Taiwan

Currently, more constructive assessments of the colonial past are emerging in Taiwan in line with the democratization process under way there. Taiwanese scholars are now able to research the hitherto sensitive Japanese period, and many have come to accept the colonial legacy as an intrinsic part of their island heritage and an important factor in Taiwan’s modern development. Nevertheless, colonialism and imperialism still seem reprehensible to the Taiwanese, and there is a lingering concern as to the dire effects of Japan’s late wartime efforts and the abrupt Japanese unconditional surrender in August 1945.

Befitting an updated history of Taiwan, this chapter reflects more the current Taiwanese perspective of the colonial past. This view allows for a broader frame of temporal and spatial reference. The Japanese period is envisioned as an integral part of Taiwan’s modern age, for throughout a longer continuum, extending from the Opium War (1839–42) to the present, the island has remained under foreign threat or outside domination, and its inhabitants have been continually exposed to modern Western and Asian influences. Moreover, colonial Taiwan is perceived within a larger Asian-Pacific context, not merely as a secluded island colony linked to metropolitan Japan.² As discussed below, Taiwan became involved in new patterns of overseas relationships and the Taiwanese, as Japanese subjects, derived a separate status and identity vis-á-vis mainland China and the expanding Japanese empire. This current perspective, with its sharper focus on the Taiwanese people, also admits a more complete and in-depth representation of their colonial experience.

The acquisition of Taiwan marked an historic occasion for Meiji Japan. An island province and its inhabitants had been wrested from Ch’ing China, and the status of a colonial power achieved. Moreover, extraterritoriality privileges in China (along with a large indemnity) had been gained as an outcome of a war highlighted by impressive military and naval victories. In East Asia, at least, Japan now seemed to have almost gained parity with the Western powers that it would continue to emulate, boasting modern armaments and overseas empires.⁶

At the time, however, Meiji Japan was hardly prepared to enter upon its first colonial venture. That country had only begun to modernize, and the Meiji constitution had been in effect for less than six years. Even Japan’s own “unequal” treaties with the Western powers were still being negotiated. The sudden acquisition of an overseas colony represented another unprecedented development that challenged Meiji leaders. Hence it is not surprising that they expressed uncertainty as to how Taiwan and its inhabitants were to relate to the Japanese home country. In Tokyo, members of the hastily organized Taiwan Affairs Bureau, headed by Itō, debated the merits of two conflicting proposals: the French assimilationist convention by which colonial Taiwan might be fused with metropolitan Japan and the Taiwanese readily assimilated; and the British model whereby the new island colony would be governed separately and its people allowed, by and large, to retain their own culture and society.⁸

The resistance initially encountered by the Japanese in Taiwan made political integration by constitutional means appear unrealistic. Eventually, in March 1896, Kabayama requested additional authority so that he could exert more complete control over the new colony. In response to his petition, the Imperial Diet enacted the controversial “Law 63,” which authorized the Taiwan governor-general to issue executive ordinances (ritsurei) having the same effect as Japanese law.⁹ This extraordinary measure granted almost supreme legislative power to the governor-general and made colonial rule in Taiwan seem more in keeping with the British system of separate governance. Meanwhile, pacification efforts about the island, coupled with the disdain the Japanese newcomers generally exhibited toward the inhabitants, forestalled the prospects of readily assimilating the Taiwanese.

Nonetheless, assimilation (dōka) remained a key issue in Taiwan under Japanese rule and was often a declared policy of the governor-general. In this colonial context, assimilation conveyed the idea that the naichijin were the bearers of a superior culture to be imparted to the hontōjin. Thus the concept connoted a one-sided response on the part of the Taiwanese, who, in effect, were expected to give up not only many of their customs and usages but, ultimately, their Chinese heritage as well. Yet there was an element of humanitarianism in all such ethnocentric dictates since assimilation, as a doctrine, was linked with the familiar admonition of “impartiality and equal favor” (isshi dōjin) for all Japanese subjects, attributed to the Meiji emperor. Under this alleged mandate his majesty’s concern for his subjects not only seemed to promise equal treatment for the Taiwanese but was further construed to mean that, as assimilated subjects, they would share the benefits of “civilization and enlightenment” associated with modern progress in common with the naichijin.¹⁰

