KO Iku-jo is Full-Time Lecturer at Meisei University, Department of Humanities. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo, majoring in Area Studies. She specializes in social and women’s history of modern and contemporary Taiwan. Her current research focuses on the connections between Taiwanese fashions and power in Taiwan under colonial rule. By scrutinizing Chinese dresses originated from China, imported Western clothing which symbolized modernity, and the Japanese kimono brought by colonialists, and by taking up the modern girl as an entry point, she addresses the following overlapping problematics: politicization of clothing, modernization of the colony, and stratification of class. Her main publications include: (1) Kindai Taiwan Josei Shi: Nihon no Shokumin Tochi to Shin Josei no Tanjo　(Women's History in Modern Taiwan: The Birth of the 'New Women' under Japanese Colonial Rule), Tokyo: Keisoshobo (2001); (2) “Shokuminchi no Ho to Kanshu” (Laws and Customs in a Colony – the Sale of Girls in Taiwanese Societies) in Shokuminchi Teikoku Nihon no Hoteki Tenkai (The Legal Development of the Japanese Empire) ; (3) “Motomerareru Shin Josei Zo: Nihon Tochi Soki ni okeru Taiwan no Shakai henyo (In Search of a New Image of Women: Social Change in Taiwan during the Early Japanese Occupation)” Chugoku Josei Shi Kenkyu (The Journal of Historical Studies on Chinese Women), no.7, 1997.