That colonialism produces an overwhelming desire in some of the colonized to emulate their masters is one of the themes of this analysis. In his chapter on Taiwan's Aborigines, for instance, the author describes how, a mere decade after the Musha Incident of 1930 (when 132 Japanese were slaughtered, and 215 more injured, in full public view at an aboriginal school sports day), numerous Aborigines nevertheless offered themselves as military volunteers in the service of the emperor.
"Why did you do this?" asked an incredulous postwar Japanese researcher. "Because we had learned the Japanese spirit!" the surviving combatants replied. "As long as we're ordered to go, we will obey." Ching concludes that, in a colonial situation, much more pervasive than the desire to rebel is the desire to become as like your colonial master as possible, even to the extent of losing your former identity entirely.
In attempting to analyze the effects of 50 years of Japanese rule on the people of Taiwan, this new book ought to be of great interest to local readers. Sadly, it is for the most part written in the jargon that will be familiar to anyone who has had any recent contact with humanities departments in English-language universities. As a result large swathes are incomprehensible to even the educated reader.
Had the author opted to research the details of half a century of domination by an occupying culture, instead of balancing one theoretical viewpoint against another while looking at a relatively small selection of examples, the book would have made fascinating reading. But such descriptions as there are occur only intermittently, like patches of sunlight on an otherwise cloudy, not to say oppressive, day.
How interesting it would have been to read about the way what is now the National Taiwan University, then the Taipei Imperial University, was organized, or how the camphor industry influenced relations between the Japanese and Taiwan's Aborigines in the era of the Musha Incident.
Meanwhile, we wait for a translation of The Orphan of Asia into English. There are rumors that one is impending, but all searches have been unable to come up with the identity of the publisher.
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