However, disagreement concerning the prospects of Taiwan and its people under colonial rule continued to prevail among the Meiji leadership. This added to the problems and confusion Kabayama and his immediate successors faced in Taiwan, for many administrative decisions were initially made in Tokyo and reflected political dissension there rather than consensus as to how affairs in the colony were to be managed. Meanwhile, the colonial authorities and Japanese military encountered armed resistance throughout much of Taiwan: almost five months of sustained warfare in opposition to the military takeover, then sporadic local partisan attacks until 1902. Throughout the 1895–97 period, the first three governors-general relied mainly on military means in conjunction with local pacification efforts. The results were disappointing. Segments of the population remained unruly, and the colonization of Taiwan proved a costly venture. Later on, a Japanese observer referred to this three-year period as an “age of mistakes and failures.”¹³

It was the island inhabitants, though, who suffered the most from the chaos initiated by the sudden cession and military takeover. Signs of unrest became evident in late March 1895, when P’eng-hu was seized. Disorder and panic ensued over the next several months as rumors of the impending cession of Taiwan spread and were subsequently confirmed. Tension about the island increased after an imperial edict, issued from Peking on May 20, ordered all Ch’ing officials to vacate their island posts and return to China. Amid the outcry that Taiwan had been abandoned by the Ch’ing court, frenzied mobs appeared in Taipei, the capital. There the governor’s yamen was gutted by fire, the arsenal looted, and the nearby powder mill demolished shortly before Japanese troops reached the city on June 7.¹⁴

Further destruction and widespread misery accompanied the five-month war and its aftermath. Walled cities were damaged, and entire villages razed. Epidemics of cholera and typhus raged in war-torn localities while endemic diseases, especially malaria, affected both the general population and the Japanese military. Meanwhile, tension continued to prevail. Townspeople and villagers remained apprehensive of the intrusion of all outside forces, no matter whether Japanese or those of the resistance. Long-standing ethnic animosities flared up as well. Villages near the reaches of the Central Range feared attacks from hostile mountain tribes. Elsewhere, rancor resurfaced among segments of the Han Taiwanese population, most notably between Hakka and Hokkien (southern Min-speaking) elements.¹⁵

A variety of resistance forces participated in this five-month war. In the north, remnant Ch’ing units from the mainland, together with ill-trained Kuangtung irregulars, briefly faced the well-disciplined Japanese advance. Following the loss of Taipei on June 7, armed resistance was offered mostly by local volunteers, including militia bodies and partisan bands. However, in the far south a small Black Flag force from southern China, led by Liu Yung-fu, a hero of the 1884–85 Sino-French War, also hindered Japanese landings and helped delay the occupation of Kao-hsiung (Takao) and, ultimately, Tainan. Throughout the war various resistance leaders capitalized on the defenses and military reforms developed in Taiwan as part of the late Ch’ing self-strengthening effort. They also made use of troops and arms dispatched from China until late in May.¹⁷

Although input from China was involved, this organized resistance to the military takeover amounted to a separate conflict apart from the Sino-Japanese War that had just ended. The Ch’ing court took pains not to become involved, fearing Japanese reprisals as well as setbacks in negotiations over the retrocession of the Liao-tung peninsula in North China.¹⁸ Nevertheless, widespread indignation over the cession of Taiwan and the popular demand for retaliation against Japan made it difficult for China to sever its relations with its former island province so abruptly. After the May 20 edict, Governor T’ang Ching-sung and his aides in Taipei took advantage of the unstable situation and endeavored to carry on anti-Japanese resistance under an island regime, labeled the “Taiwan Republic.” T’ang still professed to be a loyal Ch’ing servitor, however. The desperate act of forming a “republic” (min-chu-kuo), he alleged, was to delay the Japanese occupation so that one or another of the Western powers (France, in particular) might be prompted to come to the defense of Taiwan or be induced to take possession of the island in lieu of Japan.

