ABSTRACT
In this chapter I emphasize how “the local was created in Taiwan.” So far, I have examined both the technology of governance and the art of social grafting. The imposition of law and order by the Japanese on Taiwanese society served as both a mechanism and a discipline of colonial governmentality. The creation of “the local” is key to our understanding of a Taiwan identity in transition. At the center of this spatiality, asmentioned earlier, was the county seat. It waswithin this bounded spatiality that wartimemobilization was launched, as illustrated by slogans such as gunka so¯do¯in! (general mobilization within a county). It was from this “bounded spatiality” that a Taiwan identity began to take shape. This mobilization structure with the county as the center of social and wartime mobilization would have a significant impact on postwar local politics and, in particular, on the new form of local factions.
