著者
深串 徹
出版者
一般財団法人 日本国際政治学会
雑誌
国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.2017, no.187, pp.187_46-187_61, 2017

<p>How to commemorate the Sino-Japanese war is a controversial issue in contemporary Taiwan. The government of the Republic of China (R. O. C.) often commemorates the war from legitimate Chinese government's point of view, whereas some Taiwanese scholars criticize it as ignoring the memories of the majority of Taiwanese people. As a result, scholarly attention in Taiwan has gradually been shifting to explore the memories of "ordinary" Taiwanese people during the war. At the same time, not enough attention is being paid to the concrete contents of the official memory of the war and how it was created. In particular, scholars are holding different images as to whether the official historical narrative of the war during Chiang Kai-shek period (1950–1975) could be recognized as containing "anti-Japanese" sentiment or not. The major factor for these divisions is lack of clear definition and indicators of what constitutes "anti-Japanese" sentiment.</p><p>This article defines the historical narrative that contains "anti-Japanese" sentiment as follows: If, in a certain period of time, a government claims that the reason why she is being cautious of Japan comes from its past adversarial relationship with her, that narrative could be characterized as containing "anti-Japanese" sentiment. As for the indicators, this paper establishes four criteria: 1) Was the war against Japan described as the most important fight in the R. O. C.'s history? 2) How strongly did the R. O. C. government stress its victimhood in the war? 3) Was reconciliation with Japan described as being done sufficiently? 4) When the R.O.C. had diplomatic conflict with Japan, did the government provoke Taiwanese people to remember the memory of war?</p><p>Using these definitions and indicators, this paper examines the R. O. C. government's official historical narrative of Sino-Japanese war during Chiang Kai-shek administration. The author argues that when there was diplomatic relations with Japan, the R. O. C.'s official narrative of war had a conciliatory tone toward Japan. While provoking hostile feeling against the Chinese Communist party in mainland to fight a civil war, the R. O. C. formed and used the memory of the Sino- Japanese war to promote its relations with Japan in order to consolidate anti-communist camp in East Asia. Therefore, during that period, the official historical narrative was hard to estimate as "anti-Japanese".</p><p>However, after the R. O. C. broke off its diplomatic relations with Japan, in response to latter's normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China, the reconciliation with Japan was described as null and void because of destruction of peace treaty between the R. O. C. and Japan. Shortly afterwards, the narrative of victimization in the war grew stronger in the official discourse of the R. O. C., the historical narrative started to contain "anti-Japanese" sentiment.</p>