- Paperback: 263 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (Jun 30 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0520225538
- ISBN-13: 978-0520225534
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 381 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #423,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Draws on literary sources as well as historical documents to show what the Taiwanese coping strategies were."--the "Vancouver Sun
Book Description
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. In Becoming Japanese, Leo Ching 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.
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.
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.
Inside This Book
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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. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Jim's book reviews,
By
This review is from: Becoming "Japanese": Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation (Paperback)
One of the worst books I have ever had the displeasure of reading. The writer uses complex and hardly used difficult words that leaves the reader lost if one does not focus 110% on the reading material at hand. Wish I never bought it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent text,
By A Customer
This review is from: Becoming "Japanese": Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation (Paperback)
A great book drawing on postcolonial and postmodern thought that analyzes Japanese colonial rhetoric about Taiwan as well as different stages of Taiwanese identity-formation under colonization. Includes an analysis of Japanese representations of aborigines, a group that is often glossed over or ignored in books on Taiwan.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The nature of colonialism and its contemporary consequences.,
By "ransomed_1" (Wheaton, IL, United States or Taichung, Taiwan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Becoming "Japanese": Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation (Paperback)
This study is an excellent examination of Japanese colonialism in Taiwan and its consequences for the contemporary formation of national identity. Through examining not only the particular circumstances of Japan in Taiwan but also the nature of colonialism in general, Ching shows how colonialism is a social transformation which produces people of mixed identities. He draws upon "The Orphan of Asia" by Wu Zhuo-Liu as an example of this understanding. Ching also sets forth an interesting critique of postmodernism's hesitancy to draw judgments across cultural boundaries. The "miracle" of postwar Japan, essentially an almost immediate turn from complete external orientation to complete internal orientation and subjectivity, was made possible by the United States' appropriation of Japan's colonies and Japan's immediate alliance with the U.S. in the Cold War. Because of these factors, Japan never had to go through the harsh but important process of decolonization, and Ching shows how this failure affects the identity crisis of Taiwan today. Ultimately the book is oriented around "the politics of identity formation" in which Taiwan must come to hold a national identity which embraces the diversity of elements (Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, aboriginal, etc.) that have formed the ontology of Taiwan through history.
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