<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><div> Speaking of Taiwan, after Korea, I went to Taiwan to study spoken Mandarin and T'ang poetry at the Mandarin Language Center at Taiwan Normal University. I was very interested in the Taiwanese aboriginal culture and history and traveled extensively around Taiwan. Interestingly, my spoken Mandarin [which was pretty good] was practically useless for communicating with aboriginals, however, Japanese was the lingua France not only with aborigines, but with many Taiwanese as well.<br><br></div><div id="RTEContent"><div id="RTEContent"><div id="RTEContent"><div id="RTEContent"><div id="RTEContent"><div id="RTEContent"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://koreanpoems.blogspot.com/">Dr. Edward D. Rockstein </a><br></div><div
class="MsoNormal"><br>ed4linda@yahoo.com <font color="#00bf60"><i><br><br>"All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly asoften as was necessary."</i></font><br>George Orwell; Nineteen Eighty-Four; 1949.<br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="display: block;" class="yahoo_quoted"> <br> <br> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> On Saturday, October 26, 2013 1:32 PM, Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann@koreanstudies.com> wrote:<br> </font> </div> <blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> <div class="y_msg_container">Hello Don:<br clear="none"><br
clear="none">> It would be interesting to know the source of that "primitive <br clear="none">> culture" quote.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">You mean the percentage given, or you refer to the "primitive culture" <br clear="none">term? <br clear="none">I put, as a usual practice in such cases, scare quotes around the term <br clear="none">to distance myself from it (as I would also do it when using a term <br clear="none">such as "oriental"--with or without capital "o"--for the first time in <br clear="none">any given text), not because it is a quote. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">As for the mentioned 80%, the source is given right below. That <br clear="none">dissertation is online at the link given. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">Over the past 15 to 20 year I have looked quite intensely at modern and <br clear="none">contemporary Taiwanese art and art history, and same as with Korea, <br clear="none">that can only be understood and
explained by looking at the wider <br clear="none">cultural policies. While you say that Taiwan was "far more amenable to <br clear="none">Japanese rule than was Korea" we see at the very same time the almost <br clear="none">exact same structural setup that we see in Korea (I looked at that for <br clear="none">the case of art on an almost microscopic level), AND we also see the <br clear="none">almost exact same "reactions" in terms of resistance and <br clear="none">collaborations. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">Coming to "reactions" though, I like to note that I cannot share Balazs <br clear="none">Szalontai's observation: "I think this cultural shock played a decisive <br clear="none">role in the rise of cultural purism in both Koreas." (KS list message <br clear="none">of Oct. 25). Go to any country in SOUTH East Asia where the British or <br clear="none">the French where the colonial powers, and you see that the very old <br
clear="none">people, if still alive, have a very different way of dealing with the <br clear="none">colonial past: many are happily sharing their pride to have been <br clear="none">participating in e.g. a British school, or even still are wearing <br clear="none">partially British cloth, and so on. This reaction in Korea is a <br clear="none">different kind of reaction: the early modernization movements on the <br clear="none">1890s already used Japanese models. Japan itself had distanced itself <br clear="none">from the model of "import modernization" as that would come with open <br clear="none">or hidden Western modes of colonization, and that Japanese model of <br clear="none">"internal modernization" then became a very attractive one for Koreans, <br clear="none">but also for e.g. the Chinese in cities like Shanghai. (Of course, <br clear="none">nationalist historiography in the various countries keeps that theme <br clear="none">small.) The
problem, the failure in Korea, was that there was not a <br clear="none">single political group in that rather short time spam (mid-1880s to <br clear="none">early 1900s) that could gather sufficient political power to actually <br clear="none">stay on and modernize the corrupted, declining Chosŏn Empire using this <br clear="none">model. So, when the Japanese took over, then the same model was used to <br clear="none">fight them. Yet, there was an ongoing back-and-forth between desire and <br clear="none">objection, resistance and collaboration, and we see that when we follow <br clear="none">cultural or political leaders around through the years (and there often <br clear="none">drastic changes). The ideology of "pursim" is an ideology of the lowest <br clear="none">common denominator, probably never stronger than today. It was not a <br clear="none">reaction as such, it was more of an adapted or at least <br clear="none">Japanese-inspired versatile
model that was then assigned various tasks, <br clear="none">depending on the political situation--working fine in North Korea, <br clear="none">South Korea, colonial Korea, etc. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">I must say though, that I am not at all a big fan of system comparisons <br clear="none">when it comes to what they say about culture. The issue with those <br clear="none">country-level comparisons is the same as with statistics: don't believe <br clear="none">any statistics which you haven't forged yourself! When we do a <br clear="none">comparison between two political, economic, and cultural mega systems, <br clear="none">then I would tend to switch my brain to energy-saving mode: whatever <br clear="none">one finds is as valid as it is completely invalid. I get more <br clear="none">scientific evidence out of a Picasso drawing with an oversized dig and <br clear="none">a virgin with a Stalin beard to then talk about the political and
<br clear="none">cultural situation of a person or country at any given time than a <br clear="none">comparison of the general colonial situation in Japan-Korea with <br clear="none">France-Algeria produces. Japan-Taiwan seems at least closer in that (a) <br clear="none">it is within the former sino-centric world, and (b) one of the players <br clear="none">is identical. So, if we look at very specific issues, then it *may* <br clear="none">make some sense to compare, but MOSTLY, in my opinion, to become more <br clear="none">aware of issues and connections not seen or thought of before, and of <br clear="none">getting to know other new ways of looking at already known data. (This <br clear="none">is the exact same positive approach there, in the social sciences, that <br clear="none">also makes sense in the hard sciences.) That kind of comparison can <br clear="none">lead to new ideas of what to do and how to interpret data. But as such, <br
clear="none">as a "comparative study," it makes usually little sense--it is more <br clear="none">what follows that can make sense. George E.P. Box, a very dangerous man <br clear="none">who revolutionized how statistics processing (Bayesian model) is being <br clear="none">used by computers for forward-looking tasks (NOT just for analyzing <br clear="none">past occurrences)--without him Google would not be possible and the <br clear="none">speed of the Internet would not be there--has this very useful and <br clear="none">simple insight to offer: "All models are wrong, but some models are <br clear="none">useful." (1979) If a model can be useful, we may want limit for what <br clear="none">exactly. A model that compares two colonial systems, not just on an <br clear="none">economic or political level, but even culturally, and those compared <br clear="none">systems are geographically (and culturally) THAT far apart, then the <br clear="none">very first
thing I would want to know is what exact aspects can still <br clear="none">be useful, and what for? The outcome of such a multi-country comparison <br clear="none">*on such a wide scale* is in itself without doubt completely invalid. <br clear="none">But there might be something that it leads to, as it might have brought <br clear="none">up new issues and questions.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Best,<br clear="none">Frank<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"> The Taiwan experience with Japan was very different <br clear="none">> from that of Korea. Taiwan did not exactly appreciate the demands, <br clear="none">> from time to time, from Beijing and was far more amenable to Japanese <br clear="none">> rule than was Korea. Japanese culture penetrated deep into Taiwan in <br clear="none">> ways that it never did in Korea -- a legacy that continues to this <br clear="none">> day.<br clear="none">> Don Kirk<br
clear="none">> <br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> From: Frank Hoffmann <<a shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:hoffmann@koreanstudies.com" href="mailto:hoffmann@koreanstudies.com">hoffmann@koreanstudies.com</a>><br clear="none">> To: <a shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:koreanstudies@koreanstudies.com" href="mailto:koreanstudies@koreanstudies.com">koreanstudies@koreanstudies.com</a> <br clear="none">> Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2013 1:03 AM<br clear="none">> Subject: Re: [KS] Japan-Korea, France-Algeria: Colonialism and <br clear="none">> language policy<br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> By 1945 about 80% of the population of Taiwan was speaking Japanese. <br clear="none">> And Taiwan, let us not forget that, was considered a "primitive <br clear="none">> culture" in the late 19th century when the Japanese colonized it.<br clear="none">> Just something to think about.<br
clear="none">> <br clear="none">> See:<br clear="none">> Catherine Shu-fen (Yu) Fewings, "Japanese colonial language education <br clear="none">> in Taiwan and assimilation, 1895-1945," PhD diss., Curtin University of <br clear="none">> Technology, 2004.<br clear="none">> <br clear="none">(<a shape="rect" href="http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=15269&local_base=GEN01-ERA02" target="_blank">http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=15269&local_base=GEN01-ERA02</a>)<br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> Regards,<br clear="none">> Frank<br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> <br clear="none">> --------------------------------------<br clear="none">> Frank Hoffmann<br clear="none">> <a shape="rect" href="http://koreanstudies.com/" target="_blank">http://koreanstudies.com</a><div class="yqt0686833992" id="yqtfd30182"><br clear="none">> <br
clear="none">> <br clear="none">> <br clear="none"><br clear="none">--------------------------------------<br clear="none">Frank Hoffmann<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://koreanstudies.com/" target="_blank">http://koreanstudies.com</a></div><br><br></div> </blockquote> </div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>