A Research On The Anti-Japanese War In The History Textbooks Of Taiwan Secondary School From 1949 To 1991

The History of the Anti-Japanese War is one of the hot topics and plays an important role in the study of Chinese modern history. The content of Anti-Japanese War history is presented to the society through textbook, which reflects political ideology of the country in a certain period and the mainstream social and historical consciousness as well as certain academic achievements. The study of the Anti-Japanese War in history textbooks helps the scholars understand the attitudes of the people and the society towards the Anti-Japanese War and the evolutionof their cognition.Due to its special status, Taiwan, under the control of the Kuomintang authorities, presents different characteristics along with time variation in the study of the Anti-Japanese War history. The authorized history textbooks from 1949 to 1991 have wider use and greater impact, thus the author selects these versions of the textbooks as research objects.The history of the Anti-Japanese War in Taiwan secondary school history textbooks mainly concentrates on the National History in terms of layout; while in terms of content, it shows the general trend of "strengthening---weakening---strengthening---weakening". From the perspective of the content change, the history of Anti-Japanese War in Taiwan secondary school history textbook is mainly divided into three periods. They are the September 18 th Incident(from 1931 to 1937), the defense phase of the Anti-Japanese War(from 1937 to the end of 1938), the stalemate stage of the Anti-Japanese War and the victory(from 1939 to1945). Such important historical events as the September 18 th Incident, the Xi’an Incident, the July 7 Incident of 1937, Kuomintang-Communist cooperation and Taiwan Retrocession are detailed explained. Taiwan secondary school history textbooks use abundant charts, exercises, annotations and other forms to help students understand the contents.By taking the Yalta Agreementas an exemplar, this paper adopts text analysis method to thoroughly dissect and explore the factors that influence the historicaldevelopment of the Anti-Japanese War history, and the connection between them. The Yalta Conference effectively promoted the process of Anti-Japanese. However, it also led to the independence of Outer Mongolia. The Soviet Unionplundered a large quantity of materials from China while in aid of the Chinese Communist Party. This paper analyzes the Anti-Japanese War in Taiwan secondary school history textbooks from the perspective of diachronic analysis. And it can be concluded that the change of the contents of Taiwan secondary school history textbooks is influenced by international environment. That is, changes in the relations between the mainland and the United States, and the relations between the mainland and the Soviet Union directly affect the policy of Taiwan.Taiwan historiography has experienced three stages from the domination of Historical Source School, the rise of explanationhistoriography to the history localization, which exerts significant influence on the compilation of the secondary school history textbooks in Taiwan as well as the selection of historical view. The revision of Taiwan secondary school history textbooks is affected not only by Taiwan history research, but also by policy of the Taiwan authorities and the international environment. In the process of development, Taiwan history textbooks have obviously experienced a series of phases, which are featured by constant enrichment of local history content, continuous breakthrough of thinking taboos, gradual reduction of ideology content, and cultivation of Chinese ethos throughout the books.