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This historical study reflects on history curriculum debates over the last 20 years in Taiwan. To open up possibilities for contemporary Taiwanese to rethink themselves in terms of national culture and subjectivity, this paper explores the construction of Taiwanese subjectivity in the past. It focuses on the history of Taiwan under Japanese occupation as a key issue in history curriculum debates. Particularly, it examines language issues in the 1920s, an important theme in the histories of the formation of Taiwanese consciousness, ideology, and cultural nationalism during the Japanese colonial period. Rather than addressing issues of identity (national or cultural), identifying who Taiwanese really were, or looking for Chinese or Taiwanese consciousness, this study explores how meanings of "Taiwanese" in the 1920s under Japanese occupation were constructed in the discourse of language reform for civilisation. The analysis of the New Culture Movement discourse suggests that the classical Chinese language of "Hànwén" as a valuable cultural resource and flexible linguistic instrument played an essential role in constituting Taiwanese subjectivities that shaped Taiwanese practices of the self for distinctive civilisation.

In popular narratives, intellectual and media analysts believe the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan is a contestation for potential hydrocarbon reserves and other maritime rights which are per se divisible, but nationalism – particularly on China side – and relative power change between the two competing claimants make these territories increasingly indivisible and the dispute war-prone. Based on a review over People's Daily's coverage of the disputes and other secondary information, this article reveals a different scenario by highlighting the political meanings of disputed territories for national cohesion and regime self-preservation. It finds, Beijing's strategic moves in the disputes are influenced by its efforts at different occasions to de-legitimate Republic of China at Taiwan and defend its core interests – namely Taiwan and the "One-China" principle, to appease the patriotism in Hong Kong and facilitate the latter's stable reversion to China in 1990s, and what is more, to rally popular support at home. In addition, Beijing's Diaoyu/Senkaku strategy did not follow a carefully calculated path, but was mostly reactive to the contingencies and ultimately took shape through the incremental accumulation of previous policies and behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwanese film KANO recounts the passage of a mixed-race baseball team to Japan’s Koshien Tournament during the colonial era of the 1930s. Its release evoked in both Taiwan and Japan critical responses in view of its rosy depiction of colonial modernity. Through analysing the film’s text and reviews in both Taiwan and Japan, we identify KANO as a “post-national” cinematic event. Its inviting nostalgic invocation of Japanese colonialism at the civilian level has launched divergent discourses on colonial legacies in the contemporary re/making of national identities, reflecting on the post-colonial socio-cultural conditions facing both Taiwan and Japan. We found that KANO in Taiwan instigated a re-examination of the state’s role in crafting the foundational myth of baseball as a “national” sport. Furthermore, the film brought on schemes of othering in which two national others were distinguished to manifest Taiwan subjectivity: Japanese colonialism versus Chinese nationalism. On the other hand, KANO in Japan was stripped of its colonial connotation. Its honouring of juvenile devotion to baseball was employed as a psychic introjection of Japanese-ness, which many considered losing in the globalizing social milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares and discusses the third series of kokugo tokuhon (national language readers) used in Japan between 1918 and 1932, and the first series of kokumin tokuhon (national readers), used in Taiwan between 1913 and 1923. The study points out that the materials introducing the world (including geography and history lessons, adaptations of foreign literary texts, episodes from the life of great men of science, etc) are considerably more numerous in the Japanese readers than in their Taiwanese counterparts. Following the two different processes of (intended) national identity formation via a detailed analysis of the materials and illustrations in the two sets of textbooks, the article also sheds light on the way the Taiwanese tokuhon attempt to replicate successful methods of earlier Japanese textbooks, while at the same time anticipating some of the trends visible in subsequent readers from Japan proper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]