Under the guise of a republic T’ang also sought to demonstrate a semblance of popular support by means of petitions and a “parliament.” Given the chaotic conditions in Taipei by late May, though, T’ang was unable to control the military forces at his disposal, much less command the support of the troubled populace. Hence the Taiwan Republic, established amid a festive atmosphere at the capital on May 25, vanished from the northern Taiwan scene some twelve days later when T’ang and his aides secretly crossed over to the mainland shortly before Japanese troops entered Taipei.¹⁹

Upon the surrender of Tainan, Governor-General Kabayama declared that Taiwan had been pacified.²¹ His proclamation was premature, though, because the Japanese soon encountered further armed resistance, initially from Hakka villagers in the southernmost counties. Then the first of a prolonged series of local partisan attacks broke out near the end of the year, and the Japanese pacification efforts continued. Over the next seven years, partisan bands, dubbed “local bandits” or “rebels” by the Japanese, were active throughout Taiwan in or near cities and towns as well as in villages and remote mountainous areas.²²

The partisan leaders ranged from prominent inhabitants to outcasts and criminal elements, all of whom espoused a strong xenophobic sentiment current among the local population. They staged guerrilla raids on Japanese installations, such as police stations and guard posts, but bandit types also centered their attacks on towns and villages, where the inhabitants were caught between the onslaught of these predators and the Japanese military and police. The Japanese reprisals were often more brutal, as demonstrated by the infamous “Yun-lin massacre” in June 1896, when some six thousand Taiwanese were slain.²³

In an attempt to expedite his pacification efforts the third governor-general, Lieutenant General Nogi Maresuke, implemented a triple-guard system in June 1897. Under this plan, army units, assisted by military police, were dispatched to highland regions to confront major partisan gatherings and unruly mountain tribes; military and civil police forces were assigned to lowland areas where there was still active resistance; and the civil police undertook to safeguard more orderly rural and urban localities.²⁴ This system was not very successful during the twelve-month period that it was in effect. Various Japanese units failed to work in unison and often were unable to distinguish between submissive and unruly components of the population, despite Nogi’s strategy of enticing the partisans to surrender. Hence many anxious Taiwanese continued to sympathize or even cooperate with local partisans.

In all, only a small percentage of the island population actively participated in the war and subsequent partisan resistance. Most responded to the military occupation and uncertain prospects under Japanese rule in other ways. Many Taiwanese assumed a submissive demeanor or exhibited forms of passive withdrawal. A few even collaborated with the Japanese from early on. But given the general fear and panic, many fled to the hills and mountains, while more sought to cross over to the mainland. There was a heavy exodus of Taiwanese to China in 1895 and a steady stream of departures thereafter, for in exercising an option contained in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Meiji Japan allowed the registered inhabitants a choice: to return to China by May 8, 1897 (two years after the treaty’s ratification), and remain Ch’ing subjects, or stay in Taiwan (or return there by that deadline) and become Japanese citizens.²⁷ Altogether, more than 6,400 people, or about 23 percent of the total population, are estimated to have departed for China during this two-year period, not counting those who made secretive crossings.²⁸

Among the Taiwanese who undertook channel crossings were people of wealth and eminence. Most of the upper gentry, including portions of their families, left the island during these two years.²⁹ Upon their departure, the elite structure throughout the settled portion of Taiwan began to change. It soon appeared that the remaining gentry—who by virtue of their degrees, titles, and classical education had enjoyed high status and privileges under Ch’ing rule— would suffer a serious decline under Japanese governance. Their group had already begun to experience an acute identity crisis as a result of their “abandonment” by the Ch’ing court.

The gentry-holdover dilemma, brought about by the sudden change of rule, was generally shared, at least in part, by the Han Taiwanese at large. No longer Ch’ing subjects, they nonetheless remained ethnic Chinese with ancestral and cultural ties to areas of southern Fukien and eastern Kuangtung. During the occupation, these strong attachments fostered xenophobic feelings of defiance, yet failed to produce an effective ideology of resistance. By 1895, there had not yet emerged a vital form of Chinese nationalism that might have brought about a more united stand against the Japanese takeover. Moreover, Taiwan’s elevated standing as a separate province of China, attained in 1887, had not engendered any widespread type of popular support for the 1895 war. After the partisan resistance set in, the lack of a common unifying political sentiment was even more apparent. Local partisans expressed their xenophobic feelings in a variety of ways ranging from lingering outcries for self-rule to archaic Ming loyalist pronouncements.³⁰ Meanwhile, Taiwan and its inhabitants grew more and more detached from China as a consequence of the 1895 cession, the subsequent occupation and, finally, the 1897 deadline signifying that the Taiwanese were no longer of Chinese registry or nationality.

