2016/05/11 Heidelberg University; 2016/05/31 Humboldt University:

Clothing the Body, Changing the Identity: the Case of Japanese in Colonial Taiwan

2016/05/06-06/04, LEE Ju-Ling (JSPS Post-doc researcher) had a one month stay at the Free University, with Sebastian Conrad and Andreas Eckert as hosts. She was based at the International Research Center Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History (Humboldt University), at which professor Andreas Eckert is the director.

Invited by Prof. Henning Klöter (Department of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University) and Prof. Barbara Mittler (Institutes of Chinese Studies, Heidelberg University) respectively, through the introduction of professor Andreas Eckert, LEE Ju-Ling gave two talks entitled “Clothing the Body, Changing the Identity: the Case of Japanese in Colonial Taiwan”. She proposed an alternative approach to examining Japanese colonialism and relations with its colonies. In this work, she examines the construction of Japanese identity through the policies of dress enforced in the colonial legal framework in Taiwan. She discussed the role of the body, undressed or dressed and dressed in what, as well as how these aspects sustained the rhetoric of civilization and Japan’s imperial expansion. Through this study, she investigates the ambiguities, complexities and tensions in the colonial relationship and emphasizes the interaction and mutual effect produced in the colonial encounter. She showed that the colony of Taiwan played the intermediary role in transplanting modernity between the metropole and its periphery. Starting from this local study of the island of Taiwan, she then contextualized this postcolonial study as part of the larger transformation of the empire of Japan, and its role in the international order of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. The two talks were attended by researchers in Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese studies from different disciplines. There were interesting discussions and constructive comments both during the talk, and afterwards at the dinners after the talks. Exchanges such as these, given in these kinds of international framework, are precious for researchers in global history, and were fruitful indeed.

(LEE Ju-Ling)