Style as Identity: Fashion in Taiwan in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

In the twentieth century, fashion in Taiwan was marked by several levels of cultural influences. Compared to the establishment of radical modern education, Japanese colonial power (1895–1945) put more effort into changing social habits in everyday life. It took twenty years (until about 1914) to successfully ban men from wearing the Manchu queue and to eradicate foot binding for women. From the 1920s, men’s Western-style clothing was fashionable among the elite. However, feminine fashion was marked by two parallel trends. One, the modernized Chinese dress, came from Shanghai, while the other was the European-style dress introduced via Tokyo. In painting, photography, and the press of the time, clothing style works as a way to recognize social class, education, and personal identity. Sun shows how fashion in Taiwan showcased the crossroads of Sino-Japanese modernity during its encounter with the West.

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At the time of its conquest by China in 1664, the island now known as Taiwan had about 100,000 inhabitants, a quarter of whom were Chinese from the former Koxinga Kingdom (Zheng Chenggong 鄭成功, 1624–1662). By the decree of Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722), maritime sanctions on the Taiwan Strait prevented Chinese immigration to the island, and Taiwan saw little population growth until the end of the eighteenth century.

After the Sino-Japanese war, Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895. A census by the Japanese government from around 1905 registered about three million inhabitants, most of whom were Chinese from coastal provinces including Fujian and Guangdong. Unlike the radical system of modern education, the Japanese colonial power (1895–1945) was more patient with regard to the social side of everyday life. It took them about twenty years (until around 1914) to eliminate the Manchu queue worn by men and the binding of young girls’ feet ¹ —according to Wu Wen-hsing 吳文星, the Natural Foot Association (Tennen sokukai 天然足会), created in 1900 in Taipei by about forty former Qing literati, was the first non-governmental organization during the Japanese period. Encouraged by the Japanese Governor, the founder of the Huang Yujie 黃玉階 (1850–1918), a doctor of Chinese medicine, also campaigned to cut off men’s queues but not to change their style of dress. ² This indicates the progressive ideology of Taiwan’s early twentieth-century elites, which had differed from that of Chinese republican revolutionaries since the end of the Qing dynasty. In the latter case, wearing traditional Qing clothing with a short haircut also expressed anti-Manchu nationalism.

Japan’s rule in Taiwan followed its own modernization after the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912), which was in turn highly influenced by the European West. After the end of the First World War (1914–1918), the Japanese colonial government implemented the Assimilation Strategy on Taiwan. The youths of the new generation, born in the early twentieth century, quickly adapted to modern institutions. Clothing was the most representative of this change in their lives, and Taiwanese fashion in the twentieth century had a variety of cultural influences.

As early as the 1920s, Western dress was fashionable among elite Taiwanese men. Women’s fashion took two parallel courses: On the one hand was a modernized Chinese dress known in Cantonese as a cheongsam 長衫 (qipao 旗袍 in Mandarin), which came from Shanghai fashion; on the other, the European “Roaring Twenties” style, via Tokyo. In addition to the activities of the leaders of the island, entertainment, and the press, there was also the presence of the traditional Japanese kimono. Through paintings, photography, and media of the time, we can discern social class, level of education, and personal identity based on style of dress. An example is the works of Chen Jin 陳進 (Chen Chin, 1907–1998), Taiwan’s first female artist to study in Japan and one of the first three painters to win Taiten 台展, the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (1927–1936). Her first paintings were selected while she was still studying in Japan from 1927 to 1929. Four out of the five are portraits of women wearing kimono, a typical subject of Japanese-style painting (nihonga 日本画). ³

The Cheongsam (Qipao) as Motif and the Dress as Costume

After returning to Taiwan in the 1930s, Chen Jin worked as a teacher at the Pingtung 屏東 Girls’ High School in the south. Her paintings from this period show a more characteristic style and ambitious motifs. However, she finally abandoned the kimono in two portraits selected by the Imperial Exhibition of Fine Arts in Japan in 1934 and 1935, choosing to dress her subjects in qipao instead. Henceforth, this change of dress in her painting was also a successful attempt to attract the attention of the jury of the Japanese Official Exhibition, the Imperial Exhibition of Fine Arts of Japan (Teiten 帝展 or Teikoku bijutsu-in tenrankai 帝国美術院展覧会). The painter’s family still keeps a black-and-white photograph of the time concerning one of these two paintings, the famous Leisurely of 1935. ⁴ It shows a domestic scene of a reclining woman wearing a summer qipao, pausing for a moment of contemplation during her reading. She is propped up on her right shoulder, her right hand extended to her left hand, which holds a book. According to sources, the model was the painter’s older sister, Chen Xin 陳新 (Chen Hsin), who also posed for her sister on other occasions (Fig. 14.1).