Colonial Reform and Taiwanese Accommodation (1898–1915)

Gotō launched a variety of projects that laid the foundation for extensive economic development and modernization in Taiwan. The harbor at Keelung (Kirin) was improved and work continued on the trunk railway line connecting that northern port with nearby Taipei (Taihoku) and the southern seaport of Kao-hsiung, a project begun in the late Ch’ing and completed in 1908. More pushcart (daisha) trackage was also laid, and road building continued at a relatively rapid pace. By the time Gotō left office in 1906, primary and secondary roads had been extended three times over their 1899 length. Postal and telegraph facilities were likewise expanded, the first modern newspapers established, and telephone services introduced at the turn of the century. Soon thereafter, Taiwan’s initial hydroelectric generating plant was constructed to serve Keelung and the administrative center at Taipei. In order to further modernize the economy, accounting and banking systems were introduced, along with Japanese corporate enterprises. Moreover, the Bank of Taiwan, founded in 1899, was assigned the duty of issuing silver (and later gold-backed) currency. A year later, a uniform system of weights and measures was established as well.³²

Greater efforts were also made to harness Taiwan’s economy to that of metropolitan Japan. Major exports, including rice, sugar, and camphor, were diverted to the home country, and Japanese shipping lines came to monopolize commercial and passenger service with the colony. After 1902, the largest percentage of Taiwan’s export—import trade was conducted with Japan rather than with the Chinese mainland as before. Meanwhile, Western firms operating in Taiwan were soon squeezed out of most overseas trade, except for those engaged in tea exports. Consequently, few European and American merchants remained in the colony after the turn of the century.³³

Above all, Gotō’s civil administration sought to make Taiwan an agricultural appendage of Japan. In accordance with the long-range program for the development of commercial agriculture devised by Nitobe Inazō, who had been sent earlier from Japan to research forestry and subtropical agriculture, more land was placed under cultivation and several large irrigation projects were initiated to increase rice and sugarcane production in the central and southern coastal plains. Gotō figured prominently in the rise of Taiwan’s modern sugar industry by promoting scientific farming, attracting investments, and providing subsidies to Japanese sugar producers.³⁴

The costs of introducing economic reforms, as well as a modern-type infrastructure and technology, were high. Hence the Kodama regime adopted a policy of deficit financing in order to carry out many of its ambitious projects. Both Kodama and Gotō had to call upon the home government for funds and capitalization. They also sought out private Japanese and Taiwanese investors and urged the inhabitants at large to contribute through a postal savings system. At the same time, considerable revenue was raised from new excise taxes following the creation of opium, salt, camphor, and tobacco monopolies in the colony.³⁵ A land-tenure reform brought about much larger tax revenues as well after an extensive land investigation project, beginning in 1898, was completed in 1901. As a result of this investigation, a larger amount of untaxed “hidden land” was registered, and more landowners were placed on the tax rolls when the incidence of tax payment was shifted from the “large-rentholder households” (ta-tzu hu), whose claim to the land was redeemed in marketable bonds, to the former “small rentholders” (hsiao-tzu hu).³⁶ These measures, together with additional revenue generated through commercial and industrial taxes, made the governor-general less dependent on annual subsidies allotted by the Imperial Diet. By 1905, Taiwan no longer required such direct budgetary support from the home government, despite continuous heavy expenditures for new and ongoing projects.³⁷

Gotō, who had received Western medical training, also introduced a series of reform measures pertaining to public health and sanitation. As a result of their widespread application and strict enforcement, marked improvements in the control of cholera, smallpox, and bubonic plague came about by 1905. Furthermore, Gotō established a public hospital and medical college in Taipei and helped to found charity hospitals and treatment centers about the island.³⁸ These advances in health standards and medical services, together with the gradual rise in prosperity, were reflected in higher rates of natural increase among the inhabitants by the second decade of Japanese rule. The first full census of the colony’s population, carried out in 1905, indicates that the Han Taiwanese then numbered 2,890,485, only a slight increase over the 1900 estimate of 2,650,000. In contrast, by 1943, the subject population had more than doubled these early counts to a total of 5,962,000, a figure that also included more than two hundred thousand aboriginal inhabitants.³⁹

