An exhibition titled “Archival Exhibition on Inverting 1895: 120 Years After the War of Yi-We” (鉅變一八九五—乙未之役.一百二 十年檔案特展), which examines both resistance to and acceptance of Japanese colonial rule is currently being hosted by the Academia Sincia in Taipei.
The War of Yi-Wei (乙未之役), referring to the name of the year in the Chinese lunar calendar, is the Chinese term for the five-month war in 1895 between Empire of Japan and anti-Japanese insurgents who rose up after the Republic of Formosa declared independence in response to Japan’s annexation of the formerly insular Qing province.
Academia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwanese History director Hsieh Kuo-Hsing (謝國興), whose institute jointly organized the exhibition with the Academia Sinica’s Digital Center, said the exhibition is named “Inverting 1895” because it focuses on reversing nationalist historiography that focuses solely on resistance.
Photo: Tang Chia-ling, Taipei Times
The prevalent Han-Chinese nationalist perspective is simplistic and distorts historical fact, he said.
“In order to give full justice to history’s complexity, the interpretation of the past must proceed from the original documents and texts, instead of textbooks,” Hsieh said.
Most of the island’s inhabitants chose to accept Japanese rule in 1895 in order to survive, he said.
“There are multiple strategies to achieving survival, and welcoming Japanese rule was a viable alternative to resistance,” Hsieh said, adding that denouncing people for being “obsequious” to Japan or the Qing Dynasty is prejudicial and narrow-minded.
Hsieh said there are other narratives the exhibition aims to subvert. For example, he called the Republic of Formosa’s founding “a pretext” that has little to do with Taiwanese independence, but a “stratagem to thrust the Japanese annexation of Taiwan onto the international stage.”
Hsieh said the strategy backfired because no nation expressed interest in an intervention, and Formosa Republic officials, including its president Tang Ching-sung (唐景崧), fled.
“The only people who resisted Japan courageously were ordinary citizens. All of the officials had turned tails,” he said.
After the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan included in the Treaty of Shimonoseki articles that, in addition to annexing Taiwan, gave its inhabitants two years to decide whether to sell their property and leave or to remain in Taiwan under Japanese rule, Hsieh said. About 6,000 people emigrated, or only about one person in 1,000 in relation to the pre-war population, Hsieh said.
“Historians of Taiwan by consensus consider ‘Japanese rule’ (日治) to be better as a term of periodization because it reflects the epoch’s historical reality and is more neutral, while ‘Japanese occupation’ (日據) is far less supported by evidence, since Japanese rule was not based on a forceful military occupation,” Hsieh said.
After the end of the war, inhabitants of Taiwan received internal passports that identified them as “new subjects” (新臣民), while Japanese citizens were identified as “civilians” (平民), he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater