An Exploration and Analysis of Educational Progress During the Japanese Colonial Period in Taiwan (1895-1945)

The fifty years of Japanese colonial education policy in Taiwan may seem like a gift to the Taiwanese people. However, regardless of the education model or official rhetoric used, the colony's discriminatory treatment and segregation policies, combined with the deliberate suppression and molding through colonial education, were designed to instill in the Taiwanese people a sense of the superiority of the Japanese rulers. Colonial education (also referred to as “assimilation education”) did not mean that the education received by the Taiwanese was equal to that of the Japanese in Taiwan. Rather, “assimilation education” aimed to integrate the Taiwanese into the lowest and lower-middle classes of Japanese society, thereby maintaining a class-based social order. Lenin's concept of “national self-determination” inspired the aspirations of various nations worldwide, leading Japan to implement “territorial expansionism” in Taiwan, which abolished “racial segregation,” though disparities in treatment remained starkly evident. Nevertheless, the practical elements of assimilation education fostered an “interdependent” relationship between the colonizer and the colonized—a complex blend of both positive and negative emotions, intertwined in the Taiwanese people's views of Japan. As a result, the colonized Taiwanese may have found it difficult to form a clear “self-identity,” and this “contradictory emotion” is what makes the situation particularly intriguing.