DOCSLIB.ORG

Of the Taiwanese Victims of Japanese Sexual Slavery

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Of the Taiwanese Victims of Japanese Sexual Slavery The “Endangered Voices” of the Taiwanese Victims of Volume 2, Number 2 Japanese Sexual Slavery Fall 2019 DOI: 10.25335/PPJ.2.2-09 Towards Postcolonial Feminist Ethics of Listening to Trauma Magdalena Zolkos Abstract While the question of justice for the victims of sexual slavery institutionalized by the Japanese Imperial Army during the war has generated great communal and scholarly interest, in Taiwan it remains a pressing and unresolved concern what implications this traumatic history has had for the consolidation of the postcolonial and post-authoritarian publics. This is not only because the sexual enslavement of Taiwanese women unfolded before the backdrop of Japan’s colonization of Taiwan, in particular of the Indigenous “highlander” groups but also because the post-war public (and private) narra- tivization of this history, and any pursuit of justice, were impossible during Chiang Kai-shek’s authoritarian era. Referring to the victims by the Taiwanese term “Ama” (rather than the more common but problematic term “comfort women”), I propose that in contemporary Taiwan the traumatic history of female sexual enslavement is of great significance for contemporary public life because it functions as a kind of “optic,” which reveals and magnifies broader historical dynamics of colonial appropriation, of sexual and epistemic violence against women, and of the marginalization of Indigenous and economically disadvantaged groups. Methodologically, the identification of such an optic draws from cultural theory of psychoanalysis, which links traumatic experience to “unspeakability” and to psychic repression of overwhelming contents, and from sociological and philosophic insights into silencing as a mode of epistemic violence. 1. Historical Trauma of Sexual and in terms of her compliance with traditional gendered norms in post-war Taiwan. Slavery in Taiwan These women are known to the contempo- In a 1998 film,A Secret Buried for 50 Years A rary public in Taiwan as “Ama,” which is a Secret Buried for 50 Years—The Story of the Taiwanese-Hokkien term for an “elderly aun- Taiwanese “Comfort Women,” a Taiwanese tie.” According to the information in the Ama survivor of the Japanese sexual slavery pro- Museum in Taipei, the name Ama connotes gram during the Pacific War, Shen Chung Li, “endearment [and] respect for women of the describes the psychological effects of the vio- older generation.”3 In recent years it has gained lence she endured at the hands of Japanese popularity as a supplement to the formal terms soldiers as a paradoxical experience of liv- for the victims of the Japanese sexual enslave- ing-through her own death: “my life had end- ment program: “sexual military slaves” or “com- 1 ed on [that] day,” she says poignantly. Another fort women.”4 What is equally important is that survivor, Jung-mei Chaung, speaks of a contin- uous pain, which has not decreased in severity 3. Exhibition on the history of sexual enslavement of Tai- wanese women by the Japanese imperial army during for fifty years, thus also narrating the effect of the Pacific war, and of the subsequent struggle for justice, her trauma as a “devitalization,” or “withering,” Ama Museum. The material was collected during my field- of subjectivity. A third survivor, Kuei-Ying Tsai, work in Taiwan in 2017. says in an accusatory gesture directed at her 4. The survivors and their supporting activists, legal work- ers, and local allies have preferred the name “Ama” over absent perpetrators, “Our fate was sealed by “comfort women,” which is a direct translation of the Jap- you.”2 With this she hints at the difficulties of anese ian-fu and a euphemism for a female sex worker, overcoming the stigmatizing social effects of as well as the term used by the military policies of sexual sexual violence but at the psychological level slavery during the war. Incorporating within the discourse on the victims of Japanese sexual slavery an alternative 1. A Secret Buried for 50 Years—The Story of the Taiwan- name for the survivors (Ama) has been important for ese “Comfort Women” (Taipei: Taipei Women’s Rescue reshaping the debate. The language of “comfort women” Foundation, 1998). and “comfort stations” had been detrimentally colored 2. Ibid. by the Japanese nationalist and reactionary depictions Zolkos PPJ 2.2 (2019) 2 the use of the name Ama has become a way of the repression of the traumatic contents, its signalling to the Taiwanese public that there is “belated” (Nachträglich) return to the sub- a political urgency in receiving their demands ject’s life, and the aforementioned discursive and listening to their testimonies in the present, and philosophical link between trauma and given the advanced age of the survivors. And death.7 In a text often considered synonymous not only that—the sense of exigency in grant- with the beginning of the “trauma turn” in ing public recognition to the survivors’ stories contemporary theoretical humanities, Cathy also stems from the fact that the avenues for Caruth argues that trauma should be seen not achieving justice for the Taiwanese survivors only as a psychological condition but also as had been exhausted in 2002 when their case a critical and philosophical idiom for the en- was dismissed by the Tokyo District Court and counter with an extreme, incomprehensible, when, in 2004 and 2005, their appeals were and consciously unassimilable occurrence.8 rejected by the Tokyo High Court and Tokyo The “unconscious histories” witnessed by the Supreme Court, respectively.5 In the context of subjects of trauma, as Caruth argues, consti- the impending