| Abstract: | The author has completed the 2012-2013 NSC Monograph-writing Project, based
on the author’s previous four-year NSC projects (2007-2011), over the past year, and
further formally published it by the Taipei-based Daoxiang Publishing House in
March, 2013. The title of the monograph is Modern Mindset and Daily Taiwan: an
Examination of Private and Public Aspects of Lawyer Huang Jitu’s Diary
(1912-1955).
The motivation of the monograph is an attempt to suggest an alternative approach
to an increasing literature on researches into modernity-related issues in Taiwan,
mainly by integrating conceptual inspirations based on the nature of diary as both a
form of historical source and a genre of literature, and partly by reinterpreting core
ideas of the history of mentalities.
On the basis of an examination of the diary manuscripts of an individual, Huang
Jitu, this monograph foregrounds three main questions: firstly, through a private
approach based on diary entries, in general, what are its significances and
particularities that could be revealed when scholars examine modernity-related issues?
In Taiwan historical context, when and how did (colonial) modernity arrive in Taiwan?
How could we describe it, in particular, in the private sphere of Taiwan society, in
both individual and collective level? How and why did wartime mobilization during
the Second World War impact on the (colonial) modernity of private sphere in
Taiwan society? How and why was it further reshaped under the party-state system of
the Nationalist Chinese in early postwar period?
The first half of the monograph suggested, firstly, both colonial government and
Taiwanese reformist movement had roles in creating “modern mindset” among
Taiwanese youth such as Huang Jitu, and secondly, the private sphere of Huang Jitu,
as an overseas student in Japan, also demonstrated the diversity of modernity that was
reproduced in Taiwan at a later stage.
The second half of the monograph, the author examine how wartime mobilization
impacted on the change of boundary between the public and private sphere of Taiwan
society, and how it represented in the level of both individual and collective in terms
of the implication of the history of mentalities.
In the final chapter, the author continues to examine how the newly established
party-state system of the Nationalist Chinese deeply frustrated the legal modernity
and the political modernity based on the ideas of self-rule and dissident tradition that
inherited from the previous colonial modernity introduced by the Japanese into
Taiwan society. |
