Creating and re-creating the nation of Taiwan: representations of the history of the Japanese colonial era in history textbooks and teachers' discourses. Issue 3 (27th May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Yao, Ming-li
• Is Part Of: National identities. Volume 21:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 305
• Page End: 320
• Publication Date: 2019-05-27
• Subjects: China -- Taiwan -- national identity -- Japanese rule in Taiwan -- textbooks -- social agents; Nationalism -- Periodicals; Ethnicity -- Periodicals; 305.8005
• DOI: 10.1080/14608944.2018.1443324
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1460-8944

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This study argues the state power and social efforts shaped and reshaped the contour of the 'imagined community' of post-war Taiwan from mainland China to the island with a focus on how the history of Japanese rule has been represented. By conducting a content analysis of officially published junior high school history textbooks (1949–2015) and interviewing history teachers, this study discusses how they present national past. The transformative presentation of the 'Japanese era in Taiwan' suggested the self-reinventing of the statehood of the Republic of China; the bottom-up forces even went beyond the demands of the state and facilitated nation-building.