disappearance of these first- tute “a new kind of historical event,” which is hand accounts, I refer metaphorically to the characterized by “individual not-knowing” and Amas’ voices as “endangered” in order to draw which focuses the testimonial knowledge not attention to the temporal-political urgency of on “what [the subjects] know . but on what listening to Amas as something that needs to they do not fully know in their own traumatic happen now as “the time is running out.”6 pasts.”9 In Caruth’s Freudian theorizing of trau- ma, the subject sustains a kind of “wounding” The testimonies of the surviving victims of the that brings about a temporal disjunction in Japanese military sexual slavery presented her life in that it produces two distinctive life- in the filmFaces of Ah-Ma resonate strongly phases: “before” and “after” trauma. Trauma with the key motifs of the cultural and psy- has to do with the subjective impact of a choanalytic theory of trauma. These include discrete event of catastrophic proportions for which the subject is utterly unprepared in the of the survivors as voluntary profiteers of the economic “opportunities” of the system (perhaps most scandalously, moment of its occurrence and that they are Yoshinori Kobayashi’s manga books “On War” and “On Tai- incapable of absorbing and assimilating in the wan”). Since 1996, the UN has used the name “military sex- present. Caruth thus writes that “trauma is not ual slaves” to refer to the victims, which has been a mark locatable in the simple violent or original event of international recognition of the issue as a war crime and as a gross human rights violation; however, some of in an individual’s past, but rather in the way the survivors expressed their unease with a terminology that its very unassimilated nature—the way it that, they argued, reduced and solidified their identity as was precisely not known in the first instance— (solely) the victims of oppression, and sought to depict returns to haunt the survivor later on.”10 themselves instead as (also) “refractory subjects”—sur- vivors of oppression and agents of history. Scholars and In the case of the trauma of sexual slavery and activists have acknowledged the importance of the term “sexual slavery” as a historical descriptor of the program, the Taiwanese Amas, these theoretical insights rather than older term “enforced prostitution,” but have into the structure of trauma as the haunting also pointed out the limitations stemming from the UN effects of an unassimilable violent event, and and ICC definitions of slavery, which emphasize primarily as a compulsive reenactment of supressed and the commercial exchange and monetary profit as char- acteristics of slavery, and only mention sexual violence unbearable contents, need to be adjusted, or, as its secondary aspect, thereby excluding the victims’ to put it stronger, critiqued, in two important experience of “the loss of control over their bodies” from respects. First, the abstract idiom of a “violent the definition of sexual slavery. C. Sarah Soh, “Japan’s Na- event” in cultural trauma theory, which in Fac- tional/Asian Women’s Fund for ‘Comfort Women,’” Pacific Affairs 76, no. 2 (2003): 209-33. es of Ah-Ma refers to the Taiwanese women’s 5. For reasons of Taiwan’s history and geopolitical situa- experience of sexual enslavement by Japanese tion, the Taiwanese survivors had far less success with ar- soldiers, needs to be located more closely with- guing their case internationally than, for instance, the Ko- in the specific colonial, ethnic, and economic rean survivors. See Tina Dolgopol, “Searching for Justice: The Tokyo Women’s Tribunal,” Open Democracy 12 (May 7. See, for example, Roger Luckhurt, The Trauma Question 2015), https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opensecurity/ (London: Routledge, 2013). searching-for-justice-tokyo-womens-tribunal. 8. Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narra- 6. Christine M. Chinkin, “Women’s International Tribunal tive and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996). on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery,” The American Jour- 9. Ibid., xiii, xvi. nal of International Law 95, no. 2 (2001): 335-41. 10. Ibid., 3. Zolkos PPJ 2.2 (2019) 3 context of gender relations in Taiwan before research on that subject and the survivors’ the war.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Park Statue Politics World War II Comfort Women Memorials in the United States
    Park Statue Politics World War II Comfort Women Memorials in the United States THOMAS J. WARD & WILLIAM D. LAY i Park Statue Politics World War II Comfort Women Memorials in the United States THOMAS J. WARD AND WILLIAM D. LAY ii E-International Relations www.E-IR.info Bristol, England 2019 ISBN 978-1-910814-50-5 This book is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license. You are free to: • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material Under the following terms: • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. • NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission. Please contact [email protected] for any such enquiries, including for licensing and translation requests. Other than the terms noted above, there are no restrictions placed on the use and dissemination of this book for student learning materials/scholarly use. Production: Michael Tang Cover Image: Ki Young via Shutterstock A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. iii E-IR Open Access Series Editor: Stephen McGlinchey Books Editor: Cameran Clayton Editorial Assistants: Xolisile Ntuli and Shelly Mahajan E-IR Open Access is a series of scholarly books presented in a format that preferences brevity and accessibility while retaining academic conventions.
