Clothing the Body, Dressing the Identity
The Case of Japanese in Colonial Taiwan (1895-1908)
Vortrag von Dr. Lee Ju-ling (University of Tokyo)
In 1895, as soon as the Japanese arrived in the colony of Taiwan, the looser mores they had about public nudity destabilized the new regime’s authority. By covering and domesticating the bared body of the colonizer, the Government-General intended to delineate and maintain the colonial hierarchy. But the self-domestication of the Japanese body was not a unique experience produced in the colony of Taiwan. In fact, since the very beginning of the Meiji era, the Meiji government put emphasis on regulating the bodily practices of its people in the midst of increased contacts between Japanese society and Westerners. This lecture will examine the process of the self-domestication of the body of the colonizer, by revealing its connections to previous Japanese bodily experiences during the Meiji period, as well as to the bodily experiences of the colonized people.