from surfacing from within the Taiwanese population, the KMT engaged in a land reform in early 1950s, which resulted reduced private land holding of the landlord, but equalized the distribution of property in the population. The number of landless farmers and tenant families decreased, while ownership of land significantly increased. This was an important move as it acted to ameliorate the situation for the Taiwanese, hence instilling some confidence in the new era.  The political reforms of Chiang Ching-kuo opened the KMT to the Taiwanese, and by the 1990s, with the first official election for president, this process of inclusion was to significantly deplete the support for the DPP, the party which had grown from the roots of the early independent movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

In summery we see that there has been a consistent absence of a formidable movement toward a Taiwan nationalism. The factors contributing to this fact are first of all well rooted in Taiwan’s early development as a peripheral frontier region of China, where the lack of overarching authority allowed the segregated sub-ethnic communities to maintain themselves. This in turn kept any nesting ground of which may have formed a nationalistic polity from evolving.  Secondly, Japanese colonial rule failed to insight any movement for liberation from colonial subjugation. We only saw a movement, begun by an elite class of Taiwanese, who incidentally or not, had benefited from colonial development, which strove for autonomous representation within the Imperial Empire. This movement was to fizzle out in the latter days of colonial rule as the Imperial government allowed for the innocuous elections of assembly officials at the local level. Retrocession ignited in the 228 Incident, but this was more of a clash of opposing cultures, and as Phillips points it out fell short of being an independence movement. The KMT rule sought to repress any form of independent political formation. The eventual rise of the DPP during the opening, which was bought on by a relaxing of the repressive grips of the government eventually became diluted by the KMT’s own inclusion policy and democratization.

Some Considerations in the Social and Cultural Developments in Taiwan History

The “complex cultural configurations” found in Taiwan today, can easily be seen as “Chinese culture with Taiwanese characteristics”. The majority of people inhabiting present day Taiwan are descendants of Han Chinese who, beginning in the early 1600s, migrated to Taiwan from southern China.  Another significant group, also deriving from China, are the Republican loyalists, and their descendants, who fled to Taiwan with Chang Kai shek in the aftermath of the civil war.  Today, in Taiwan, one can find cultural attributes that attest to the influence of the various groups of Han Chinese, who have come to populate the island. These cultural attributes, which includes folk religion, the observances of holidays that center around community and family (Chinese New Years), as well as ritual practices, are defining elements in what anthropologists have come to agree as being the cultural basics of Chinese society. The early studies of James Waston were significant in establishing what is to be considered culturally Chinese. “‘To be Chinese is to understand, and accept the view, that there is a correct way to perform rites associated with the life cycle” (Watson and Rawski, 3). Rituals of marriage and death, as well as religious practices have been studied as representations of Chinese culture on Taiwan (Sangren, Ahern, Feuchtwang, Diamond among others). These cultural attributes may be seen as being fundamental to the cultural make-up and identity of Taiwan, existing within the universal of Chinese culture.  The particular developments, which are found throughout Taiwan’s history, such as its frontier origins, and the Japanese colonial period, may be but a few broad strokes on a large Chinese tapestry.

      

However, there are some who see the distinct developments in Taiwan’s history as causing major fissures in the cultural continuity between Taiwan and China, thus fostering an individual cultural identity of Taiwanese. Beginning with the arrival of the Dutch, and the early economic development of Taiwan through to the end colonization by the Japanese, we see alterations to much of Taiwan’s landscape independent of China. These alterations are detectable physically, economically, as well as socially. Tu We Ming states that “…the recognition that there have been distinct Dutch, Japanese and American strata superimposed upon the Chinese substrata since the eighteenth…makes the claim of Taiwan’s Chineseness problematic.”(Tu, 10) The KMT’s subsequent arrival to Taiwan, after the Second World War, juxtaposed the former colonial subjects to Chinese from the Mainland, where political strife and lingering elements of feudalism were manifest.  Such a juxtaposition revealed vast differences between the two, which the KMTs cultural policy sought to remedy. These differences exemplify a cultural divide that came to exist between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits. By looking at the cultural formations that grew out of the pre-colonial and colonial periods, we will be able to better understand the cultural issues, which have plague Taiwan throughout the second half of the 20^th century.     