    [Show full text]
  • Remembering the Grandmothers: the International Movement to Commemorate the Survivors of Militarized Sexual Abuse in the Asia-Pacific War
    Volume 17 | Issue 4 | Number 1 | Article ID 5248 | Feb 15, 2019 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Remembering the Grandmothers: The International Movement to Commemorate the Survivors of Militarized Sexual Abuse in the Asia-Pacific War Vera Mackie, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa It is over seventy years since the issue of systematized sexual abuse in the Asia-Pacific War came to light in interrogations leading up The Australian War Memorial to the post-Second World War Military Tribunals. There was also widespreadThe Australian War Memorial was established vernacular knowledge of the system in the at the end of the First World War as a ‘shrine, a world-class museum, and an extensive early postwar period in Japan and its former 2 occupied territories. The movement for redress archive’. Its mission is to ‘assist Australians to for the survivors of this system gainedremember, interpret and understand the Australian experience of war and its enduring momentum in East and Southeast Asia in the 3 1970s. By the 1990s this had become a global impact on Australian society’. The holdings include ‘relics, official and private records, art, movement, making connections with other photographs, film, and sound’. The physical international movements and political archive is augmented by an extensive on-line campaigns on the issue of militarized sexual archive of digitized materials.4 From the end of violence. These movements have culminated in the First World War to the present, the advances in international law, where Memorial has been the official repository for militarized sexual violence has been addressed the documentation of Australia’s involvement in in ad hoc Military Tribunals on the former military conflicts and peacekeeping operations.
    [Show full text]
  • Constructing Rights in Taiwan: the Feminist Factor, Democratization, and the Quest for Global Citizenship
    UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Previously Published Works Title Constructing rights in Taiwan: the feminist factor, democratization, and the quest for global citizenship Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4pf7n8g3 Journal PACIFIC REVIEW, 34(5) ISSN 0951-2748 Author Brysk, Alison Publication Date 2021-09-03 DOI 10.1080/09512748.2020.1784985 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California THE PACIFIC REVIEW https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2020.1784985 Constructing rights in Taiwan: the feminist factor, democratization, and the quest for global citizenship Alison Brysk Department of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA ABSTRACT In an era of worldwide rights regression, beleaguered Taiwan remains Asia’s most democratic, gender equitable, and liberal internationalist nation. What accounts for this seemingly exceptional record—and how does the feminist factor contribute to the construction of rights? Bridging constructivist and feminist scholarship, this essay argues that gender equity is a force multiplier for democratization as it empowers civil society and fosters legitimacy at home and abroad. In a three-level game, states at the margin of the inter- national system may benefit from rights reform that expands the national interest and delivers material and reputational rewards. The case of Taiwan illustrates the dynamics of the double transition to liberal democracy and a liberal gender regime and its projection to world politics. The rewards of rights for Taiwan suggest a wider range of options even in small states facing regional challenges—and greater attention to the feminist factor in world politics. KEYWORDS human rights; Taiwan; gender; democratization; transnationalism In an era of worldwide rights regression, Taiwan remains Asia’s most demo- cratic, gender equitable, and liberal internationalist nation.
