The document discusses how national museums in mainland China and Taiwan portray Japan and construct national identity. It analyzes exhibits at the National Museum of China in Beijing and the National Museum of Taiwan History in Tainan. Both museums emphasize narratives of national victimhood at the hands of Japan but differ in other ways. The Chinese museum focuses on high politics and modernization under the CCP, while the Taiwanese museum emphasizes social history during Japanese rule and a less overt narrative of victimization.

1. Japan and cross‐Strait displays of
national identity
Images of Japan in the historical museums
of mainland China and Taiwan
Edward Vickers
Kyushu University

2. The National Museum of China (Beijing)
formerly the Museum of Revolutionary History
(refurbished and reopened 2011)

3. The National Museum of Taiwan History
(Tainan – southern Taiwan)
(opened 2011)

4. Museums, identity and the state
• Publicly‐funded museums on both sides of the Strait have
always been subject to very close state supervision – a
phenomenon that can be attributed to at least three legacies:
– ‘Confucian’
– Leninist
– Japanese
• They are thus vehicles for transmission of official visions of
national identity. But what sort of identity?
– Specifically, how have portrayals of Japan in national museums
been implicated in efforts to construct/reconstruct official visions
of national identity in the major state historical museums of China
and Taiwan?
• When we talk about national identity in China and Taiwan,
what exactly are we talking about…?

5. Biology: racial identity and Peking Man
(a unifying or dividing factor?)
Museum at
Zhoukoudian
Peking Man Site
2004

6. Culture – a unifying factor? (Confucius
at the National Museum)

7. Culture – a dividing factor? National
Museum of Taiwan Literature (Tainan)
2009

8. National Heroes
Commemorating Zheng Chenggong in Tainan
1950s and 2000s

9. Symbols of national pride
– the Great Wall (a unifying symbol!?)
Badaling Great Wall
Museum, 2004

10. The modernization project –
talented Chinese return to contribute to the
construction of ‘New China’
National Museum
of China, 2011

11. The people become their own masters

12. Build huge factories

13. Work fantastically hard

14. And design big bombs and rockets

15. Meanwhile on Taiwan…
‘Remember Chu as Reminder
to Nation’, Chiang Kai‐shek
Memorial Hall, Taipei
The old KMT account was largely
a mirror image of the current
CCP orthodoxy.

16. a longing for reunion…
National Museum
Of China, 2011

17. exiles missing home…

18. The narrative structure: national
victimhood and its transcendence
• Both the classic KMT and current CCP narratives of modern Chinese
history take as central themes victimhood/humiliation and its
transcendence – with Japan as the principal agent of this national
trauma;
– A similar narrative structure is evident in some recent ‘nativist’ accounts of
Taiwan’s past, but substituting the KMT/China for Japan
• The NMC exhibition features no mention of the Great Leap or Cultural
Revolution
– Vagueness surrounding the deficiencies of KMT governance on the
mainland (corruption, favouring the capitalist classes, repression of
dissent…) – in contrast to the old emphasis on these (reflecting a fear of
encouraging comparisons between the current CCP regime and the old
KMT one?)
– No coverage at all of KMT governance of Taiwan (Feb 28 incident, White
Terror…) – thus nothing to suggest why KMT rule might have contributed
to souring Taiwanese against the prospect of ‘reunification’ with the
mainland – or to a certain nostalgia for the period of Japanese colonial
rule

19. Taiwanese welcome liberation /
‘return to the motherland’
228 Peace Memorial
Museum, Taipei
National Museum of China

20. But soon wonder whether KMT rule
represents any improvement…
228 Peace Memorial Museum, Taipei

21. A spark sets off the 228 massacre
(1946)

22. Claiming many victims

23. including women and children

24. and leading to a long struggle for
democratisation

25. a struggle that was ultimately
victorious
228 Memorial
Taipei Peace Park

26. Japan and the struggle against foreign
oppression
China (PRC)
Anti‐foreign nationalism
directed particularly at Japan
has been a central plank of the
CCP’s ‘Patriotic Education
Campaign’ since at least the
early 1990s. At the same time,
previously venomous attacks on
the KMT have been toned down,
with an emphasis instead on
shared ‘patriotism’ in resisting
the Japanese enemy.
Taiwan
After 1945, KMT anti‐foreignism
tended to be directed mainly at the
Soviet Union – despite the long war
against Japan (a sensitive matter within
Taiwan, and for the ROC’s postwar
diplomacy);
for their part, Taiwanese nationalists
have tended to harbour nostalgia for
the period of Japanese rule (when the
island was a model colony),
contrasting it favourably with KMT
oppression – while trying to position
Taiwan as an Asian nation, rather than
‘Chinese’ province;
But note that, in both cases, the success of propaganda relies largely on
its capacity to appeal to lived experience and folk memory

27. Japan attacks!
Images from the
National Museum
of China

28. Massacring women and children
The Lushun
Massacre
Li Wu and
Li Fulai
(2009)

29. Taiwan snatched from the bosom of
the motherland

30. Japanese colonialists attempt to
brainwash their Chinese subjects…

31. but Taiwan compatriots determinedly
resist their oppressors.

32. Those insatiable Japanese militarists
come back for more…

33. Prompting patriotic Chinese to rise up,
led by the Soviet‐inspired CCP
Burning Land
Deeds,
Ying Rongsheng,
1975

34. Japan provokes a new conflagration
‘Cut the Devil’s
Head with a
Broadsword’
Yan Yang and Li
Fulai (2009)

35. Committing horrific atrocities
Diorama of Unit
731, at the Nanjing
Massacre Memorial

36. And prompting fierce resistance by the
Chinese people…
Installation at the Military
Museum, photographed
In 2004
‘Flesh and Blood Great Wall’,
Ye Yushan (2009), National Museum

37. united thanks to Zhang Xueliang (later
taken into exile on Taiwan) …
Statue of Zhang Xueliang (erected
in 2005) outside his mansion
in Shenyang

38. and inspired by the far‐sighted
leadership of one man
‘For Truly Great Men
Look to this Age Alone’
by Jin Shangyi, 1977.

