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"From Japanese Military Installations To Multicultural Public Space: Kong-Jung Yicun in San-chong City"

KURAMOTO Tomoaki

last update: 20151225


From Japanese Military Installations To Multicultural Public Space: Kong-Jung Yicun in San-chong City

KURAMOTO Tomoaki
Abstract:
This article examines Kong-Jung Yicun, a Military Village located in San-chong, a city in Taipei County, Taiwan. Military Villages in Taiwan are village communities that were established by the Kuomintang political party after WWII, mainly for soldiers and their families.

The article first looks at the inflow of mainlanders from China and the formation of Military Villages after WWII, events which can be seen as a result of the civil war regime of the time, which was based on colonial Japanese rule. Then, it considers the population flow from southern Taiwan into San-chong City that occurred in the 1970s, which can also be related to the invisibility of the war regime inherited from Japan.

I also would like to raise the following question. While present day Kong-Jung Yicun is undergoing a transformation to an open public space from being a place that was once off-limits to the general public, and while it conforms to the current national policy in Taiwan of multicultural fusion, what role do the memories of Japanese colonialism, which in the past strategically carved out Kong-Jung Yicun and made it an object of its rule, play now in the formation of this new public place?


Keywords: Military Village, multiculturalism, memory, reconciliation, public space
REV: 20151225
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