Fig. 14.1

a Photo of Chen Xin, 1935. Collection: Hsiao Chengchia (son of Chen Jin, owner of photo) b Chen Jin (or Chen Chin 陳進 1907–1998), Leisurely [sitter: Chen Xin, Chen Jin’s older sister], 1935, 152 x 169.2 cm, gouache on silk, Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Chen Jin’s attempt to impress the jury is more evident in the painting itself. She chose patterns in a light color on an opaque green background, which gives the impression of a sumptuous velvet fabric, and she painted her model wearing a luxurious qipao. The woman reclines on a carved wooden canopy bed, which is difficult to see clearly in the photograph. ⁵ The painting also includes careful depictions of many decorative details: knots; edging on the qipao; the frog closures at the woman’s neck, a silver brooch, a bracelet on one wrist and a green jade ring on each hand; and the fine carving on the bottom of the bed. Chen creates a spectacular scene by transforming the qipao into an evening dress. Despite the aesthetics of the jury of the official exhibition of the time, it was also a competition painting with respect to a qipao fashion legend.

But would this legend created by the painter not indeed be an illusion? If the photograph of Chen Xin makes us picture qipao as a daily dress of Taiwanese women during the Japanese era, this is not the case with her painter sister. According to photographs of the time, Chen Jin often wore kimono during and after her study in Japan. She was invited to be a jury member for the Taiten exhibition three times in the 1930s and always appeared in kimono. A photograph taken during a walk in downtown Tokyo is the only one in which she could be called “chic” in the Western sense (Fig. 14.2). In the shot, she wears a two-piece ensemble: a black jacket or blouse without lapels and with short, fluttering sleeves, a black knee-length skirt, sheer black hose, and Oxford-style heels. ⁶ She was not the only woman to appreciate this kind of “dressing up”; taste for the fashions of Europe reached its peak in Taiwan via Tokyo in the 1930s.

Fig. 14.2

[Source Hontō fujin-fuku no kaizen 本島婦人服の改善 [Improvement of Taiwan women’s clothing] (Taipei: Kokumin Seishin Sōdōin Taihokushū Shibu, 國民精神總動員, 1940, p. 6). National Taiwan Library, New Taipei City]

Remodel elevation view by converting a cheongsam to a Western-style dress, 1940

As for the Japanese government, its strategy for the modernization of society in Taiwan now meant a Westernized way of life. Implemented in 1940 by the Association of the Mobilization of the Spirit of the People (Kokumin seishin sōdōin 國民精神總動員 ), a sewing pattern shows how to “remodel” the women of Taiwan by converting a cheongsam to a Western-style dress (Fig. 14.3). ⁷ According to Chang Hsiao-hung 張小虹, this model of changing women’s clothing was propaganda spread by the colonial authority in three ways: First, shortening the tail of a cheongsam by folding the two darts to make a skirt and then cutting the collar back was a stylistic transformation on a practical level. Second, the “improvement” of traditional clothing (the cheongsam of mainland China) by transforming it into modern clothing (a Western dress) was the imposition of the identity of the colonial culture on the politics of clothing in a “figurative meaning.” ⁸ Finally, the idea of inventing a style that bridged the gap between cultures—a cheongsam remade into a modern dress—metaphorically shows how delicate the colonial policy of assimilation could be. ⁹ The more the policy of assimilation of colonial power developed, the more Taiwanese society was “modernized” as well. Barely a century ago, a Taiwanese woman felt comfortable wearing a qipao at home in front of a camera, like Chen Xin . She could also change into a dress and heels to go out, and paint portraits of women in traditional Chinese or Japanese dress, like Chen Jin .

