In Doctors Within Borders, Ming-cheng Lo discusses the experience of Taiwanese doctors under Japanese colonial rule. By examining the viewpoints of colonial subjects, this work expands our understanding of colonialism in East Asia. The position of Taiwanese doctors continuously fluctuated between the colonial state, Taiwan society, and the culture of their medical profession. These doctors were ‘in-betweens’ in various ways. They received colonial education, and benefited from the Japanese rule, but at the same time they were a part of the Taiwan ethnic community. Though they enjoyed liberalism and autonomy within their professional culture, they remained subordinate to their Japanese mentors and colleagues. While they were the most modernized or ‘Japanized’ elements in Taiwan, they nonetheless engaged in social movements and contributed to the formation of Taiwan's civil society.

This in-between position of Taiwanese doctors reflects the ambiguity of Japanese colonialism. Japanese colonized their Asian neighbors, who were culturally and racially similar to themselves. To counter Western powers, Japanese identified themselves as “anti-colonial colonizers.” They adopted the theory of “scientific colonialism,” and nurtured doctors as a native elite who would develop it. Thus Taiwanese doctors positioned themselves on the borderline between the colonizers and the colonized.

Lo traces transformations of Taiwanese doctors' identities through three time periods: 1920–1931, 1931–1936 and 1937–1945. Under Japanese rule, the medical profession was a part of the colonial system, but, as the medical community in Taiwan developed, Taiwanese doctors began to possess their own professional autonomy, and in the 1920s they engaged in modernization and liberalization movements. They called themselves “national physicians” who could cure and help the Taiwanese nation, and they criticized colonial policies.

However, in the 1930s and the 1940s, as the colonial state expanded its regulating power it encroached on the professional autonomy of Taiwan's medical community. After 1931, the colonial state became increasingly intolerant of social and cultural movements. Cultural as well as political activities were destroyed and suffocated, and many doctor-activists withdrew from civil society. Moreover, Taiwanese doctors “became increasingly incorporated into the expanding imperial medical systems” (p. 94).

During the Sino-Japanese War period (1937–1945), the Japanese colonizers further enforced their ‘Japanization’ policy and promoted assimilation of the Taiwanese. Taiwanese were educated to be Japanese, and Taiwanese doctors became a significant part of the imperial medical system. Ironically, the war provided Taiwanese doctors with opportunities for upward mobility within the medical community. While ethnic boundaries between Taiwanese and Japanese became obscure, Taiwanese doctors did not identify themselves as Japanese. Instead, they identified themselves with modern medical science, which was supposed to have no ethnic or national boundaries. By doing so, these doctors rejected the category of ethnicity itself, and subtly took exception to the ‘Japanization’ policy.

Lo's work is a significant contribution to the literature on Taiwanese history. Moreover, this work demonstrates that colonialism was not a one-way process. While colonizers imposed their logic on colonial subjects, colonial subjects could interpret and alter the colonizers' logic in their own terms. This work also highlights the political and colonial power of medical science. Lo's work suggests that precisely because medical science was meant to save human lives and had universal appeal, it had the political and cultural power to legitimatize colonial rule. At the same time, the colonized used the universal value of modern medical science to alter, subvert, and even challenge the colonial rule.

———Chieko Nakajima, DePaul University