Colonial Legacies, War Memories, and Political Violence in Taiwan, 1945–1947

In this chapter Victor Louzon turns our historiographical focus to the violence of decolonization in Taiwan, namely the 1947 uprising known as the February 28 Incident. Louzon details how the revolt broke out, and places the incident in the context of memory wars in Taiwan since. His chapter delves into the politics and geopolitics the incident, highlighting both the KMT brutal suppression of the revolt, and the experience of Taiwanese at the center of the revolt, many of whom had been mobilized by the Japanese army and paramilitary structures. His work redirects our attention to the experience of “remobilized” Taiwanese and the repertoire of actions and symbols invoked from the imperial era which defined the incident. Even more his work suggests new insights into broader transnational questions of the imperial roots of mobilization and militarization in Cold War Asia.

Introduction: The Search for Meaning in Defeat and Victory

World War II dragged on in East Asia for three more months than in Europe, where the Allies declared victory on May 8, 1945. The formation of the United Nations was announced in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, and soon it became clear that Japan’s imperial demise would be entirely different from the Nazi collapse. World War II fractured the political spectrum in East Asia: the result was a cacophony of groups vying for postimperial authority in a situation where nothing was preordained and where no result was inevitable....

Bullets of a Defeated Nation: The 1946 Shibuya Incident

In this chapter Adam Cathcart turns our attention to the black markets and shattered streets of the city formerly known as Imperial Tokyo. In so doing he zeros in on a violent confrontation and riot in the Shibuya district in July 1946, tracing an expanding historical arc as the ripples of the violent confrontation between Japanese and former imperial subjects (Korean and Taiwanese) radiated out. Drawing on the transnational threads of the incident Cathcart tells a story which provides new insights into the American Occupation, post-1945 Sino-Japanese relations, and highlights how reports of the incident played out across East Asia. In so doing we see the realities of empire’s end on the streets of Tokyo, and gain new insights into the lived experience of multi-ethnic empire. In Cathcart’s hands, the violence of empire is brought to life in the streets and back alleys of occupied and impoverished Tokyo.

Punishing Han Traitors beyond Chinese Borders

This chapter investigates the struggle between Nationalists and Communists to punish so-called “hanjin” (literally, traitors to the Han Chinese nation) across the vast canvas of postwar East Asia. Drawing on hitherto unexamined government correspondence, legal codes, edicts, accusations, newspapers and popular literature, this chapter examines how former collaborators were brought to justice in legal and extra-legal ways. It examines the political struggles, and the tensions between justice and nationalism in the crucible of civil war. In so doing it delves into fraught categories of identity after empire, collaboration and nationalism, and postwar commemoration and memory of the so-called War of Resistance against Japan (1931-1945) in China. Ultimately this work forces us to reckon with questions of not just the meaning of “hanjian” but what the persecution of such figures reveals about the imperial roots of Modern China.