Examining the coverage in seven major Japanese and Taiwanese daily newspapers of a selection of events involving both societies in the first decade of the twenty-first century, this paper investigates the phenomenon of rhetorical instrumentalization of the past for present ideological purposes. The concerns of this study are the processes of dehistorization in Japanese and Taiwanese news and public debate, and through a critical thematic reading of the sources I argue that a motif of Taiwanese repetition and imitation of Japan runs through all the studied cases as a basic narrative formula. Analyzed cases include news presentations of Taiwanese politicians visiting Japan, controversial statements on Taiwan by a Japanese cabinet minister, infrastructure developments in present-day Taiwan and the controversy surrounding a Japanese guidebook to Taiwanese prostitution. Throughout the material, Taiwan is pictured as ideally progressing along a trajectory marked out by Japan and the two are cast in fixed roles that recall their relative positions in the half-century of Japanese colonization of Taiwan: Japan teaches Taiwan order, unity and modern development and Taiwan studies Japan’s past to overcome the challenges of its own present. Or Taiwan spontaneously imitates Japanese precedence as a consequence of its own development. This paper fundamentally challenges the rationale underlying strategic instrumentalization of the past and draws critical attention to the paradoxical fact that the use of the repetition formula positions the covered news events in a thematic field of time-lag and retrospection.
歷史的工具化及日本臺灣新聞報道中的重複主題
通過分析日本和臺灣七份主要報紙對兩國在二十一世紀第一個十年間發生的一系列事件的報道，本文攷察了通過虛飾和工具化歷史為當今意識形態服務的現象。本文著重討論了日本和臺灣的新聞和公共討論中去歷史化的過程。通過對這些文獻中有關主題的批評性閱讀，我認為臺灣對日本的重複和模倣這一主題作為一個基本敘事模式貫穿了所有本文所攷察的案例。本文所分析的案例包括對臺灣政治家訪問日本的新聞報道，日本一位內閣大臣關於臺灣的極具爭議的講話，當前臺灣的基礎設施建設和關於一份日本出版的臺灣色情業指南的爭論。在這些文獻中，臺灣被描繪為正沿著一個由日本開拓的理想軌跡進步。在這些敘事中，兩個國家被定型於兩個固定的角色中，呼應了日本在對臺灣半個世紀的殖民中兩者之間的關係：即日本教導臺灣秩序、統一和現代發展，而臺灣則從日本的過去中吸取教訓以戰勝自己當前的挑戰；而臺灣自身的發展同時也複製了日本的領先故事。本文從根本上質疑了策略性地工具化過去的動機，並指出對重複模式的使用自相矛盾地將被報道的新聞事件定位於一個延時和追憶的主題地帶。
Translated from English by Xin Huang
Jens Sejrup