Becoming Japanese
Subtitle: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: June 18, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9780520225534
Subjects: Asian / Middle Eastern history: from c 1900 -; Asian studies; Elections & referenda; 20th century; Politics and government; History; History - General History; History: World; Japan; Taiwan; Asia - General; Literary Criticism & Collections / General; Asia - Japan; 1895-1945
First sentence: In a formal sense, Taiwan was the first addition to the Japanese overseas empire after the resounding victories of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895.
Description: Becoming Japanese analyzes the ways in which the Taiwanese struggled, negotiated, and collaborated with Japanese colonialism during the cultural practices of assimilation and imperialization. It 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, Ching 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. Successfully bridging history and literary studies, this bold and imaginative book rethinks the history of Japanese rule in Taiwan by radically expanding its approach to colonial discourses.