meself - oscar mike.

A lot of things happened in between; getting married, having a child, raising the said child, quarrels, losing jobs, struggling with the aftermaths of a lot of things, etc, etc.

Yet here I am, still (somewhat) standing.

As a person whose country was under Japanese rule--although the general public of the nation, myself included to be honest, prefers to call it “occupation”—watching a newly released Taiwanese film "Kano" wasn't exactly a pleasant experience.

I'm not saying it was a bad movie. I'd rather say it's the opposite. It was an entertaining film to watch, and the others at the premiere seemed to have the same opinion of the film. (There was a premiere of the film at a baseball stadium in Kaohsiung today.) The quality of the film has nothing to do with the reason why I find watching it not entirely pleasant. Rather, it was the underlying tone of the movie that appears to be praising the Taiwan under Japanese rule.

Taiwan was ceded to Imperial Japan in 1895 when Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki and for the next 50 years was under their rule. After centuries of being practically abandoned by the Qing court ever since they became subjects of the court in the 17th century—except for taxes levied and collected—and, much thanks to that, all prevalent corruption and economic as well as social hardships that they had to endure, Imperial Japan appeared to be more thoughtful and caring Taiwan as they put quite a ‘formidable' amount of effort into Japanizing Taiwan with heavy infrastructure development, development of an effective sanitation system, and introduction of universal public education. (All of which were to exploit Taiwan as a lucrative colony more effectively and systemically for their benefits, to be perfectly clear.)

Somewhat ironically, what came after Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies was Chinese mainlanders again, except it was a ‘republic’ this time as Taiwan was returned—or ‘illegally’ handed over as some people might argue—to Kuomintang (KMT). It would have not been too bad if things didn't go downhill right away and stay there for relatively a long time, the period known as “White Terror”, during which the general standard of living in the island had become much worse comparing to of the one during the Japanese rule. (On a side note, It was forty years later that the KMT finally abandoned the idea of maintaining Taiwan as one-party state and free elections started to be held.)

Thanks to all the historical background, more than a few Neishengren (內省人) Taiwanese people show little to none antipathy towards the Japanese rule. (You’d be surprised to learn how easy it is to find Hinomaru-themed stickers, logos and whatnot in Taiwan. It’s pretty much like running into Nazi Hakenkruezs in Poland, Czech, Slovakia or Hungary.) Bearing these in mind, I couldn’t help but to feel what was underlying the film is this pro-Japanese rule sentiment.

Some people might say that the film is more or less an accurate depiction of the era without any particular bias towards either anti- or pro-Japan, and as proof of that they would mention that there were a few scenes in which Japanese showed discriminatory attitudes towards the Taiwanese aborigines such as calling them savages (蛮人), mocking them by asking aboriginal players if they could speak Japanese and so on. I do agree that the film indeed tried to show the viewers some dark sides of the colonial rule with such scenes, but throughout the film, there was almost no portrayal of oppressions and discriminations against the Taiwanese aborigines as well as the Han Chinese Taiwanese working class by the colonial authorities. (One of the good examples might be the Wushe incident.)

Also, more or less constant appearances of Yoichi Hatta and his brainchild the Chianan canal along with a Japanese agriculturalist named Hamada was pretty much irrelevant to the main storyline and unnecessary. I’m aware that Hatta and his legacy (the entire irrigation system) are well respected until now in Taiwan and Chiayi was/is indeed a farming region—after all, the school the players belonged to was Kaji Agricultural High School—but I still don’t think these facts are relevant enough to the film’s plot to justify and deserve such a lengthy portion of it. All these things considered, I cannot help but to think that the undertone of the film was a bit too overtly pro-Japan, through which—whether intentionally or not—effectively glorified the Japanese rule as a magnanimous, caring and even justifiable regime. (I believe it’s worth noting that the DPP is pretty much in line with this sort of thinking.)

In North America

1. Cheap(er) drinks. 2. Starbucks Rewards. (Free *unlimited* refills for your tea and coffee!)

In elsewhere, wherever that might be

“We believe that publishers should be protected of their intellectual freedom when writing textbooks, but we must also consider what’s accepted as the core ethical values of this country. This is a sensitive social issue and we believe it should be expressed (in the books) that there are different opinions about it,”

So, you dumb fuck mean to tell me that one of my own country's core ethical values is discriminating against minorities because of their sexual orientations in the name of respecting and heeding (one of the most powerful lobby groups) "different opinions"?

“Every country has its own set of laws in evaluating and approving the education material for books. I don’t know if it’s appropriate for a foreigner to judge how we manage our education. You won’t see us commenting how other countries teach at schools.”

Oh, right, now one has to be a national of a given state in order to criticize it when it clearly violates several articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)--to which South Korea is also bound as the UDHR defines the meaning of the words "human rights" and "fundamental freedoms" in the UN Charter, by the way--because its government is afraid of going against powerful religious lobby groups?

Isn't it interesting that among these photos none of them features anything Asian--okay, there's one from Vietnam. I'll give you that much--African, Middle Eastern, , or Latin American, and the only photos that feature anything other than European and North American were ones from the Pacific Front and Vietnam?

al-Shabaab, Nairobi, Kenya, Somalia, AU, Ethiopia, and the US.

I was aware that the National Language Policy, or the practice of forcing-those-islanders-to-stop-speaking-Japanese-and-awful-Mǐnnán-and-start-speaking-the-proper-one, was vigorously and mercilessly practiced by the KMT for several decades, and as a result, Mǐnnán (閩南語) as a lect has been losing the number of its speakers rapidly and will become a "minor" language on the island in a matter of years. (Although now they finally became willing to compromise a bit in favor of Taiwanese, which can be a start.)

But I didn't realize such a policy has led to an interesting result that now there are different variations of Mandarin in Taiwan, and that they can be (roughly) categorized in two, one being Taiwanese Guóyǔ (國語) and Taiwanese Mandarin -- the former being a by-product of switching the default mode of the communication pretty much overnight and the people struggling to get by, and the latter somewhat a desired result that the KMT long wanted to make happen.

Sometimes it really makes me dumbfounded that Taiwan, especially given the size of the "island", appears to attract so many bigot White--or would the word "Caucasian" make you feel better?--airheads to their home turf and at the same time they're quite casual about it, especially like ones commenting on this article.

Cowboys were frontiersmen, using their wits to charm and conquer, and push America’s territory westward. In the process, they formed a new national identity built on adventure and charisma. 

You know, it's always a GREAT pleasure to see non-US media embracing and propagating Manifest Destiny and its philosophy without a sliver of a question, and, by doing so, giving a humongous finger to peoples who were displaced and have been socially and systemically ostracized by the very "nation" which was built on such admirable adventure and charisma for Heavens-only-know-how-long.