Written by Tsai Min-Ying. This article examines how wartime air defence shaped Taiwan’s visual culture through a logic of self-concealment. The author traces works by Peng Ruey-lin, Chiu Tzu-Yen, and Huang Tonghong. She argues that colonial practices of hiding from aerial surveillance persist in contemporary art as a collective memory of war, survival, and identity.
Written by Tsai Min-Ying. Following its first part, this article continues to explore the wartime mobilisation and the air war that did not only take place in the air through artists Hsu Chia-Wei and Lo Yi-Chun’s works.
Written by Tsai Min-Ying. This article reframes Taiwan’s World War II air-war experience through the material logistics that sustained Japanese aviation. Tracing sugarcane, molasses, alcohol, and fuel production alongside works by Hsu Chia-Wei and Lo Yi-Chun, the author explores how aerial warfare was materially organised, remembered, and inscribed across Taiwan’s industrial and agricultural landscape.
Written by Anne Sokolsky. This article examines Taiwan no shōjo (1944), a collection of essays by Taiwanese writer Huang Fengzi, arguing that its emotional language reveals the complexities of colonial identity under Japanese rule. Through an analysis of competing voices and affective expressions, it explores how emotions, power, and cultural belonging shaped both the text and its colonial context.
Written by Nikhil Sharma. This article analyses the historical contexts that underpinned eventual reforms and the reimagining of Taiwanese identity resulting from Taiwan’s democratic transition. It argues that Taiwan’s nationalism is unique because it is not rooted in ethnicity but in a shared experience of historical repression and a shared struggle to chart its own path.
Written by Meng Kit Tang. The article examines how Cheng Nan-jung, now commemorated as a martyr of free speech, was once violently rejected by the opposition movement that later claimed his ideals. It argues that this episode is a test of democratic credibility. By placing the 1987 incident alongside present-day political rhetoric, the piece highlights the risks of selective remembrance in a maturing democracy.
