Bodies and Structures

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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