    [Show full text]
  • The Grandmother and the Girl
    University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities 1-1-2016 The Grandmother and the Girl Vera C. Mackie University of Wollongong, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Law Commons Recommended Citation Mackie, Vera C., "The Grandmother and the Girl" (2016). Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers. 2760. https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/2760 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] The Grandmother and the Girl Abstract I opened the white box and took out the figurine of a girl, a miniature chair, and a little pedestal with an inscription in Japanese, English and Korean. I assembled the diorama, placing the girl on the low pedestal, with the empty chair beside her. Without context, this act might have seemed like child's play - like placing a doll in a doll's house. Keywords girl, grandmother Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Law Publication Details V. Mackie 2016 The Grandmother and the Girl Australian Women's History Network http://www.auswhn.org.au/blog/grandmother-and-girl/ This creative work is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/2760 The Grandmother and the Girl | Australian Women's History NetworkAustralian Women's History N... http://www.auswhn.org.au/blog/grandmother-and-girl/ AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S HISTORY NETWORK The Grandmother and the Girl Vera Mackie explores women’s experiences of militarised sexual abuse during the Asia-Pacific War, and the survivors’ campaign for acknowledgement by the Japanese government in the eighth post in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence series.
    [Show full text]
  • The Holocaust and Its Heritage: Taiwan, East Asia, and Beyond
    H-Japan The Holocaust and its Heritage: Taiwan, East Asia, and Beyond Discussion published by Ran Zwigenberg on Tuesday, May 25, 2021 In July 2018 the Taipei AMA museum, which is dedicated to the memory of the comfort women, opened a year-long exhibition under the title “Anne x Ama: Girls Under Fire in WWII.” The exhibit brought together the memory of Anne Frank and the young Taiwanese girls who were victimized by the Imperial Japanese military. The exhibit is part of a wave of Holocaust-related activities throughout East Asia. China and Japan have found and commemorated their own “Schindlers” (Ho Feng- Shan and Sugihara Chiune). Individual victims of Japan’s war and their supporters, along with institutions like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki museums, have increasingly turned to the models of restitution, legal precedents, and memorial practices of the Holocaust. Seeking to explore the impact of the Holocaust across East Asia, our webinar will bring museum professionals and Academic experts on Taiwan, China, Japan, and Korea to discuss the intersection of East Asian and Holocaust memory cultures. We interrogate the nature of institutional cooperation between museums and memorials, investigate models shared between different memory cultures, and inquire into the extent that one call such connections a global memory culture. The webinar is jointly sponsored by Kyushu University’s UNESCO Chair on Education for Peace, Social Justice and Global Citizenship, Stanford University's Center for East Asian Studies, and the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, National Taiwan University. The round table will take place June 2nd, 2021 (June 1st for North America).
    [Show full text]
  • The Unusual Case of Taiwan Written by Thomas J
    The Unusual Case of Taiwan Written by Thomas J. Ward and William D. Lay This PDF is auto-generated for reference only. As such, it may contain some conversion errors and/or missing information. For all formal use please refer to the official version on the website, as linked below. The Unusual Case of Taiwan https://www.e-ir.info/2019/03/01/the-unusual-case-of-taiwan/ THOMAS J. WARD AND WILLIAM D. LAY, MAR 1 2019 This is an excerpt from Park Statue Politics: World War II Comfort Women Memorials in the United States. Get your free copy here. Besides Korea, Taiwan is the only country that was annexed by Japan in the period leading up to WWII. Taiwanese and Koreans shared the experience of Japanese colonial rule. When one visits Taiwan, one discovers a more positive and appreciative attitude towards Japan than one finds in Korea, which does not conceal its deep feelings of resentment. Although no doubt much less in number, Taiwanese comfort women, like their Korean counterparts, were forced to provide sexual services to Japan’s military. Nevertheless, while 38 statues and monuments honor the memory of the comfort women throughout Korea, not one such statue can be found in Taiwan. Unlike Korea, Taiwan has erected monuments to pay homage to Japan, honoring the contribution that Japanese made to Taiwan during the colonial period. Taipei opened its first comfort women museum in December 2016. The museum clearly points to Japan’s culpability for the comfort women system. It further goes on to suggest practical ways that the comfort women ordeal can inform today’s efforts to end human trafficking and domestic violence in Taiwan, crimes which stem from a demeaning view of women.
