Ministry of the Interior Publishes Banned Songs Handbook

Source: Notes on Banned Songs During Taiwan’s Martial Law Era
From: Homeland Moon
Date: December 2, 2007Author: Lee Kun-cheng

Beginning in July 1971, the Ministry of the Interior started compiling and distributing handbooks of banned songs to media outlets. New provisions were also enacted allowing bans to be issued without specifying dates, file numbers, or reasons — making it entirely opaque how a song came to be banned. Furthermore, there had previously been a large number of agencies and organizations with the authority to ban songs, including the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of National Defense, the General Political Warfare Department, the National Institute of Music Research, the Music Association of the Republic of China, the Taiwan Provincial News Bureau, the Taiwan Provincial Police Administration, the Broadcasting Corporation of China, and, of course, the head of the secret police apparatus — the Taiwan Garrison Command.

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External Links

• The GIO’s Limitless Banning Power, and Lee Tai-hsiang’s “Olive Tree” That Almost Got Banned (The News Lens)
• The Formosa Era: The New President’s Inauguration Song Was Once a Banned Song in Taiwan (Gushi)
• Op-Ed, Tsao Yu-mei: The More You Ban It, the More Popular It Gets — Pop Songs That Were Once “Forbidden” (CommonWealth Magazine Independent Opinion)
• One “Formosa,” Each Wildly Misrepresented (Kuan Jen-chien) (Newtalk)
• The Beauty and Sorrow of Songwriting: A Study of the Song Censorship System During Martial Law (Airiti Library)