The idea of a Taiwan culture, whether it is seen as a particularity of a greater Chinese culture, or an actual individual formation, is inextricably tied to the arena of identity formation in regards to the concept of cultural and national consciousness.[1] By consciousness we mean an understanding of a distinct shared culture among the people of Taiwan that can be seen in opposition to Japanese or Chinese, and which derive from identifiably distinct practices, beliefs or behaviors. It is believed that the appearance of a Taiwanese identity, or consciousness, first occurred during the colonial period, but its roots predate colonial Taiwan. Sung Tse-lai, writing in 1988, sees that a Taiwan ethnic identity developed out of “objective economic conditions” that gave rise to an “indigenous capitalist” character, which historically “can be traced back to the Dutch rule” (Ching, 68). As Sung argues that the maturity of Taiwan’s independent identity manifested itself during Japanese colonial rule, he states that such an identity is well rooted in the frontier era, going as far back as the Dutch presence in the late 1600s. 

In the Dutch period Chinese from coastal Fujian and Kuangdong were recruited for settlement to farm the fertile soils of Taiwan’s western plains. Water conservancy was developed by the Dutch to assist in the cultivation of sugar, rice, tea, wheat, and hemp. The Dutch helped the Han in the farming and settlement of the land through the provisions of seeds, tools and currency. (Knapp, 99) These foreign influences, imparted to the early Han inhabitants of Taiwan, certainly had a cultural element, for culture has much to do with how a people interact with and shape their environment. Such an early exposure to foreign influences in a non-confrontational way, lead to the eventual formation of what Sung refers to as an ‘indigenous capitalist character’ and a ‘social community’ founded on ‘objective economic conditions’. In this regard Hill Gates points out that there was an economic prowess in the pre-colonial Taiwanese, which allowed for them to master the new economic opportunities at the time. Though Taiwan’s early formation was made up of communities based on place of origin and kinship, as well as sub-ethnic division between Hakka, Hokklo, and aborigine, economic patterns would eventually serve to bring these varying, and often conflicting communities together.      

In the decades just prior to colonization, Taiwan became integrated into the ‘world system’ as camphor and tea production excited the interest of foreign traders (Sangren, 87). The pressure from foreign interests resulted in the Treaty of Tientsin, which was to greatly hamper the Ch’ing government’s attempt at monopolizing trade between Taiwan and the outside world, and thus further detaching Taiwan from the cultural center of China by allowing foreigners to trade directly with Taiwan. American and European traders looked to Taiwan, where, according to Hill Gates, the Chinese of the island where able to “organize rapidly to meet the new demands…. to maintain control over. …profitable new export trade” (Gates, 36).  The growth of commodity exchange benefited Taiwan’s Han Chinese population, which had grown significantly through the 1700s and early 1800s, outnumbering the aborigine population.  In regards to the ethnic division between Hakka and Hokklo,  “expanded economic opportunities and the increased need for cooperation among Taiwan’s Chinese inhabitants reduced the incidence of Han subethnic strife.” (Gardella, 178). The Han sub-ethnic boundaries were lessened, as class appeared as a newly emergent defining feature of the social landscape, and an ‘indigenous capitalist character’ appeared.  The integration of Taiwan into the global market exposed the Taiwanese to international capitalism and nurtured industrious habits.

Although the softening of ethnic boundaries between sub-ethnic groups happened as a result of the economic changes in the 1800s, it was not until colonization by Japan that the formation of a political composite as ‘Taiwanese’ unfolded. (Winkler, 1988). This follows the logic of Sung’s idea that Taiwan consciousness is rooted in earlier formations, but came to maturity during the colonial period.  During colonial rule the ethnic differences receded further, allowing for the divergent groups of Han Chinese to fall under a definition as Taiwanese  “…local boundaries and loyalties of local communities were somewhat weakened and the cultural differences that expressed and reinforced those differences were correspondingly blurred at the edges.” (Harrell and Huang, 3).  Once under colonial rule the Han Chinese on Taiwan, whether Hakka or Hokkien became united as the subjects of Japanese. It is during the Japanese colonial rule that the Han Chinese came to form a singular social configuration as Taiwanese, which unfolded in a matrix of industrialization, urbanization, and social development.  

