In an interview with Japanese magazine Voice, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said that Taiwan did not fight in the Second Sino-Japanese War, because at that time Taiwan was part of Japanese territory, and Taiwanese were fighting for their mother country — Japan. The statement was strongly condemned by members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), with the Presidential Office demanding an apology and KMT legislators planning to amend the law to deprive Lee of his privileges as a former president.
From the perspective of historical accuracy, following the Qing Dynasty government’s decision to cede Taiwan to Japan under thte terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Taiwan became part of Japan and Taiwanese became Japanese citizens. Although this made many Taiwanese unhappy, Japan did indeed rule Taiwan for half a century.
During World War II, 80,000 Taiwanese joined the Japanese Imperial Army and fought in the war, with more than 30,000 of them losing their lives. Most Taiwanese did not participate in the War of Resistance Against Japan, and this was the experience of the older generation who were born and bred Taiwanese, so Lee was perfectly right in what he said.
However, not everyone in Taiwan these days is born and bred Taiwanese; there are also hundreds of thousands of Mainlanders who came here when the KMT army retreated from China after losing the civil war in 1949. In addition, the KMT made its eight-year war against Japan the orthodox collective memory of Taiwanese by imposing its version of events on history curricula.
It has commemorated its war against Japan every year, and this year — trying to highlight its key role in the war against Japan — it held an expanded ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat. The memory of the War of Resistance Against Japan does in fact exist in Taiwan.
Different versions of history coexist in Taiwan, so it is only natural that there are divisions. The memories of all are valid. The ethnic integration that has taken place since 1949 has meant that people with different backgrounds and ideas about the past are living within the same borders. Although the KMT attempted to brainwash the public, it has not been able to obliterate the experience of the Taiwanese people.
Turning history into a political football forces people to choose sides and is a consequence of Taiwan’s long-standing insincerity regarding history and politics. Not investigating key events, judging statements from the perspective of political correctness, introducing politics into school textbooks, and distorting or giving fragmentary explanations have obfuscated the unique backgrounds and experiences of ethnic groups and created a lopsided view of history.
This is the reason for the long-standing enmity between ethnic groups and it has also contributed to generational conflict.
Mainlanders’ experiences of fighting Japan and the experience of Japanese rule among those born and bred in Taiwan do not incorporate the whole of modern Taiwan’s collective memory.
The attitude toward Japan among young Taiwanese is based not only on school textbooks, but also on information gleaned from magazines, movies, music and the Internet, and also perhaps on visiting the country. Using Japanese names such as Masao Iwasato — Lee’s Japanese name — or Buntetsu Aoyama — a reference to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) name — to attack public figures in a bid to win votes might be an attempt to stir up anti-Japanese sentiment among older KMT supporters, but such extreme measures can only lead to a dead-end.
There has been much catastrophizing in Taiwan recently about America becoming more unreliable as a bulwark against Chinese pressure. Some of this has been sparked by debates in Washington about whether the United States should defend Taiwan in event of conflict. There also were understandable anxieties about whether President Trump would sacrifice Taiwan’s interests for a trade deal when he sat down with President Xi (習近平) in late October. On top of that, Taiwan’s opposition political leaders have sought to score political points by attacking the Lai (賴清德) administration for mishandling relations with the United States. Part of this budding anxiety
The diplomatic dispute between China and Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments in the Japanese Diet continues to escalate. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong (傅聰) wrote that, “if Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression.” There was no indication that Fu was aware of the irony implicit in the complaint. Until this point, Beijing had limited its remonstrations to diplomatic summonses and weaponization of economic levers, such as banning Japanese seafood imports, discouraging Chinese from traveling to Japan or issuing
On Nov. 8, newly elected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) and Vice Chairman Chi Lin-len (季麟連) attended a memorial for White Terror era victims, during which convicted Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spies such as Wu Shi (吳石) were also honored. Cheng’s participation in the ceremony, which she said was part of her efforts to promote cross-strait reconciliation, has trapped herself and her party into the KMT’s dark past, and risks putting the party back on its old disastrous road. Wu, a lieutenant general who was the Ministry of National Defense’s deputy chief of the general staff, was recruited
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Nov. 5 recalled more than 150,000 eggs found to contain three times the legal limit of the pesticide metabolite fipronil-sulfone. Nearly half of the 1,169 affected egg cartons, which had been distributed across 10 districts, had already been sold. Using the new traceability system, officials quickly urged the public to avoid consuming eggs with the traceability code “I47045,” while the remainder were successfully recalled. Changhua County’s Wenya Farm — the source of the tainted eggs — was fined NT$120,000, and the Ministry of Agriculture instructed the county’s Animal Disease Control Center to require that
RSS