Introduction

Abstract

This book places Taiwan and Korea, the two ex-colonies and anticommunist allies, side by side in a “transwar” analytical framework, calling for the “de-colonializing” and “de-Cold warring”. It explores late colonial and early postcolonial Taiwanese and Korean popular fiction (such as romance and detective stories) and films (both propaganda and melodrama films), with a focus on issues surrounding gender, genre, state regulations, and spectatorship. In addition to concentrating on popular culture, this volume distinguishes itself from existing scholarship in its crossing the 1945 divide, and its shying away from the empire-centric or state hegemony-focused approach. The eight chapters, organized categorically as well as chronologically, explore how writers and directors negotiated censorship or the dominant discourse between 1930s and 1960s. They altogether demonstrate Japan’s colonial engineering and the statecraft of subsequent authoritarian regimes in Taiwan and South Korea were at best partially successful.