Fig. 14.3

[Collection: Hsiao Chengchia (son of Chen Jin, owner of photo)]

Photo of Chen Jin 陳進 (right) wearing a two-piece Western-style dress in Tokyo, 1930s

In the same year that Leisurely was selected for the official exhibition in Japan, a portrait entitled The Lady at Rest by Li Meishu 李梅樹 (Li Mei-shu, 1902–1983) was also honored by the jury from Taiwan (Fig. 14.4). ¹⁰ This award-winning painting includes many references to famous works of art such as the background, which pays homage to Water Lilies by Monet, and the color plates scattered in the foreground, including of The Bathers by Renoir and Doctor Gachet by Van Gogh, as if the painter is paying tribute to the Impressionists. The painting’s subject, a young woman, sits in a rattan armchair in a sunny garden wearing a red-patterned blouse with a green scarf on her lap, holding her left index finger to her chin. Her crossed legs are covered by a muslin skirt, opaque white hose, and white high-heeled Mary Janes. The predominance of white and other pale colors creates a bright image. Li Meishu always had his relatives model for his paintings. Thus, through his portrait, Li represented women’s fashion of the elite rural class.

Fig. 14.4

[Collection: The Li Mei-shu Memorial Gallery, New Taipei City]

Li Meishu (1902–1983), The Lady in Rest, 1935, 162 x 130 cm, oil on canvas

Fashion in the Press and Images of City Life

Aside from the Taiten exhibition, 1935 was also a year of prosperity in the Japanese colonial era. The Japanese government organized the Taiwan World Expo to celebrate its fortieth year in Taiwan. ¹¹ From the beginning of October to the end of November 1935, the Exposition halls attracted more than a million visitors, a third of the population of the island. It was the event of the year. The Taiwan New Daily News (Taiwan nichinichi shinpō 台湾日日新報, 1898–1944) was one of the main sponsors, organizing a postcard contest of the island’s scenic sites in addition to news columns about the exhibition.

Magazines also played their role and did not miss their chance to cover the fashions, like Taiwan Women’s Sphere (Taiwan fujinkai 台湾婦人界, 1934–1939). Published in Japanese, this monthly review was aimed at both Japanese women residing in Taiwan and Taiwanese women who had studied Japanese. The subtitle of the magazine, “The only Taiwanese magazine for women and family,” was also a compromise term to the modernized Japanese system with the profile of an ideal woman in a pre-industrial society such as Taiwan’s in the early twentieth century. The cover of the May issue of 1935 was an illustration of a woman nine heads tall (the typical human is seven heads tall), as exaggerated as fashion illustrations of today (Fig. 14.5). The model wears a floral evening dress with a short blue cape and holds white gloves in her right hand, which is adorned with an Art Deco bracelet. The whole effect is evocative of Paris in the 1930s.

Fig. 14.5

[Collection: Taipei Fine Arts Museum]

Lin Zhizhu, Recess, 1939, 195.5 x 152 cm, gauche on paper

The November 1934 issue of Tours aux Maîtres (師匠めぐり) includes photographs of a sewing workshop called “Très Bien” which was held by Madame James, a designer and the wife of English teacher William James, who taught in Taipei. ¹² The photograph above was taken in a department at the Kikumoto Department Store (Kikumoto hyakkaten 菊元百貨店, 1932–1945) in downtown Taipei. It depicts a collection of Western-style dresses made by the house. The other was taken during a sewing-class session. The house not only held seasonal fashion shows; the young “ladies” of Taipei at the time were also enthusiastic about joining the sewing classes.

In the same magazine, fashion also manifests in food advertising, for example in an advertisement for black tea produced by Mitsui in 1934. The advertisement is a drawing in red and white of a woman holding a cup of tea at a table. She is wearing a cloche hat over bobbed hair, fashionable in Europe since 1920. Her short-sleeved dress is simple and elegant. On the cup, three straight-lines extol the virtues of the color, the scent, and the taste of the tea. This illustrates a phenomenon of the 1930s: Fashion did not only mean a change of clothes; it represented a perfect image highlighting consumer society. As drinking black tea was fashionable, cafés and tearooms represented cosmopolitan life.

A 1939 painting by Lin Zhizhu 林之助 (Lin Chih-chu, 1917–2008) depicts three coffee shop waitresses wearing uniforms consisting of a blue dress with a white apron, warming themselves around a small cast-iron stove (Fig. 14.6). The white headbands in their hair and their black, brown, and gray socks attract the eye of a presumed young male viewer contemplating a rendezvous. ¹³ The painter chose green, white, brown, and other cool colors for the tone of this painting except for a drawing of a tank on the little red notebook in the pocket of the waitress on the right, which suggests that this was a wartime painting.