    [Show full text]
  • Organisation Background Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation (TWRF)
    Organisation Background Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation (TWRF) was formally registered in September of 1987 to provide legal consultation and counseling to girls and women in the sex trade, and to help them return to their families and society. The foundation has been a pioneer in the effort to eliminate the trafficking of women in Taiwan and was established with a mission to eradicate child prostitution, which as recently as 1987 was a serious problem, most notably with economically disadvantaged parents selling their daughters into prostitution. In 1991, the TWRF, together with Awakening Foundation and Rainbow Project, initiated the “Save Child Prostitutes” campaign, which was a landmark in creating awareness of the problems associated with prostitution. With the help of significant media coverage, this campaign brought much attention to the women’s movement, which had not hitherto been in the public spotlight. Since 1992, the foundation has maintained a toll-free hotline to reach out to sex workers seeking assistance. Furthermore, through cooperation with the police, the foundation has helped sex workers to file lawsuits, and provides services such as settlement, medical aid, education, and career counselling. On the lobbying front, the TWRF has cooperated with legislators and other organizations to help bring modern legislation to Taiwan, including the “Children’s Welfare Act” (1989) and the “Youth Sexual Transaction Prevention Act” (1995). The foundation has been a standard bearer for the plight of aging women who served as sex slaves (so-called “comfort women”) to Japanese soldiers during World War II. Since 1992, TWRF has provided legal counsel and psychological support for these victims.
    [Show full text]
  • View Latest Version Here. Why Law Matters in Taiwan, with Margaret K
    This transcript was exported on Jan 14, 2020 - view latest version here. James Evans: Welcome to the Harvard on China Podcast. I'm James Evans at the Fairbank Center for Chinese studies at Harvard University. Today I'm speaking with Professor Margaret Lewis, professor of Law at Seton Hall University, who researched law and criminal justice in mainland China and Taiwan. Professor Lewis received her JD from the New York University School of Law and her Bachelor's from Columbia University. She's practiced law in New York and California and was recently a public intellectuals program fellow with the National Committee on US/China Relations. She's the author, with Jerome Cohen, of the book Challenge to China: How Taiwan Abolished its Version of Reeducation Through Labor, and she's a renowned expert on Taiwanese law and politics. Professor Margaret Lewis, welcome to the Harvard on China Podcast. Margaret Lewis: Thank you. James Evans: So, your talk at the Fairbank Center is entitled Why Law Matters in Taiwan. Why did you pick this title, and why wouldn't law matter in Taiwan? Margaret Lewis: It's first a play on the title of the great book by Shelley Rigger, Why Taiwan Matters, because so much, I think, of doing Taiwan studies is explaining to people why Taiwan is important, not just to people who are living there but for people outside of Taiwan. And so, my point, as a legal scholar, is it's not just that Taiwan matters, but when you look within Taiwan and you see how many issues there are right now bubbling up in society, that law is a critical component of that discussion.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Party Identification and Support
    Global Taiwan Brief Vol. 6, Issue 16 Global Taiwan Brief Vol. 6, Issue1 16 Political Party Identification and Support: Transitory or Turning Point? Russell Hsiao Fighting with the Army You Have: An Alternate Vision of Taiwan Defense Reform and US-Taiwan Security Cooperation (Part I) Eric Chan Japan’s Policy Shift on Taiwan Centers on Okinawa I-wei Jennifer Chang CCP Proxies Call for Mutiny, Violence, and Overthrow of the Tsai Government J. Michael Cole The Struggle Over “Comfort Women” in Taiwan: Historical Memory and Lack of Consensus Emilie Hu Political Party Identification and Support: Transitory or Turning Point? The Global Taiwan Brief is a bi-weekly publication released By: Russell Hsiao every other Wednesday and pro- Russell Hsiao is the executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) and editor-in-chief vides insight into the latest news on Taiwan. of the Global Taiwan Brief. Editor-in-Chief Amid the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and other simmering political issues, party identifica- Russell Hsiao tion in Taiwan appears to be undergoing a transition, potentially signaling a turning point Associate Editor in Taiwanese domestic politics. According to the latest polling data from TVBS—a major John Dotson media outlet aligned with the Kuomintang (國民黨, KMT)—the public support rate for the Staff Editor Katherine Schultz opposition KMT edged out support for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (民進黨, DPP) in the month of July. Public opinion polls conducted by other party-affiliated as well The views and opinions expressed as academic institutions released in recent months have also pointed to similar trends in in these articles are those of the party identification on the island.
