Sumei Wang, "Radio and Urban Rhythms in 1930s Colonial Taiwan"

I'm going to do some blogging about scholarly articles I've found related to communication practices in Taiwan. I thought I'd start with this one because I saw that there's an exhibition on the history of communications technology in Taiwan that has opened in Taipei. 

Wang, Sumei. (2018). Radio and urban rhythms in 1930s colonial Taiwan. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 38(1), 147-162. https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2017.1285152

Wang's article traces the rise of radio broadcasting in colonial Taiwan, from its beginnings in 1925 through the 1930s, which is her main period of focus. She makes the argument that although some scholars see the mass culture created by media like radio as "an instrument of social control and a vehicle for the promotion of hegemony" (p. 159), the advent of radio in Taiwan was more than that. Along with  phonographs, newspapers, cafés, dance halls, and theaters, radio created a consumer culture in Taiwan among the urban middle class. At the same time, she argues that radio contributed to a shift in the rhythms of Taiwanese culture by bringing a standardized way of telling time from the public sphere and into the home. (Until 1921, "clocks were synchronized according to the sound of a cannon fired daily by the military at 12:00 p.m." [p. 153].) Wang points out that "[a]fter the advent of the radio in Taiwan, every day at 11:59 am and 9:20 PM, immediately before the end of broadcasting, the radio announcer began a count- down: 50, 40, ... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 s. The audience gradually became used to the temporal order provided by the radio" (p. 154).

Wang also discusses the programming provided on station JFAK, Taipei's first radio station that was established by the Taiwan Hōsō Kyōkai (THK). 

 

JFAK Radio Tower (原台北放送局放送亭), New Park, Taipei

She notes that the station did not only broadcast programs about Japan: 

Because the population of Japanese residents numbered only 270,000 in Taiwan, compared with the five million native Taiwanese, THK acknowledged that, to increase the number of radio subscribers, the programmes had to attract Taiwanese listeners. Therefore, programmes on Taiwanese music, history, entertainment, and business information were introduced. The radio station also invited artists to perform their music in real-time broadcasts, and reviewed newly released pop records (p. 151)

Not only did some THK programs have a Taiwan focus, but  

[o]n 9 September 1934, THK produced the programme ‘Taiwanese Evening’, made available to listeners across all of the Japanese territories, and it later became a regular monthly show. This revealed that Taiwan was not only a passive receiver situated on the fringe of the Japanese Empire; on the contrary, through radio broadcasting, it could transmit its own culture to the mainland, and thus was also an exporter of culture. (p. 151)

Wang's article goes beyond radio, however, and in fact it is sometimes a bit challenging to understand the reason that radio is the focus of the title and abstract--there's also a lot in the article about newspapers, phonographs, and even bus schedules and their contribution to urban life and "structured punctuality" in 1930s Taiwan. At the beginning of the article, Wang proposes to use Lin Huikun's (林煇焜) 1933 serial novel Inviolable Destiny (《爭へぬ運命》, later translated into Chinese as 《命運難違》) as evidence for the common role of radio in urban life in colonial Taiwan. However, many of her examples from the serialized novel have to do with other 

rich depictions of urban life at the time. For example, buses, taxies and bicycles pass through busy cities; viewing movies in theatres was a form of popular entertainment for urban residents; and young females could visit public spaces unaccompanied. All of these examples indicate modern life in metropolitan Taipei. (p. 155)

Overall, though, the article does a good job of depicting urban life in 1930s Taipei. It reminds me of the book 台灣西方文明初體驗 (Taiwan's First Experiences of Western Civilization), by 陳柔縉 (Chen Rouxin). And it has introduced me to a new work of Taiwanese fiction that I would like to read some day. (《命運難違》is available in Chinese translation, though it comes in two volumes. Maybe I'll buy it next time I'm in Taiwan...)