Fig. 14.6

Cover, Taiwan fujin-kai 臺湾婦人界 [Taiwan Women’s Sphere], May 1935 issue

Perusing the photographic archives, we can see that old photographs also play an important role in exhibitions on the fashion of the time. Family photographs are often a good source. Looking at a picture from the early twentieth century of the Taiwanese family of Chen Chiu-jhin 陳秋瑾, ¹⁴ we can also observe hierarchy reflected the different clothes of family members. In the 1930s, her grandfather and grandmother already had four daughters; as two of the couple’s sons died very young, the husband then took another wife, who had been a geisha. In this photograph, taken around 1938, Chen Chiu-jhin’s great-grandmother Mrs. Shen (Lin Bao 林寶, 1877–1948) sits in the center of the second row with the wife of her eldest son on her right, both wearing traditional cheongsam in black. Behind Mrs. Shen, her two sons are standing in the third row, each wearing a suit with a white shirt and a tie. The youngest son Shen Hanchuan 沈漢川 (1911–1946) stands to the left of Mrs. Shen, between his mother and his wife. But his older brother Shen Gang 沈港 (1900–1982) is not near him, nor behind their mother. Two steps behind his younger brother, Shen Gang stands behind his wife and his concubine. The latter is wearing a Shanghai-style qipao from the 1930s. In the picture, she appears much younger than Shen’s wife, who is to her left, holding her youngest daughter in her arms. The young wife is well made up and wearing long bangs and a Shanghai qipao. The eldest daughter of the Shen family, A Li 阿梨 (1921–1986), who sits next to her, also has the same hairstyle. A Li, like her three aunts sitting in the second row on the right, the four ladies wear the “one-piece” dresses with or without belts, lapel collar, turtleneck, sailor collar, and sewn sleeves: the foundation of women’s fashion in Taiwan at the time. According to the author, the Shanghai-style qipao was preferred by female actresses and entertainers, like geisha. ¹⁵

Among the little girls in the foreground, Shen Hanchuan’s second daughter, A Hua 阿華 (b. 1934), is standing in the center of the first row wearing a kimono with a pair of geta 下駄 (Japanese clogs). Although she was barely five years old at the time of the picture, her dress reminds us in concrete terms of a historical visual identity: a Taiwanese family of the early twentieth century under Japanese rule. ¹⁶ We would be surprised that there was no difficulty in merging four modes of dress in one family photograph: cheongsam (traditional and modern qipao), the men’s Western costume, the ladies’ dresses, and the little girl’s kimono (Fig. 14.7).

Fig. 14.7

[Source Chen Chiu-jhin, Searching for Taiwanese Visual Cultural Signs: The Stories of Old Photographs, Xunzhao, Taiwan tuxiang: Laozhaopian de gushi 尋找臺灣圖像: 老照片的故事 (Taipei: National Museum of History, 2010, p. 144)]

Photo of Shen Family, 1938

From this point onward, mixed-gender encounters of young people were not confined to cafés or tearooms in the city. There were more than a dozen professional photographers in Taiwan during the interwar period. Most of them owned galleries or workshops that contained studios for taking snapshots and a darkroom for developing and printing photographs. Moreover, some photographers were not content with indoor creations; they carried their cameras everywhere. Deng Nanguang 鄧南光 (Teng Nan-kuang, 1907–1971), born to a Hakka family in northern Taiwan, studied in Japan in 1922. He obtained a Kodak autographic camera by chance while he was still a law student and fell in love with photography. He is known for his “on the street” portrait series from the 1930s: first in Tokyo, then in Taipei after his return to Taiwan in 1935. The “Taipingding” series (today’s Yanping North Road) taken in the late 1930s shows the streets of the Dadaocheng 大稻埕 district, which was the commercial center of Taipei (Fig. 14.8). The very lively images are of passersby on the street, on foot, in bicycle rickshaws, women wearing dresses, qipao, and kimono.

