In the Japanese colonies Korea and Taiwan, the imperial policy from 1910 onwards required people to undergo cultural assimilation by eradicating their own national identity. This was enforced by the educational systems and policies which also regulated public behavior and clothing.
In Taiwan, Western, Japanese, and Taiwanese-style dress coexisted at the same time. Women adopted Western dress to avoid Japanese oppression, intellectuals wore Chinese dress to preserve tradition, and those who interacted with Japanese authority dress in Japanese clothes to copy their colonial masters. After 1930, the colonial government encouraged Taiwanese women explicitly to wear kimonos, which was not only well received by the Japanese. Some felt that allowing Taiwanese women to wear kimonos would blur the line between the rulers and the ruled.
When Japan annexed Korea in 1910, they praised their traditional clothes for its simplicity. By the mid-1930s this started to change and Japanese colonial government began to initiate policies aimed to discourage Koreans from wearing traditional white clothes. Koreans were persuaded to wear more colorful fabrics, mostly in the interest to destabilize Koreans’ sense of national cultural identity. This enforced policies caused Korean women to protest to protect their culture and history. During the colonial period, the kimono was seen primarily as the clothing of the colonisers and was rarely worn by Korean women.
01 Artist: Shimizu Kon (1912-1974) Artwork: 1941 – Japanese postcard of a Taiwanese woman wearing a Chinese Qipao. Titled: A Girl Moping Herself. Picture postcards were an important element of Japanese propaganda, to promote tourism and national identity. Taiwan’s majority Han population was represented through exotic female images while indigenous peoples were shown as culturally intact.
02 Artwork: ca 1930 – photography of Taiwanese woman wearing Kimono. Due to the hot climate of tropical Taiwan and their prohibitive price, kimonos remained rare.
03 Artwork: Cover from the fashion magazine Shinyeoseong, which was the first magazine for women in Korea published from 1923 to 1934. In order to promote a modern Korean society, magazines displayed a Westernised look, which became the standard for beauty in the 1930s. This included features like short hair, lighter skin tone, large eyes and straight nose, that did not reveal any racial or ethnic identity.
04 Artist: Chen Chin (Taiwanese, 1907 – 1998) Artwork: ca 1934 – Beauty under the Moon. Chen was born during Japanese rule of Taiwan. Her father was an official in the Japanese colonial government. Under the recognition and encouragement of her teacher, Gobara Koto (1887-1965), she became the first Taiwanese female artist to study in Japan.