A Study Of Colonial Education In Taiwan During The Japanese Occupation

The failure of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War in 1894 led Japan to occupy Taiwan and Penghu Islands in China,and took colonial domination for 50 years.The Japanese rulers realized that to safeguard their own ruling interests and achieve long-term colonial rule in Taiwan,cultural aggression is an important part in addition to repression by force.Because cultural aggression has the characteristics of subtlety and brainwashing,it can achieve fundamental long-term rule towards the people in a certain area.In cultural aggression,education can be regarded as the most important means.The Japanese rulers taught Japanese to the people of Taiwan through education,aiming at popularizing Japanese.At the same time,the Chinese culture was destroyed by restricting and prohibiting the use of Taiwanese and Chinese.Through education,the Japanese rulers instilled the idea of emperor and patriotism in Taiwanese,to educate them to be loyal to the Japanese Empire;Through education,to educate the Taiwanese people to acquire industrial skills in order to cultivate the human resources for the development of the economy...These,on the one hand,could help Japanese rulers to achieve the japanization of Taiwanese people through the infiltration of Japanese culture,making them to be loyal to Japanese Empire.On the other hand,they could cultivate labor resources and develop industries to realize the plunder of the economy and interests.Whatever the case was,they sought economic development while seeking social stability in order to safeguard their dominion interests,to help Japan implement further territorial expansion.Japanese colonial education in Taiwan can be roughly divided into two types:school education and social education.School education played an important role in the education of Taiwan because it was organized,systematic,and large-scale.It had a fixed class time and teaching curriculum,and could influence Taiwanese people from the new generation.Therefore,the study of school education during Japanese colonial period was of great significance for understanding Japan’s colonial rule over Taiwan.Many people have done research on Japanese colonial education in Taiwan.Those research can be roughly divided into two categories.One type is monographic study which chooses the period of 1895-1945 as time range,focusing on a single aspect such as vocational education,women’s education and teacher education,etc.,and analyzes its history and general situation.The other type is overview type which divides the 50 years of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan into three periods of time and sectionally discusses the dynamic changes in various types of education during each period.But this method has problems such as the fragmentation between various types of education and the lack of systematic logic.At the same time,its narratives and analysis are relatively thin,with more emphasis on evolution and overview.Furthermore,although those research has already summarized the two basic characteristics of Japanese colonial education in Taiwan:"assimilation" education and "differential" education.However,as for the explanations of assimilation education,the content mainly focuses on Japanese language popularization and ethics lessons in common schools which lacks of innovation,and in terms of differential education,the argumentation is simple,and the data supporting the argument is relatively thin and multi-referenced.It lacks more comprehensive and three-dimensional statistics and materials.Therefore,the orientation of this paper is to supplement the content and logic on the basis of the clarification of the predecessors.This paper selects the time period of 1895-1922,which is from the beginning of the occupation of Taiwan to the issue of the second education regulations in 1922,focusing on school education,using historical materials such as Japanese emperor’s edicts and government’s edicts,government orders,education laws,and related declarations,to further explain the reasons for the opening of various types of school institutions,their opening decisions,and their opening decisions.At the same time,according to the two phases of changes in the educational policy of the Taiwan government,divide the development of education systematically.In addition,charts and statistical analysis methods and the official statistical data such as the Taiwan government statistics,the Taiwan statistical summary,and the annual report of Taiwan government have been used to provide a more comprehensive support for the feature of "differential education",thus unveiling the essence of colonial education in Taiwan by Japanese rulers.This paper is discussed in three chapters.The first chapter clarifies the research background and it is divided into three sections.The first section outlines the background of Japan’s occupation of Taiwan.The second section discusses the evolution of Taiwan government’s policy in the period selected by this paper.The evolution is focused on how colonial policy is transformed from "colonialism" to "inland extensionism".The third section introduces the education policy adopted by Taiwan government.This education policy takes the spread of Japanese as the core from beginning to end and it is a kind of assimilationism.The second chapter discusses the two stages of the implementation of Japanese colonial education policy toward Taiwan,namely the rapid popularity of Japanese language in the beginning and the subsequent development of general education.In the first stage,this paper explains the origin,process,and general situation of the Shisangen School,the National Language School,and the National Language Densyujo.In the second stage,this paper focuses on the common schools,which were the elementary schools for Taiwanese children,and normal education,which lays the foundation of Japanese popularity in a large scale.The remaining industrial education,specialized education,and general education are briefly discussed in the third section.The third chapter discusses two characteristics of Japanese colonial education in Taiwan,namely "assimilation" education and "differential" education.In the part of assimilation education,the emphasis of the discussion is placed on the education of loyalty and patriotism Through analyzing the measures of reading Imperial Rescript on Education,singing Kimi Ga Yo and adding contents of loyalty and patriotism in the school curriculum,the Japanese government’s desire of assimilating people of Taiwan into the emperor’s law-abiding people is easily seen.The part of differential education is centered on the comparison between the common schools for Taiwanese children and primary schools for Japanese children.The difference lies in three aspects,which are the allocation of education resources,the setting of school curriculum,and the choice they did after graduation from school.This part shows inequality and differentiation on education between Taiwanese and Japanese.Finally,after summing up the chapters above,a simple contrast was made between the colonial education in Taiwan and the educational reforms in the late Qing Dynasty that occurred across the strait.It was pointed out that although both of them are educational reforms,the purposes are quite different.Japan’s colonial education in Taiwan was aimed at futher overseas expansion,and the education reform in the late Qing Dynasty was intended to save the country.Through the discussion,it can be clearly stated that although it has been pointed out that Japan’s colonial education in Taiwan is in no way intended to benefit the people of Taiwan or cultivate genuine education talent.Although it had trained a number of labor resources with certain production skills and had promoted Taiwan’s social and economic development,it cannot be denied that its real purpose is to maintain its dominance and to seek for their own development.Japanese colonialists attempted to control Taiwanese people and maintain the stability of the ruling society by promoting assimilation education like popularizing Japanese.And they provided human resources for the development of militarism under the imperial system by cultivating agricultural and industrial business technicians through vocational education.This cultivation and construction of talents that are not carried out in accordance with the normal purpose and mode of education is enough to unveal the slavish nature and sinister intentions of the Japanese colonial education.