Taiwan Government-General Library and Its Art-related Collection
The colonial government of Taiwan opened its library in 1915 in Taipei as part of a shift towards cultural rule (Ibid., 84. Ujigo Tsuyoshi, “Kindai Kankoku toshokanshi no kenkyū: shokuminchiki o chūshin ni,” Sankōshoshi kenkyū, no. 34 (1988): 5-6. The colonial government in Korea opened its library in 1925 in Seoul. Scholars have suggested that the relatively late establishment of both Governor-General Libraries reflects the discriminatory policy of keeping the colonized people from going beyond their station in life. Kawata, “Ajia shinryaku to Chōsen Sōtokufu Toshokan (1),” 87-88). Starting in 1922, Taiwan also had a traveling library, which was mostly used by the Taiwanese population. (Katō et al, Nihon no shokuminchi toshokan, 86.). Recent scholarship on library history in Japan has proposed viewing the libraries established by the Japanese colonial governments in Taiwan and Korea as active agents in imperial expansion and called for linking their histories to the history of libraries in Japan (Kawata Ikohi, “Ajia shinryaku to Chōsen Sōtokufu Toshokan (1),” Jōkyō to shutai, no. 140 (1987). Katō Kazuo, Kawata Ikohi, and Tōjō Fuminori, Nihon no shokuminchi toshokan: Ajia ni okeru Nihon kindai toshokanshi (Tōkyō: Shakai Hyōronsha, 2005), 12-14.).
Next to primary, middle, and high schools teaching Japanese, public libraries constituted a crucial part of the cultural infrastructure of the expanding empire. They catered to Japanese settlers and the gradually growing number of the colonized who could read Japanese, especially among the younger generation (The Taiwan Government-Genera Library also had some books in Chinese and Western languages). The knowledge of Japanese varied among the colonized subjects based on their level of contact with the Japanese population, education, class, and year of birth. Literature scholar Nayoung Aimee Kwon argues that to view colonial subjects as naturally and effortlessly speaking the imperial language negates the violence of imperial censorship and the propaganda policies of assimilation (Compare Kwon, Intimate Empire, 190-91.). This is an important point to acknowledge.
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