In the beginning of 1930s, local government of Taichung City--which was then under the colonial rule of Japan, launched a project to write the city’s chronicle almost the same time as the prefectural government of Yamaguchi in Japan embarked on a similar task; furthermore, the two governments both published their written work in 1934. Despite the coincidence of time that they engaged in the two similar projects, one can find difference of writing policy and style between the two historical works. The chronicle of Taichung, for instance, put an emphasis on the city’s role as a colony, whereas the chronicle left by Yamaguchi historians displays contemporary tendency of local society at that time. The purpose of writing is found of causing such difference.
During 1972 and 1984, the city government of Taichung made part of the accomplished chronicle public, but a complete writing of local history was never done until 2003, when modern historians began a new project in order to resume the written assignment. The project unveiled its revision of Taichung City Chronicle in December 2008. As for Yamaguchi Prefecture, in fact, Japanese historians had even earlier engaged in resuming the work in 1994, given the society’s growing concern that the prefecture is in need of a complete chronicle under the trend of chronicle writing in Japan after the Second World War. The prefectural government formed a task force to take on the assignment and published its result in 1990s.
This essay compares the two revised chronicles and finds their major differences. The new Taichung City Chronicle, first of all, has been implemented in accordance with local governors’ expectation and was jointly fulfilled by the government and academics. The newly accomplished chronicle of Yamaguchi Prefecture is presented as a collaborative brainstorm of local residents and prefectural government; therefore, it highlights popular interpretation.
Secondly, the new Taichung City Chronicle elaborates modern incidents much more than historical happenings to scrutinize contemporary history and the status-quo of Taichung, in addition to the priority of events than time sequence. The revision of Yamaguchi County Chronicle explores historic incidents more than modern occurrences under the emphasis on restoring the historical scene. It also makes much of time than each happening.
These differences suggest that historians in Taiwan and Japan developed their individual chronicle writing styles based on their own historical background. The way that they present the works also demonstrate individual expertise and specialty they created under different background. There are similarities founded in the two chronicles, too, concerning popularity-orientation, expertise-orientation, information-orientation, contemporary-orientation, mission-orientation and local-orientation.
To sum up the comparative study of the two local chronicles, the new Taichung City Chronicle focuses on discussing modern happenings than history, emphasizing the importance of review and the city’s multi-cultural establishment, which made it to become reference of other countries for a similar project. The new chronicle presented by Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture, otherwise, details history than contemporary incidents. It encourages historians’ self-examination, forming special database and a task force, the “Yamaguchi County Chronicle Editing Division” to conduct the mission, which significantly differ from the way their Taiwanese counterparts did.