39. with a little help from Mr and Mrs
Jiang*, and a few foreigners…
*Note – Chiang Kai‐shek takes a higher profile in some other recently‐established PRC museums

40. Taiwan compatriots also fought
alongside their mainland brethren

41. Final and decisive Chinese victory

42. Taiwan and Japan
• No mention in the CCP narrative (as displayed in
the NMC and elsewhere) of the fact that
Taiwanese fought mainly on the Japanese side in
the war.
• Mainstream narratives in both Taiwan and the
mainland agree on Taiwan’s status as ‘victim’ –
but differ on the identity of the main oppressors:
– For the CCP, Taiwan was the first Chinese victim of
Japanese invasion and colonization
– For many pro‐independence Taiwanese, Taiwan has
been victimized by pretty well everybody, including
(or even especially) China (i.e. the KMT)

43. Narrative of victimhood – the National
Museum of Taiwan Literature

46. Rehabilitating the Japanese legacy in
contemporary Taiwan
The National Taiwan
Museum, Taipei Peace
Park (formerly the
Taiwan Provincial
Museum, and originally
The Museum of the
Governor’s Mansion),
founded in 1909 –
refurbished and
renovated in the
mid‐1990s.
Other museums evince a certain nostalgia for the Japanese period
– e.g. the Peitou Hot Springs Museum on the outskirts of Taipei.

47. National Museum of Taiwan History –
permanent exhibition themes/zones
• The early residents
• Encounter between disparate cultures (16th +
17th centuries)
• Chinese migration to Taiwan
• ‘Territorial societies and plural cultures’
• Transformations and the New Order [Japanese
colonial period] – occupying the central space of
the main exhibition hall
• Towards a diverse, democratic society

48. Japan and Taiwan’s ‘multicultural’
early history

49. ‘The Great Transformation’:
Law, order and ‘scientific’ modern administration

50. Anthropology – mapping and
cataloguing Taiwan

51. Education

52. Modernization and the liberation of
Taiwan’s women

53. The introduction of representative
institutions

54. Taiwanese participation in Japan’s
wars

55. Taiwanese suffering in the war

56. Gaps in the NMTH account…
• Little discussion of the impact of Japan’s wars on the
Chinese mainland (and hence also on the waishengren
who migrated to Taiwan after the war)
• No discussion of the deployment in wartime Taiwan (as
in the Japanese ‘home islands’) of POW forced labour
• The account of the war in the NMTH (like that in the
Showakan in central Tokyo) highlights Taiwanese
victimhood – excluding discussion of the ‘victimization’
of those against whom Taiwanese were fighting (largely
their ‘compatriots’ on the Chinese mainland); this is
largely a factor of the museum’s overwhelming focus on
social history and everyday life rather than high
politics.

57. Taiwan tours for mainlanders
– a typical itinerary
• Taipei NPM (with a stop‐off at Chiang
Kaishek’s villa)
• Sun Moon Lake
• Taroko Gorge
• Aboriginal village
• Happy shopping…
• You won’t find many mainland visitors at the
NMTH…

58. Diverging narratives
NMC
• The victimhood‐transcendence
narrative is strongly evident –
with the Japanese invasion
centre‐stage (while class struggle
is now absent as a major theme)
• The NMC narrative is linear and
overwhelmingly focused on high
politics (a repackaged version of
the old ‘revolutionary history’
narrative); it is explicitly and
unapologetically didactic
• The NMC narrative has a clearly
normative status within mainland
China (though there is diversity
within the museums sector)
NMTH
• The victimhood‐transcendence
narrative is evident, but less
obviously or stridently than (for
example) in Taipei’s ‘228 Peace
Memorial Museum’; Japan is not
portrayed as ‘victimizing’ Taiwanese
• More ‘themed’ and focused on social
than political history – extensive use
of walk‐through dioramas and
artifacts relating to everyday life
• The NMTH narrative has a less
clearly normative status – it caters
largely to a ‘native Taiwanese’
constituency within a museums
system that nowadays (unlike 30
years ago) offers something for
almost everyone

59. ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: national identity in a
Japanese mirror
NMC
• A clear, singular (politically, culturally,
racially?), central subject to the
narrative – ‘the Chinese people’,
represented by the CCP – with the
Japanese firmly in the category of
hostile ‘other’
• Acknowledges no positive role for
Japan in China’s modernization
(despite the huge impact of Meiji
Japan on late Qing / early Republican
reformists and revolutionaries)
• Taiwan and the Taiwanese are
unambiguously located with ‘us’ (‘the
Chinese’) against ‘them’ (the Japanese
and other foreign imperialists) –
Taiwan’s significance is primarily as a
lingering symptom of this Sino‐
Japanese confrontation
NMTH
• Taiwanese identity defined and
celebrated as hybrid (culturally
and ethnically) – embracing the
Japanese along with other
groups/influences arriving from
overseas
• Japanese influence on the
modernization of Taiwan’s
society, economy and culture is
represented in broadly positive
terms
• China’s status vis‐à‐vis Taiwan is
ambiguous – implicitly, Taiwanese
identity is depicted as owing as
much to the Japanese legacy as to
that of China