일제 하 ‘대만의식’의 형성 배경과 그 성격

Taiwanese Consciousness During Japanese Colonization: Its Formational Background and Characteristics

This article deals with the speculation on the formational background and characteristics of Taiwanese consciousness during the Japanese colonization, which becomes the mental background of Taiwanese liberation theory, that is, the biggest issue of the current Taiwanese society. The Taiwanese society during the Chung Dynsty was not equipped with the condition to develop Taiwanese consciousness on the basis of the territorial identity of Taiwan. It was because Taiwan at that time was regionally divided into several districts between north and south, which were rarely contacted with one another, and thereby, its administrative districts were also determined by this regional restrictions, and each administrative districts developed its own discrete community on the basis of township economy. Furthermore, in the early stage of main Chinese immigration to Taiwan, the immigrants considered regional consolidation as important, and built their community on the basis of their regional language identity. In fact, these immigrants regarded their regional hometown of China as their place of identification, and thus, their regional consciousness was very strong, causing frequent conflicts between different regional groups. Since then, as the main Chinese immigrants (the people of Han tribes) got domesticated in Taiwan, the regional consciousness got blurred and a new collective consciousness to consider Taiwan as their object of identity emerged by 1860s. However, this took the time of Japanese colonization to get concertized as a complete Taiwanese consciousness. Japan could occupy Taiwan as a result of the Sino-Japanese War, but it paid the big price to cope with the strong resistance by Taiwanese people. However, most of anti-Japanese resistances by armed Taiwanese people were pre-modern forms of protest based upon Chung dynasty as their national identity or setting up the motto for the change of old dynasty. In this respect, the Taiwanese society in the early stage of Japanese colonization could not form the Taiwanese national identity as well as the Taiwanese consciousness as their local identity. By the animosity against their betrayed country and the love for their land as well as the separation policy of Japanese colonial government, Taiwanese people were getting segregated from China and accumulated Taiwanese consciousness against the exploitation and racial discrimination by the Japanese colonial government. After their occupation of Taiwan, Japan stabilized the public security by subduing the protest groups, and built up the infrastructure of capitalist system by renovating the real estate controlling system and constructing the transportation system. They also set up the colonial economic system to make Taiwan as a place for providing food and tropical products. Japanese colonial exploitation could be found in the tax burden of Taiwanese people and the heavy influx of Japanese industrial capital as well as the percentage of industrial laborers and teenage laborers. It could be also found in the confiscation of pageantry lands by allowing the Japanese capital group to use those lands as well as the policy of allowing Japanese sugar company to control the price of sugar cane products. On the one hand, Japan set up the despotic system to control rights and duties of Taiwanese people by adopting actinglegislature system, and this tendency continued in the general governor system. To maintain this system, the Japanese colonial government functioned as a police state by employing the intimidating and vast power of the police. The police threatened Taiwanese people to obey the government and discriminated them with their power and authority.