In 2017, Kyushu University (Kyudai), with support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, launched the Kyushu University Taiwan Studies Program. The aim was to bolster engagement and collaboration between students and researchers at Kyudai and their counterparts in Taiwan, so as to deepen cross-national understanding of history, politics, and culture.
The program has led to increased interaction between Western Japan and Taiwan through guest teaching, student exchanges, academic events and collaborative research.
A core element of the program has been two Taiwan-themed courses open to students from across the university. A class on “East Asian Images of Japan – Taiwanese Experience in Comparative Perspective” is offered to undergraduate students from all departments, and has proven popular with both overseas exchange students and local Japanese students. Around 30-40 students enroll in this course each spring. At the postgraduate level, “An Introduction to Taiwan Studies – History, Politics, Sociology and Culture” runs as a seminar series in the summer semester. Over the years, around 200 students have taken these courses, with extremely positive feedback. A number of students have gone on to journey deeper into Taiwan Studies, for example by undertaking Taiwan-related postgraduate research.
In addition to its regular annual courses, the program also features two or three intensive courses on Taiwan each year, offered by scholars from Kyushu University and other partner institutions. These courses are open to both undergraduate and postgraduate students and have been taken by well over 100 students since the program’s inception. Like the core courses, these intensive courses are aimed primarily at students unfamiliar with Taiwan and seek to pique their curiosity and encourage them to undertake further studies.
The annual “Taiwan Today” symposium, which takes a different theme each year, has also become a significant event in Japan’s Taiwan Studies calendar, constituting an important opportunity for scholars, journalists and others to share their Taiwan-related work with Japanese-speaking audiences. Online screenings of Taiwanese films (followed by discussions) have also been organized for students at Kyudai and beyond.
Of special importance are the people-to-people exchanges the program has facilitated, especially the annual Taiwan Field Trip jointly organized by Tokyo University and the Kyushu University Taiwan Studies Program. Each year, this field trip brings a group of around 30-40 students to Taiwan to learn about and experience aspects of Taiwan’s history and culture first-hand, and to engage with Taiwanese students and others. In addition to visiting sites and institutions in Taipei, the field trip also takes students to less-visited parts of Taiwan; destinations have included Green Island, Pingtung, Kinmen and Penghu. Kyushu University’s proximity to Taiwan makes it easier – and cheaper – for local students than for those further afield to engage in visits and exchanges. This direct experience of Taiwanese society and culture has proven valuable in stimulating interest in Taiwan Studies; for example, one of the Kyudai students who joined the very first field trip in 2018 went on to pursue a doctorate in Taiwan Studies.
Kyushu University’s location makes it both geographically and historically close to Taiwan. Off the north-western tip of Kyushu lies the island of Hirado, the birthplace of Zheng Cheng-gong (鄭成功). Each year, a group of Kyudai students make the short journey to Hirado to participate in the annual Zheng Cheng-gong Festival, which marks his birthday. This occasion, typically attended by delegations from Tainan and Fujian, offers a fascinating window into the varying interpretations of the legacy of a significant figure in East Asian history, and the politics that shape those interpretations. The Zheng Cheng-gong Festival thus provides a unique local take on the fraught politics of Taiwan’s identity in the early twenty-first century.
Indeed, interdisciplinary and comparative research on Taiwanese identity politics has been a principal focus of research conducted by scholars and students associated with the Kyushu Taiwan Studies Program, in collaboration with Taiwanese partners. Doctoral students have researched topics including the politics of language education and contemporary Taiwanese multiculturalism, and the history of the ROC’s “Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission” on Taiwan. Work is currently underway on a collaborative project investigating the intersection between local memory and national discourse on imperial and colonial history in Okinawan and Taiwanese Indigenous communities.
Student exchange programs between Kyushu University, National Taiwan Normal University, National Taiwan University and National Chi Nan University have expanded under the auspices of the Taiwan Studies Program, offering an important opportunity for Kyudai University students to gain longer-term experience and exposure in Taiwan and engage more in-depth research. A new MA double degree in Education, just launched by National Taiwan Normal University’s College of Education and Kyushu University’s School of Education, enrolled its first Japanese student in 2026.
As the Program’s founding director, Professor Edward Vickers, puts it, “the Kyushu Taiwan Studies Program has played a crucial role in expanding opportunities for Japanese students to learn about Taiwan, giving many an invaluable chance to experience the vibrant social and cultural life of contemporary Taiwan first-hand.”
As the Kyushu Taiwan Studies Program approaches its second decade, Taiwan is assuming an ever more important role in university-wide plans for internationalization at Kyushu University. Scholars from across the humanities and social sciences are working to expand the scope of their Taiwan-related work and further strengthen partnerships with Taiwanese counterparts.