On Kobayashi Yoshinori's On Taiwan

Abstract

Part of manga, or comic, artist Kobayashi Yoshinori’s “New Arrogant-ist Manifesto,” serialized in the magazine SAPIO beginning in summer 2000, was published as a paperback in November 2001 under the title “On Taiwan”: New Arrogant-ist Manifesto SPECIAL (hereafter On Taiwan). More than 250,000 copies of this book were sold in Japan. In February 2001 a Chinese translation of the book was published in Taiwan, provoking an immense reaction in Taiwanese society. To summarize briefly, On Taiwan is a manga text in which Kobayashi selectively uses so-called pro-Japanese opinion in Taiwan to legitimize past Japanese colonial rule.Manga artist Kobayashi is also a foundingmember of the Japanese Society for Historical Textbook Reform, a group whose members exhibit varying degrees of conservativeness. He is a figure positioned as