Fig. 14.8

Deng Nanguang (1907–1971), Taipingding, 1940, 15 x 8.5 cm, gelatin sliver print. Collection: Chien yun-bing

[Source Taipei: Cyber Island : Resources Databases of Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures, http://cyberisland.ndap.org.tw/g/qwwoHkvlwzAudNbBItDulex (30, May 2018, accessed)]

Finally, another fashion that we discover in Taiwanese photography is the trend for young women to dress in the “garçonne” or “tomboy” style. There are about ten shots from three photographers, Yang Baocai 楊寶財 (1900–1990), Wu Jinmiao 吳金淼 (1915–1984), and Lin Shouyi 林壽鎰 (1916–2011). ¹⁷ The practice of disguising oneself as another sex is common in traditional Chinese opera, but this “cosplay” in photograph galleries seems to have had a broad appeal in the city in Taiwan, especially for young women. Taken with box cameras in photography studios decorated with stage curtains and fine furniture, these portraits reveal a discreet fantasy. Since the photographs of young women disguised as men were taken in privacy, these portraits also suggest women’s desire to liberate themselves from other people’s interpretations. This practice of “cosplay” would later become a portrait-gallery business, as in the big wedding-photograph albums that we still see today in Taiwan as well as in other countries in Asia.

Wu and Lin each left a wedding photograph dated to the 1930s in which the “husband” was a woman wearing a man’s suit. The tomboy trend was started in Taiwan by Yang Baocai , who established his Yangbao Photography Studio in the Nisshinmachi 日新町 district of Taipei in 1921, then in Talongdong 大龍峒 where the Confucian temple is located. Most of his clients were the elite citizens of downtown Taipei. As with Yang in China around 1935, Lin Shouyi’s photographs include more such female “cosplayers.” Lin also left about one hundred self-portraits. In making his photographs, he integrated himself, with his models, in the staging of his shot. It was his oeuvre; not just a commercial product, but a work of art. As we see this photograph, dated 1940, three young women are posed in suits with their photographer (Fig. 14.9). The latter, standing on the far left in the photograph, is young and proud, his arms crossed over his chest. The woman on the far right, also with arms crossed, is wearing a black Chinese tunic suit with a newsboy cap; she seems to fear nothing. Two women share the chair in the center. One, wearing a scarf, sits with her arms and legs crossed to her right while the other, perched on the arm of the chair, rests her arm along her friend’s shoulder. These women also wear hats. Both of them wear fedoras, and the left one in suit and tie. Looking at this photograph, the impression for us is not one of a formal portrait, but rather a splendid memory, à la recherche du temps perdu, of four friends in the bloom of youth.

Fig. 14.9

Lin, Shouyi (1929–1966), Photographer (left) with three ladies “à la garçonne,” 1940

[Source Chien Yun-bing, In Sight-Tracing the Photography Studio Images, Ningwang de shidai: Rizhi shiqi xiezhen guan de yingxiang zhuixun 凝望的時代—日治時期寫真館的影像追尋 (Taipei: Sunnygate Phototimes, 2010, p. 244)]

The history of fashion in Taiwan shows an aspect that was, in a way, more authentic than political history. There was no such thing as a single dominant style. Fashion is about juxtaposing and fusing multiple traditions that tell the pluralistic stories of the inhabitants. It would be interesting to see fashion in Taiwan as a showcase of the intersection of Sino-Japanese modernity during the time of sustained contact with the West.

Notes

• 1. The baojia 保甲, civilian control system of the Japanese government of Taiwan, officially prohibited the binding of young girls’ feet in 1915 and imposed a fine of 100 yen for violators.

• 2. Wu Wen-hsing 吳文星, “Riju shiqi Taiwan de fangzu duanfa yundong” 日據時期台灣的放足斷髮運動 [The Foot-Releasing and Hair-Cutting Movement in Taiwan During the Japanese Occupation], Zhongyang yanjiuyuan minzuxue yanjiu zhuankan 中央研究院民族學研究專刊 [Journal of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica] 16 (1986): 69–108.

• 3. At the time, the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (Taiten) was divided into two sections for paintings: Western-style painting (seiyōga 西洋画), which was further divided into watercolor and oil painting; and traditional style, further divided into black-and-white and colored-ink painting. The Commissioner-General of the Exhibition later came up with the East Asian (tōyōga 東洋画) theme instead of nihonga . See John Clark, “Taiwanese Painting Under the Japanese Occupation,” Journal of Oriental Studies 25, no. 1 (1987): 63–105.

• 4. The painting is currently in the collection of Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM).

• 5. There is another picture of Chen Xin playing with her child on a four-poster bed. Chen Jin merged these two photographs of her sister for the composition of this work. See Lin Yu-chun 林育淳, ed., Taiwan no josei Nihonga-ka seitan hyaku-nen kinen: Chin Shin ten 1907–1988 台灣の女性日本畫家生誕100年紀念:陳進展 1907–1988 [Centennial Celebration of the Birth of Taiwan’s Woman Painter: Exhibition of Works by Chen Jin , 1907–1988] (Tōkyō: Shibuya Kuritsu Shōtō Bijutsukan, 2006), 151.

