Discoursing ＂Japan＂ in Taiwanese Identity Politics: The Structures of Feeling of the Young Harizu and Old Japanophiles

Title

Discoursing ＂Japan＂ in Taiwanese Identity Politics: The Structures of Feeling of the Young Harizu and Old Japanophiles

Author

Ming-Tsung LEE

Page

49-103

DOI

10.6163/tjeas.2015.12(2)49

Abstract

This paper explores how Taiwanese people appropriate symbolic ＂Japan＂ to envisage, discourse and pursue their own- but hybridized- identities. Rather than asking ＂how the Taiwanese have been affected or dominated by Japan,＂ which positions the Taiwanese as passive subjects, I emphasize their active engagement with somewhat idealized ＂Japan.＂ The two questions are elaborated: (1) How do we understand that so many young Taiwanese enthuse about ＂Japan,＂ despite simultaneous moral panic arising from a sense that this trend seriously threatens national/cultural identity? (2) How do Taiwanese people articulate and negotiate their subjectivities with such a culturally embedded ＂Japan,＂ and further reshape their identities? I adopt the concept of ＂structures of feeling＂ to develop a historical/genealogical articulation between older and younger ＂Japanophiles;＂ and then discuss three historical events-the two disputes over Taiwan's revised textbooks and over the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands in 1997, as well as the uproar over the provocative Japanese manga (comic book) On Taiwan in 2001- to find the role of ＂Japan＂ within a conflictridden Taiwanese identity politics. Finally, on the framework of comparative East-Asian sociology, I provide some observation to overview the trans/ formation of the cultural-political relations and the peoples' identification between Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China.

Keyword

Japan, structures of feeling, identity politics, Taiwanese Japanophiles, hari

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