Taiwan under Japanese rule
"Understanding Taiwan" was released in 1996 and adopted as the junior high school textbook in 1997. This textbook aroused much interest in East Asia. The history section is presented as "history of Taiwan", and the era of Taiwan under Japanese rule was introduced more positively than previous junior high school textbooks, with objective facts and surveys. In contrast to earlier textbooks, the authors of "Understanding Taiwan" hoped to eliminate Chinese nationalist ideology from the curriculum, re-evaluate the Japanese colonial period (which was previously portrayed entirely negatively), and emphasizing the historical experience of indigenous peoples on Taiwan (previously looked down upon). Furthermore, the "Society" section of the textbook explicitly embraced the concepts of Taiwanese identity and nationality.