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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Tipping Points

Two different political events motivated Cai’s manifesto, this call to his “fellow countrymen.” One was the failure of the Japanese Imperial Diet to repeal the law that granted the Government General special powers. The other was the passage of the Universal Suffrage Act.

Explore the historical context of Cai's manifesto through the “Tipping Points” pathway. Or, continue on the main pathway to explore how Cai’s days as a colonized student in Tokyo shaped his understanding of the relationship between spatial identity and political freedom in the Japanese Empire.

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Cai's Taiwan
Cai described Taiwan as a unique place by virtue of its unique history of Chinese migration. This representation of Taiwan's essence served his argument for ending Taiwan’s colonial status. Yet it also denied Taiwan’s indigenous peoples the power to direct the political future of Taiwan — the same rights that Cai claimed for himself as a “fellow countryman” of Japanese citizens in the metropole. In so doing, Cai’s cultural regionalism replicated rather than challenged the settler colonialism of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan. Cai’s Taiwan was a Taiwanese Chinese Taiwan.
Follow this sub-pathway to explore how Nihon honkokumin ni atau addressed the question of indigenous rights in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule. Or, continue on the main pathway to learn about the conditions that produced Cai’s manifesto and its contradictory politics of liberation and empire.

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