Taiwan Church News 3325 Edition November 16 - 22, 2015 Church Minstry The Tapani Incident in 1915: An Event Of Religious Mobilization Or Armed Uprising?Reported by Chen Yi-hsuan As the Tapani Incident in 1915 was one of the largest armed uprising, consisted of Han and Aboriginal people,against the Japanese government during her 50 years' ruling of Taiwan, a seminar entitled as " A centenary commemoration of Tapani Incident", organized by by NCKU's Deaprtment of Taiwanese Literature and Taiyang Cultural Studies Association, was held at National Museum of Taiwan Literature on November 11. Utilizing traditional lyrics, folklore, social history concepts like religious mobilization and the digital householdregistration data, Mr. Chou Ding-ban(traditional lyric singer), Prof Dai Wen-fong(Tainan University) and Prof Paul Katz(Distinguished Research Fellow of Academia Sinica) submitted their alternative analysis and refreshed the historical meanings of Tapani Incident. Through his singing a traditional lyric, Chou helped the audience to understand how Taiwanese peopleunderstood the major events of Tapani Incident. Prof Dai emphasized folklore was an important source in studying history, as some official data or bureaucratic documents were hiding rather than telling the truth of history. Prof Katz used statistical data and graphs of household registration to analyze: how the Tapani Incident participatorswere influenced and recruited by folk religion of fasting and royal lord worship; how such folk religions mobilized the people to organize and plan the armed uprising, as these participators believed they were bulletproof from modern guns and artilleries. Because the relationship between religion and revolution is always intimate from a global point of view, Prof Katz reminded the audience that, just like Boxer Revolt related to Righteous Harmony Group in China, the factor of religious mobilization behind Tapani Incident 100 years ago deserved our attention. We should not let our reflection of this historical armed uprising in Taiwan, being dominated by official propaganda as a revolution against the Japanese government, or overlooked by mainstream narratives as an aboriginal armed rising only. Translated by Peter Wolfe |