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A Study of Taiwanese Nationalism in the Japanese Colonial Period, 1895~1945

With the interest in studying nationalism, the writer initiated a study on the Taiwanese Nationalism in the Japanese Colonial Period (1895~1945), which she thinks is the most remarkable time in the Taiwan¡¦s 400 years of history and reveals exactly the essence of the nationalism theories. As a student in the field of Political Science, the writer takes it as a responsibility to make the theories she has learnt applied to the Taiwan¡¦s history, which has a lot to do with us.
This graduate thesis is titled ¡§A Study of Taiwanese Nationalism in the Japanese Colonial Period, 1895~1945¡¨, and in the thesis three methods (literature analysis, history comparative analysis ) are mainly used for study on Taiwan¡¦s nationalism movements during the Japanese Colonial Period. The thesis is going to present the following aspects: first of all, to look into the interior significance of Taiwanese nationalism movements, what the Taiwanese people wanted and their ideologies during the Japanese Colonial Period; secondly, to clarify the differences among all the perspectives of the Taiwanese nationalism during that colonial time from the angle how they were influenced by factors, like the time, place and historical events; furthermore, we will talk about ¡§identification¡¨ which is the most important topic in the theories of nationalism. Therefore, in this thesis, we¡¦ll also learn about how Taiwanese people¡¦s identification shifted among Taiwan, China and Japan.
The thesis does not assent to consider Taiwanese people¡¦s intention with pure ¡§Binary opposition¡¨ contention while discussing the Taiwanese nationalism in the Japanese Colonial Period. For the movement leaders or the public, identities such as ¡§Chinese ideology¡¨, ¡§Taiwanese ideology¡¨, ¡§Homeland faction¡¨, or ¡§Japanese Komin (Japanese Imperial Civilization)¡¨ are too illiberal, too strict and too simplified. Therefore, despite no historical resources can 100% reveals how the nationalism identification shifted under the same or different factors and time¡¦s effect, it is still undoubted that the movement leaders at that time wavered among the mainstreams (the Han nationality, China, Japan and Taiwan). We should not judge such identities right or wrong, because it¡¦s a question of values options. The writer thinks Taiwanese people¡¦s resistance against Japan government in the Japanese Colonial Period is the part worthiest of our attentions.
At last, the thesis indicates that, Taiwanese people¡¦s orphanage consciousness in Japanese Colonial Period and they hardly had any alternatives, and that discussions of modern scholars on Taiwanese people¡¦s nationalism focus too much on their intention is absolutely not impersonal, for their perspectives were usually led into arguments on different ideologies. The charm of nationalism is to awaken the mysterious belonging and the power of returning to the start, lying deeply in people¡¦s mind. Everybody felt attached to the past, recalling ¡§long time ago¡K¡¨. This was the emotions and latent ideology the ¡§Homeland Faction¡¨ possessed during the Japanese Colonial Period and their ¡§China ideology¡¨ intention should not be erased. However, the Taiwanese were apart from their homeland under pressure for fifty years as the length of Japanese Colonial Period, and these years would surely lead to the transformation of Taiwanese people¡¦s ideologies, also we cannot deny if the so-called ¡§Taiwanese ideology¡¨ was born during this transforming process.
When the Japanese put civilization into practice in Taiwan, the Taiwanese sensed the existence of ¡§another party¡¨ and then inspected internally to themselves. At that time, it was like the Taiwanese people got onto the train and claimed to find out who they were, and the destinations are China, Taiwan and Japan. Did they know where the train headed to? Not exactly, that was a question with no answers, because as written in Wu Cho-Liu's unprecedented and unrepeatable epic, the Taiwanese are the orphan of Asia.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0113109-131415
Date13 January 2009
CreatorsLi, Li-fen
Contributorsnone, none, none
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0113109-131415
Rightsnot_available, Copyright information available at source archive

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