• 6. Lin, Taiwan no josei Nihonga-ka seitan hyaku-nen kinen, 153.

• 7. Kokumin Seishin Sōdōin Taihokushū Shibu 國民精神總動員台北州支部, ed., Hontō fujin fukusō no kaizen 本島婦人服装の改善 [Improving Women’s Clothing on Our Island] (Taipei: Kokumin Seishin Sōdōin Taihokushū Shibu, 1940), 6.

• 8. Chang Hsiao-hung 張小虹, “Qipao de weizhouzhe” 旗袍的微縐摺 [The Differential Folds of Qipao], chap. 7 in Shishang xiandaixing 時尚現代性 [Fashioning Modernity] (Taipei: Lianjing Chuban Gongsi, 2016), 321.

• 9. Chang Hsiao-hung, 315–348.

• 10. Having won the prize at Taiten in 1935, this original oil painting “ Ikofu on’na ” 憩ふ女 belongs to the painter’s family in the Li Mei-shu Memorial Gallery, Sanxia District, his hometown in New Taipei City.

• 11. The Universal Exhibition of Taiwan in 1935 was titled the Shisei yonjū-shūnen kinen Taiwan hakurankai 始政四十周年記念台湾博覽會. See a map of one of the parks of the exhibition from the catalogue Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program, TELDAP. (“Shisei yonjū-shūnen kinen Taiwan hakurankai kaijō haichizu” 始政四十周年記念臺灣博覽會會場配置圖 [Exhibition Site Layout of the Universal Exhibition of Taiwan in 1935], Shuwei diancang yu shuwei xuexi lianhe mulu 數位典藏與數位學習聯合目錄 [Catalogue of Digital Archive and Digital Learning], accessed August 27, 2017, http://catalog.digitalarchives.tw/item/00/21/a3/21.html).

• 12. See Wang Shiang-ting 王湘婷, “Rizhi shiqi nüxing tuxiang fenxi: Yi ‘Taiwan furen jie’ weili” 日治時期女性圖像分析: 以《臺灣婦人界》為例 [A Pictorial Semiotic Analysis of Taiwan Women’s Sphere During Japanese Occupation of Taiwan] (Master’s thesis, National Chengchi University, 2011), 46–47.

• 13. Lin Zhizhu’s Recess (1939) gouache on paper is in the TFAM collection. In 1940, the painting was part of the fourth exhibition of the studio of the painter Kodama Kibō 児玉希望 (1898–1971) in Tōkyō.

• 14. Chen Chiu-jhi 陳秋瑾, “Shenjia de gushi” 沈家的故事 [Story of the Shen family], in Xunzhao Taiwan tuxiang: Laozhaopian de gushi 尋找臺灣圖像: 老照片的故事 [Searching for Taiwanese Visual Cultural Signs: The Stories of Old Photographs], Shiwu congkan 史物叢刊 [Artifacts and History] 63 (Taipei: Guoli Lishi Bowuguan, 2010), 128–147.

• 15. The fashion houses in the Taipingding 太平町 district were owned by Shanghai fashion tailors. There were more than 200 geisha in Taiwan in the 1930s, according to the Taipei press. See Chen Hui-wen 陳惠雯, “Chengshi, dian, jia yu funü: Dadaocheng funü richang shenghuoshi” 城市、店、家與婦女: 大稻埕婦女日常生活史 [City, Shops, Families and Women: A History of Women’s Everyday Life in Ta-tao-Cheng] (Master’s thesis, National Taiwan University, 1997).

• 16. With the arrival of the seventeenth Governor-General, Kobayashi Seizō 小林躋造, in 1936, the Japanese power in Taiwan began to change to a strategy of stricter control in favor of the Japanese Empire. The Kōminka Movement 皇民化, literally “transform the people into subjects of the emperor,” and its philosophy prevailed until the end of the second Sino-Japanese war in 1944.

• 17. Chien Yun-ping 簡永彬, Ningwang de shidai: Rizhi shiqi xiezhen guan de yingxiang zhuixun 凝望的時代—日治時期寫真館的影像追尋 [In-Sight: Tracing the Photography Studio Images of the Japanese Period in Taiwan] (Taipei: Xia Lu Yuan Guoji, 2010).