Fiction From Japanese-Occupied Era Taiwan

[Kobo-Daishi]

At the thread titled "National education 國民教育", there was a link to a Japanese production of a short story by James Clavell about a nation under occupation by an invading force.

http://www.chinese-f...education-國民教育/

The occupiers were introducing their own "national curriculum" into the classroom.

It reminded me of this short story by Wu Cho-liu (吳濁流) titled "Xian Sheng Ma" (先生媽).

http://literature.ihakka.net/hakka/author/wu_zhuo_liu/wo_composition/wo_onlin/com_10.htm

No, it doesn't translate to Mr. Mom.

In this case, "xian sheng" means "doctor".

Wu Cho-liu was an ethnic Hakka Chinese who lived during the 50 years that Taiwan was a colony of Japan.

Quite a long time. Two generations.

More than the 10 year US war in Afghanistan just ended. Supposedly America's longest war ever.

The 35 years Korea was under Japanese rule.

It's comparable to the time when China was under Mongol rule. Okay, northern China was under Mongol rule for about 100 years but the south was for only the last 50 years.

And the Mongols didn't try to assimilate the Chinese into becoming Mongol.

There is quite a body of literature from the occupation era but most if not all in Japanese. During occupation the Japanese in an effort to assimilate the people of Taiwan, introduced Japanese education, dress, language etc. to make the Taiwanese into Japanese.

There are quite a few academic articles that compare how other people under colonization compared with Taiwan then. Articles on French Quebec under the British, Hong Kong under the British and Korea under Japan, etc.

Quite interesting stuff if you are interested in searching it out.

I found a cool book titled "Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895-1945: History, Culture, Memory" that someone's scanned and put up.

I'm going to read it and maybe give a short synopsis for the just read thread.

edit: added link to short story.

Kobo.