Japanese colonial rule brought dramatic changes to Taiwan, which represented, according to Shih Ming, author of ‘The Four- Hundred Year History of the Taiwanese’, a fundamental factor alienating or separating Taiwan from the mainland. (Ching, 2001) For, while the mainland struggled politically, and much of its rural landscape remained tied to agrarian ways, Taiwan was being modernized through its incorporation into the Japan empire.  With economic industrialization and Japanese capitalism, the population saw the transformation of their built environment with roads and transportation infrastructure. The Japanese developed the productive forces agriculture, focusing on rice and sugar, which were exported to Japan. Taiwan, becoming financially independent from Japan by 1905, was able to support a market for the industrial goods produced in Japan. Industrial manufacturing was also developed, and by the 1930s nearly 20 percent of the income at the national level was due to the industry sector (Galenson, 1979).  Nonagricultural infrastructure, such as power and transport was also developed.  With industrial growth urbanization began to take root.

The urban environment was scene to accommodation by the Taiwanese, who mingled between elements of Japanese culture and modernity. Bicycles were fixtures on the streets as were telephones in the home.  Taiwanese speech was peppered with elements from Japanese, as well as other foreign languages. (Lamley, 99) Urbanization of the population was significant. In 1895 the urban population on Taiwan was just 5 percent of total population, by 1943 the urban population grew to represent 15 percent of the total population. (Knapp, 1999) 

The social development of Taiwan during the colonial period was significant as well. Modern health care in Taiwan became second only to that of Japan’s in all of Asia. Since education was necessary to support the modern economy, schooling at the primary and secondary levels was implemented. The use of Japanese was part of colonial education. Although there was no uniform language policy implemented, a significant portion of the Han population could speak Japanese to one extent or another. The Japanese brought law and order to Taiwan, as well. The justice system was efficient and fair. The Japanese did not greatly disrupt the cultural structure of Taiwan. Although temples were burned, due to their conduciveness to opposition formation, the Japanese left alone marriage and religious customs, as well as inheritance patterns (Gates, 1987) While retaining an underlay of heritage representing south China Hakka and Hokklo culture, the Taiwanese absorbed the cultural elements of a modern and civil nature, and industrial production. The indigenous capitalist character was not lost, but strengthened. Hill Gates states that life for the Taiwanese under Japanese rule was “much safer, healthier, a bit more comfortable”(Gates, 41).       

Did the experiences of colonial rule, and changes brought to Taiwan in the colonial era transform the cultural lanscape translating into the notion of a Taiwanese cultural identity? We can see a negotiation portrayed in the Angelina C. Yee’s reading of Wang Changxiong’s ‘Benlui’, a story written in Japanese in 1942, by The story, displaying the struggle with ‘self and national identity’, charts a negotiation of identity with competing identity constructs.  In the beginning a boy, named Benlui, a Taiwanese, is captivated by a Taiwanese teacher, who exhibits a pride in qualities of his own to Japanese. Such pride is in harsh contrast to the antithesis found in the local Taiwanese, who harbor an apprehensiveness concerning colonial rule. This, Yee states “points ironically at the author’s own shameful use of the Japanese in writing the text”(Yee, 88). The Taiwanese teacher named Ito and a Japanese woman, whom he is in love with, presents the complimentary perfections of feminine and masculine, yet through this association Ito feels unworthy in the women’s eyes, hence exemplifying the colonizer and the colonized. 

Eventually, Ito becomes torn between Japan and Taiwan, but resolution is offered when he takes up samurai sword fighting, with the intention of using the skill in “serving his native place”.  In the last scene of the story the narrator is overtaken by the beauty of Taiwan, and looks to the opposite side of the Taiwan Straits, which is “asleep”. Yee states that this “is an oblique reference to the dormant mainland relegated to the past, whereas the palpable life is here and now in Taiwan” (Yee, 91). Through Yee’s reading of Wang Changxiong’s story near the end of colonization, it is quite clear that for the individual Taiwanese were experiencing interceding realms of differing constructs representing the native, the colonial, as well as the historical. 

  

At the close of the Second World War Taiwan was reverted to its status as a territory of China. The difference being that China was now a Republic. The people of Taiwan had been exempt from the struggle and the political turmoil that enveloped China in the first half of the twentieth century. The modern development that the Taiwanese had been engaged in contributed much to the way their world was constructed, and had little to do with the formation of a Chinese national identity. During the time it was a minority of elite who had contact with China.  Concerning the Chinese cultural underlay, the Japanese did not subject the Taiwanese culture to a significant repression. Temples were destroyed in some cases due to their potential use for organizing opposition.  Also foot binding and minor marriages were discouraged as the Japanese saw them as feudal remnant. Overall the Japanese colonial authority “did not attempt to alter radically Taiwanese culture and social structure”(Gates, 41). This being the case cultural elements and practices remained as a reminder off the shared heritage with China, but can one say that this heritage signifies a cultural identity? Thomas Gold refers to a Taiwanese culture during this time that is a “hybrid of the Chinese outback and the Japanese imperialism…”(Gold, 60). This definition resemble our ideas above, which sees a pre-colonial and colonial coalescence in regards to culture, while of course retaining the heritage of southern China.  How strong was the affinity of this heritage, which originated across the Straits?     

 The jubilant hope of union with the arrival of the Chinese ‘brothers’ faded quickly as differences between the two sides of the straits became apparent. And were not these differences cultural?  Shih Ming sees that the “latent identification with the Chinese was fragile and short-lived” (Ching, 72). The identity based on a mythic singular race united by blood lineage was supplanted by “an identity produced from a common fate and common psychology”(Ching, 72) Accordingly, Shih posits that the affinity between Taiwanese and Chinese by the closing of the Second World War in regards to culture was only pertinent to studies in anthropology (Ching, 72).  Allen Chun reminds us that the Taiwanese “had been left out of the Nationalist experience that gripped China in the early 20^th century…” (Chun, 56).  Changes on both sides of the straits contributed to the cultural and social divide.

The 228 incident, and the subsequent repression and sinification by the KMT regime certainly attests to Shih Ming’s reasoning. The “fossilized” Chinese heritage, which the Taiwanese shared with the arriving Chinese forces, meant little compared to the more immediate customs that were formulated and imparted to them during the colonial period. Clearly this points to a major fissure between the cultural continuity of Taiwan and China, and it was a fissure which the Nationalists exerted much effort in mending during the second half of the twentieth century.

 Nationalist rule on Taiwan saw the implementation of a cultural policy, which was consciously engineered to unite an otherwise incongruent majority population of Taiwanese with a Chinese national cultural narrative that, according to Alan Wackmann, was that of the gentry and elite nature. This was not necessarily in accord with the lingering elements of peasant Hakka and Hokklo culture. The KMT had self-designated itself as the guardians of cultural China. The ‘cultural reunification’ was aimed at ridding Taiwan of the “vestiges of Japanese influence from fifty years of colonial rule and …suppressing any movement toward local Taiwanese expression” (Chun, 56). Through martial law the KMT regime kept a tight grip on all sectors of society.   Allen Chun refers to KMT policy as “…a kind of colonialism which was no less ‘foreign’ than the Japanese interregnum that preceded it.”(Chun, 56).

