I will be holding a webinar with Masayuki Ienaga on December 3rd.
I will be having a conversation at the Bunshun Webinar with Masayuki Ienaga, who published Taiwan's Identity: Postwar History of the Conflict with 'China' through Bunshun Shinsho this month. It will be held on Sunday, December 3rd, from 13:00.
I took several classes with Mr. Ienaga in graduate school. Back in 2012, when I was still a historian, we also held a three-way conversation that included Ryota Fukushima.
Naturally, I will be reading his book before the conversation. It is an extremely valuable book that allows one to learn the general history of Taiwan in a single Shinsho volume. If I am not mistaken, I feel it is the first of its kind since Masatake Wakabayashi's (Mr. Ienaga's teacher) Taiwan: A Transforming and Hesitant Identity. That book was published by Chuko Shinsho in 2001.
As I will mention later, I believe the appeal of Mr. Ienaga's book lies in a different point, but first, as a premise, I have created a timeline from the book of the outline of 'Taiwan after democratization' (I have omitted elections where Chen, Ma, or Tsai were 'reelected').
1988: Chiang Ching-kuo passes away; Lee Teng-hui becomes the first native Taiwanese president. 1996: Incumbent Lee Teng-hui (KMT) wins the first presidential election. 2000: Chen Shui-bian (DPP) wins the presidential election. Because the KMT split the vote, Lee Teng-hui was expelled to take responsibility. The DPP is a minority ruling party in the legislature (Legislative Yuan). 2008: Ma Ying-jeou (KMT) wins the presidential election. 2016: Tsai Ing-wen (DPP) wins the presidential election. The DPP also gains a majority in the legislature. 2019: The Tsai administration legalizes same-sex marriage, a first in Asia. 2024: What is the future of the post-Tsai Ing-wen presidential election?
In 2001, when Professor Wakabayashi's (who I was in a seminar with Mr. Ienaga for) Shinsho was published, it was an era where the positioning of Taiwan as a success story of 'democratization at the end of the Cold War' was widely shared. Of course, it is not the case that Wakabayashi's book is written with a simple progressive view of history, but it is a fact that the perspective of 'why was democratization able to succeed' pulses strongly throughout the work.
Conversely, now, after seeing Trump's election in the US in 2016, it is an era where 'Just because it is a democracy, is it a 'success'?' has become questionable. Therefore, I read Mr. Ienaga's depiction of Taiwan's postwar history as emphasizing the many 'fissures' that have existed from the past to the present.
Should one live in Taiwan as a 'Chinese person,' or become a 'Taiwanese person' separated from China? How should one perceive the oppression during the era when the KMT was authoritarian? When opposing that KMT, should one adopt the logic of the Chinese Communist Party on the mainland or not? How should the memory of colonial rule by Japan be evaluated? ...Beyond the well-known 'native Taiwanese vs. mainlander' divide, Taiwan holds infinite points of contention that divide its identity.
I feel that the characteristic of Mr. Ienaga's general history of Taiwan is that it places more weight on 'reconciliation' and 'tolerance/coexistence' in a society that has been historically divided, rather than on democratization itself, so I would like to ask him about that. I hope many of you will watch.
P.S. I am also appearing with him in the mook '
100 Issues of 2024' published by Bungeishunju in November; Mr. Ienaga talks about next year's Taiwanese presidential election, and I talk about this year's 'Studio Ghibli and Kimutaku'. Please check that out as well.