    [Show full text]
  • AMA Museum, Taiwan Author: AMA Museum OVERVIEW: in 1992, the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation (TWRF) Initiated a Survey of Ta
    AMA Museum, Taiwan Author: AMA Museum OVERVIEW: In 1992, the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation (TWRF) initiated a survey of Taiwanese “comfort women” survivors and launched a campaign demanding reparations from the government of Japan. After a quarter century accompanying the Ama (Taiwanese for grandmother) and attending to their spiritual and physical wellbeing, including 12 years of construction planning, on December 10, 2016, TWRF officially opened the AMA Museum as a venue for documenting the stories and struggles of 59 former Taiwanese “comfort women” survivors. Taiwan witnessed the birth of a center for social education that focused attention for the first time on the activism of “comfort women” survivors, advancing contemporary women’s empowerment and enforcing women’s rights. The AMA Museum is dedicated to the cause of women’s rights and seek to transform trauma into resilience and find peace by mending the scars of history. In Exhibition Hall, the “Comfort Women” Permanent Exhibit and Women’s Rights Exhibit introduce historic background on the “comfort women” system, accounts from Taiwanese “comfort women” survivors, related international campaigns on human rights and the women’s rights movement. In Women’s Power Space, artworks produced by Ama survivors in wellness workshops regularly held by TWRF from 1996 to 2012 are on display. The museum also rents out event space and maintains a library open to the public with approximately 400 titles on women’s rights. The resiliency of over 1,000 Taiwanese Ama is symbolized by the Song of the Reeds Walk, which employs more than a thousand transparent cylinders and 59 metal lamps projecting the names of “comfort women” survivors.
    [Show full text]
  • 112Constructing Rights Feminist
    CONSTRUCTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN TAIWAN: THE FEMINIST FACTOR Alison Brysk University of California, Santa Barbara Taiwan Fellow, September-December 20191 Draft: Please do not quote or cite without consulting the author. Comments most welcome. In an era of worldwide rights regression, Taiwan remains Asia's most democratic and gender-equitable nation, and a regional role model. What accounts for this seemingly exceptional record? This paper will show how women’s rights, democratization, and international rights promotion in Taiwan have been mutually reinforcing and beneficial for the national interest. In international perspective, Taiwan is actually “the exception that proves the rule,” in a pattern of rights construction parallel to other highly globalized liberalizing middle powers outside the region. Like Costa Rica, Canada, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries, Taiwan has established a democratic niche and transnational mode of diplomacy rooted in the pursuit of gender equity that have fostered human security, amplified its influence and helped to construct a rights-based national identity. Taiwan’s similar but distinctive pattern of constructing rights demonstrates the possibility of creative agency, adaptation of local conditions and pathways--and the centrality of the feminist factor to all aspects of rights and democracy. In Taiwan, rights make sense because rights make the state in its quest for global recognition and domestic consolidation. Human rights policy is generally constructed via a combination of political opportunity structure, social mobilization, and norm change— democracy, development, social modernization, and positive globalization. Taiwan is a most-likely case for human rights reform and a structural challenge to the cultural contention that “Asian values” are incompatible with democratization.
    [Show full text]
  • Foreign” Victims of Taiwan's 1947 February 28 Incident and Their
    Special Sessions -State Violence and Trauma “In the Shadow of Empires: “Foreign” Victims of Taiwan’s 1947 February 28 Incident and their Journey toward Justice and Reconciliation” Yoshihisa Amae1 [Japan, Chang Jung Christian University Associate Professor ] 1 The author is an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies at Chang Jung Christian University. Email: [email protected] 1 Introduction The February 28 Incident of 1947 (hereafter simply “2/28”) had long been taboo in Taiwan under martial law. However, following the lifting of martial law in 1987, it has gradually gained publicity. In 1995, President Lee Teng-hui offered an apology to the victims and their families for their losses, and his government made measures to bring justice to the victims, including reparation and restoration of the victims’ reputation. The literature on 2/28 is vast, especially in the Chinese language. Few, but important, works exist in the English and Japanese literature as well (Kerr 1965; Lai, Myers, and Wei 1991; He 2003). Yet almost all of them focus on the victimhood of the native Taiwanese and the brutality of the Chinese perpetrators. Little is mentioned of the foreign victims, namely the Japanese, Okinawans, and Koreans. This is understandable for their existence has been unknown until quite recently (in 2015 Aoyama Esaki became the first foreign victim to be recognized by the Taiwanese government) and the numbers are small. As of August 2020, there are only three foreigners (two Japanese and one Korean) who have been officially recognized as “victims” and consequently received reparations from the Taiwanese government.
    [Show full text]