. In order to mend the fissures in the continuity between Taiwan and China, the KMT presented the myth of a ‘continuous history’ of Chineseness.  What this meant for the Taiwanese was the imposition of a reconstructed culture, and repressive measures towards elements of localism, or what we may call Taiwan culture.  The policy of strict standardized Mandarin, which disallowed the use of Japanese, as well as Taiwanese, was just one element in a grand cultural engineering policy that ran through the institutions of education, news media, entertainment, and communications. The supposed ‘reconstruction’ or mending was based on fabrication, as the majority of Taiwanese and their ancestors spoke Minnan hua, or what is now known as Taiwanese. As Chun states, “The dictatorship of a unified language became in turn the precondition for the widespread inculcation of Chinese traditional history, thought and values, or culture in the broad sense.”( Chun,12) Taiwanese folk religion, a remnant of the south Chinese Minnan tradition, were also discouraged by the KMT, as they saw it these as representing loaclaism, and viewed it as being subversive to the greater nationalist project. The KMT’s policy towards folk religion can be traced back to the May 4^th Movement, and the years of Republican formation, when local cults were viewed as being superstitious, archaic, and feudal. The repression of Taiwan’s local cultural expression was part of a cultural policy that was closely tied to the Republic of China’s efforts to survive. The erection of the National Palace Museum represents a most tangible example of this imposition of the mythic continuous historical Chineseness, since much of the museums collection was the ‘national treasure’, which the Nationalists horded from China. Is such an act a metonym of the grand hording of a cultural narrative founded on classical gentry culture?  Overall, we see an attempt at national survival in a geographical location with a people who were entirely divorced from national formation.     

The political developments of the past few decades have been quite contentious in regards to the cultural issue on Taiwan. Joseph Bosco sees the “sense of Taiwanese identity” coming from two junctures in the past century. The first that he states is very near to what has been stated above, which is the juxtaposition of the Taiwanese and the Mainlanders during retrocession. The second “growth” which he describes occurred when martial law was dismantled, and travel to the Mainland by Taiwanese allowed. During this time again the Taiwanese were juxtaposed to the Mainland Chinese, and again, what could be call cultural differences, became salient. Visiting Taiwanese to the Mainland found that PRC was “…sufficiently different from their society…”(Bosco, 393). Thomas Gold sees the emergence of a “unique Taiwan identity” during the 1970’s when the tangwai emerged as a political force, and modern cultural forms were created in the area of the arts, film and theatre. Regarding this late blooming of Taiwanese cultural and identity Alan Wackmann uses the word “invented”, and sees it as a response to the harsh repression, which “inadvertently” fueled a perceived distinct identity. Alan Wackman States, “we cannot deny that Taiwanese culture is an extension of Chinese culture…”(Wakeman, 49). This seems all to simplistic, and in disregard to historical reality. But it does add a new dimension to our discussion, namely that of invented culture.

  

The Dutch, the foreign markets of the 1800s, and the Japanese colonilers all interceded with the continuity between China and Taiwan, but since this was a continuity stemming from the local cultures of the Fujian Hokklo and the Kuangdong Hakka, it was a limited one. The cultural influences imparted to the people of Taiwan through these historical events are were not invented, but have been used as well as forgotten in order to invent notions of shared identity. The KMT invented the myth of Chineseness, in its efforts in maintaining the national narrative on Taiwan. Furthermore “The universal assertion of a ‘Chinese consciousness’ is a response to the real danger posed by the equally universalizing tendency of Western imperialism” ( Ching, 66). National Chineseness grew from China’s painful encounter with the west at the turn of the century. Is this not invention?

The ideation of Taiwanese cultural identity, or consciousness, was invented in response to the ever-present universalized ideation of Chinese. Leo T.S. Ching sees that Taiwanese cannot be negated or ”sublated by a universal Chinese consciousness nor reduced to a particularistic Taiwanese consciousness.” ( Ching, 79 ). Taiwan identity must exist in both regions simultaneously, but outside of conflicting polarity, and embracing the historical and cultural reality of “nationalist China, colonial Taiwan, and imperial Japan.” ( Ching, 80). Adding to this matrix Bosco states that the battle “between orthodoxy of the center and heterodoxy of the periphery has given way to the unorthodox cosmopolitanism of Taiwan popular culture.” ( Bosco, 394 ).      

