Experiencing ‘Taiwanese’ nationhood in the ambivalent heritage from the Japanese colonial era

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study discusses how ordinary people experienced and reproduced Taiwanese nationhood in response to the ambivalent heritage of the Japanese colonial era. Heritage serves as a crucial instrument to convey the national imagining; nevertheless, it is unclear how ordinary people could gain a national meaning from the colonial-era heritage of hegemonic discourse. By interconnecting the theoretical ideas of ‘imagined community’ and ‘banal nationalism’, semi-structured interviews were conducted in this study to explore how ordinary people appropriated the colonial-era heritage as the notion of a ‘historic territory’ shared by a ‘national we’. Their discussions revealed intelligence attachments, local characteristics, personal memories, and political statements as scenarios from which they obtained gratification and admiration. The results also revealed that these social narratives extended the official narrative to reshape the colonial-era heritage associated with one particular group and era as the property of all Taiwanese, emphasising the recreation of nationhood through a bottom-up force.