Book contents
- Geographies of Gender
- Geographies of Gender
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Text
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Woman Question and Interwar Japan’s International Engagements
- 2 Empire Apart, Empire Together
- 3 Becoming a Taiwanese Man
- 4 When the Hearth Was at Once Warm and Cold
- 5 Freedom in a State of Flux
- 6 Stories Marginal Women Wove
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Becoming a Taiwanese Man
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2025
- Geographies of Gender
- Geographies of Gender
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Text
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Woman Question and Interwar Japan’s International Engagements
- 2 Empire Apart, Empire Together
- 3 Becoming a Taiwanese Man
- 4 When the Hearth Was at Once Warm and Cold
- 5 Freedom in a State of Flux
- 6 Stories Marginal Women Wove
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter demonstrates how young male Taiwanese elites turned to gendered masculinity in response to colonial redefinitions of women within the family and marriage from the 1920s onward. Taiwanese masculinity derived from the mixture of Han Chinese tradition and Japanese colonialism. Chinese men had developed their masculinity on sociocultural standings and power in and outside of the household. Meanwhile, male Taiwanese elites often received higher education in Japan, and they built Taiwanese nationalism on calls for regulating or ending the practices of bride prices, daughter adoption, and premarital sex among ordinary Taiwanese men and women. In those top-down calls, Taiwanese elites defined themselves as men in terms of their ability to facilitate individual willpower and liberalize society. Far from being personal, their masculinity made it necessary for the elites to work with the colonial authorities to materialize family reforms in the late 1920s. To shore up their sociopolitical standing, those elites held women responsible for obstructing family reforms and painted them in a negative light, constructing masculinity while assigning additional gendered burdens.
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- Information
- Geographies of GenderFamily and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan, pp. 115 - 149Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025