The study of Taiwan history has received a great deal of attention in recent years.
Members of the Legislative Yuan have urged that Academia Sinica establish an Institute of Taiwan History, and National Taiwan University is planning to set up a research office on the subject. Some people say that more publications on Taiwan history have come out since the lifting of martial law than were published during the previous forty years.
At the same time, academic exchanges between the Republic of China and Japan have been increasing day the day. Several noted Japanese sinologists, such as Mizoguchi Yuzo of Tokyo University and Ochi Shigeaki of Kyoto University, have visited Taiwan, and "that would have been practically impossible a few years ago," according to Chang Yen-hsien, an assistant researcher in the Institute of the Three Principles of the People at Academia Sinica.
Although Japan has a strong heritage of China studies, scholars there have never accorded much importance to the academic world on Taiwan, partly because of a predisposition toward the "Greater China" ideology of the mainland and partly because of an inadequate understanding of Taiwan's political, economic and cultural accomplishments.
Nonetheless, more and more Japanese historians have begun to devote attention to the study of Taiwan history, the most active of them at Tenri, Central Kyoto and Osaka universities, in the Kansai and central region.
Their studies have been scattered and piecemeal in scope so far. Tenri University, for example, is the leader on the period of the Dutch occupation, thanks to the presence of Nakamura Takashi. In addition, several professors in the foreign languages department there, such as Tsukamoto Terukazu and Shimomura Sakujirou, are enthusiasts of Taiwan literature and regularly publish their studies in an academic journal called Yiya.
At Osaka City University the historian Morita Hiroshi, an expert on water conservancy during the Ch'ing and Meiji periods, has recently turned his attention to the study of Taiwan history. And at Central Kyoto University the graduate school of sociology has set up a Taiwan history association, which has carried out onsite studies on the island every summer since 1982. The results have been published in seven volumes that are indispensable materials for students of the period of the Japanese occupation.
Taiwan history is still a rather neglected, out-of-the-way field of study in Japan, hardly to be mentioned in the same breath--whether in terms of scholarly participation or of research results--with the study of Chinese history, which enjoys a worldwide reputation. But no matter how unpopular the field may be, there are still some scholars who share an interest in it, and that may well be the greatest joy of academic research. It is also proof of the old adage that "everyone has a soulmate in the world somewhere."
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