The discourse concerning Taiwan’s cultural identity has predominately come to exists as a dichotomy between Taiwan identity as a distinct expression, indicative of Taiwan’s unique development, and Taiwan identity as being derived from, or a particular expression of, a greater universal Chinese culture. Here, it would be a good to recall the words of Talcott Parsons concerning culture. He stated that “culture is transmitted…. it is not a manifestation, in particular content, of man’s genetic constitution…”(Parsons, 15). Culture is not static and stationary, but is constantly evolving and intersecting.  

Bibliography

  

Ching, Leo T.S. (2001). Becoming Chinese, Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Edmond, Richard Louis and Steven M. Goldstein. (Ed.). (2001). Taiwan in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective View. Cambridge University Press.

Galeson, W. (Ed.). (1979). Economic Growth and the Structural Change in Taiwan: The Postwar   Experience of the Republic of China. Ithica, Cornell University Press.

    

Gates, Hill. (1987). Chinese Working Class Lives. Ithica, Cornell University Press.

  

Harrell, Steven and Huang Chun-chieh. (Ed.). (1994) Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan.  Westview Press.

Liu, Lydia H. (1995). Translingual Practice, Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity China, 1900-1937. Stanford, Stanford University Press.         

  

Parsons, Talcott. (1951). The Social System.  London, Routledge and Kegan

  

Rubinstein, Murray A. (Ed.). (1994). The Other Taiwan, 1945 to the Present. Armonk, M.E. Sharp.

Rubinstein, Murray A. (Ed.). (1999). Taiwan, A New History. Armonk, M.E. Sharp.

  

Sangren, Steven P. (1987). History and Magic in a Chinese Community. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Shambaugh, David. (Ed.) . (1998). Contemporary Taiwan. Oxford, Oxford University Press

  

Tu, Wei-ming. (Ed.). (1991).  The Living Tree, Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Watson, Jamse L. And Evelyn S. Rawski. (Ed.). (1988). Death Ritual in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, University of California Press.

 

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Cited Texts

Bosco, Joseph. The Emergence of a Taiwanese Popular Culture. In Rubinstein, Murray A. (Ed.). (1994). The Other Taiwan, 1945 to the Present. Armonk, M.E. Sharp.

Ching, Leo T.S. (2001). Becoming Chinese, Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Chun, Allen (2000). ”Democracy as Hegemony, Globalization as indiginization or the “Culture” In Taiwanese Nationalization. Journal of Asianand African Studies, vol.xxxv., No. 1,

Garadella, Robert. (1999). From Treaty Port to Provincial Status, 1860-1894. In Rubinstein, Murray A. (Ed.). (1999). Taiwan, A New History. Armonk, M.E. Sharp.     

Gates, Hill. (1987). Chinese Working Class Lives. Ithica, Cornell University Press.   

Gold, Thomas B. (1994) Civil Society and Taiwan’s Quest for Identity. Harrell, Steven and Huang Chun-chieh. Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan.  Westview Press.

  

Harrell, Steven and Huang Chun-chieh. (1994)  Introduction: Change and Continuity in Taiwan’s Cultural Scene. In (Ed.). Harrell, Steven and Huang Chun-chieh. Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan.  Westview Press.

  

Liu, Lydia H. (1995). Translingual Practice, Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity China, 1900-1937. Stanford, Stanford University Press.         

  

Tu, Wei-ming. (1991). Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center. In Tu, Wei-ming. (Ed.). (1991).  The Living Tree, Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

  

Watson, James L. (1988).  The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites: Elementary Forms, Ritual Sequence, and the Primacy of Performance. In Watson, Jamse L. And Evelyn S. Rawski. (Ed.). (1988). Death Ritual in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Yee, Angelina Chun-chu. (2001). Constructing Native Consciousness: Taiwan Literature in the 20^th Century. In Edmond, Richard Louis and Steven M. Goldstein. (Ed.). (2001). Taiwan in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective View. Cambridge University Press.

 

  

  

  

         

  

      

  

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[1] Wenhua did not take its modern western connotations until the twentieth century, when, via Japan, many otherwise nonexistent notions from the west were introduced into China. The western concept of culture in China, growing out of China’s encounter with the west in the late Ch’ing period, became part of an “ideological struggle in twentieth century nation building”(Liu, 239).