Discrimination with respect to educational opportunities seemed a suitable colonial policy to Gotō. He deemed it imprudent to provide universal education for the subject population since full assimilation of the Han Taiwanese appeared unlikely in the near future. Furthermore, schooling for aboriginal children of the remote mountain tribes was as yet only a projected venture. On the other hand, Gotō fostered elementary education, featuring both moral and scientific training, for those Taiwanese students whose families could afford such schooling. He also enabled the brightest to advance in the fields of teaching and medicine. He envisioned that, through a selective admissions process, there would emerge a generation of upright and enlightened Taiwanese leaders responsive to reform and modernization. For this reason Gotō opposed what he considered the outmoded shobō training, which, he believed, impeded progress and mainly perpetuated empty learning.⁴²

Despite the accomplishments initiated by the Kodama regime, the early period of colonial rule remained a turbulent one. Partisan disturbances persisted, and almost twelve thousand more “bandit-rebels” were killed in battle or executed between 1898 and mid-1902.⁴³ After the partisans had been quelled, a series of local uprisings flared up, a phenomenon indicative of a new phase of Taiwanese armed resistance. The succeeding regime of General Sakuma Samata (1905–15), the fifth governor-general, witnessed at least six such insurrections from 1907 to 1915. These resulted in more casualties among the inhabitants and more than eight hundred executions.⁴⁴

Meanwhile, the mountain tribes remained restive and prone to attack guard posts and raid nearby settlements. In order to bring about peace and stability within Taiwan’s rugged interior, Gotō imposed a boundary encircling the high country, a huge area that was designated as a reservation for the various tribes.⁴⁵ The peaceful seclusion he sought to maintain was disrupted in 1911, however, by Sakuma and his chief of civil administration, Uchida Kakichi, who arranged for a large military force to open up Taiwan’s mountainous reserve so as to gain access to its prime timber resources. Over a two-year span (1913–14), a bitter “subjugation” campaign ensued, involving even an aerial attack and naval bombardments from off the eastern seacoast. By 1915, many aboriginal villages had been destroyed and lives lost, especially among the Atayal and Bunun people, who offered the fiercest resistance.⁴⁶

The year 1915 marked the end of a twenty-year period of armed resistance against Japanese authority. Notwithstanding the fact that disturbances continued well after their tenure in office, Kodama and Gotō are credited with having devised a successful pacification strategy by which such turbulence was eventually eliminated. Soon after assuming office, Kodama abolished Nogi’s triple-guard system and relieved the army from primary responsibility for police affairs. Instead, the civil police were authorized to maintain order and take action against partisan and aboriginal incursions, while the military police were held in readiness for emergency use.⁴⁷ The civil police force, under Gotō’s supervision, was then enlarged and assigned to rural and urban posts throughout the colony. Because of the shortage of trained Japanese policemen, a sizable number of Taiwanese were added to the force after the junior grade of assistant patrolman was instituted in 1899. Meanwhile, a separate force of specially trained mountain police, also composed of both Japanese and Taiwanese patrolmen, was posted at guard stations along or within the aboriginal reservation boundary.⁴⁸

In their efforts to subdue unruly partisan and aboriginal bands, the colonial authorities had also to enlist the support of local forces. These consisted mainly of “able-bodied” militia (sōteidan, or chuang-ting t’uan) drawn from hokō (pao-chia) units among the Han Taiwanese population, and aiyūü (ai-yung) guards, composed of armed bodies of Taiwanese and acculturated aborigines, that had operated since the late Ch’ing to provide protection from mountain aborigine forays. Gotō relied heavily on the sōteidan to help combat partisan guerrilla onslaughts. Later on, Sakuma made use of “able-bodied” militia contingents in actions against insurgents and during the “subjugation” campaign he and Uchida waged against the mountain tribes. In the meantime, the aiyü guards were used during the Kodama and Sakuma reigns to contain and then cordon off the mountain people as a five-hundred-mile guard-line (aiyŭsen) was constructed around their territory.⁴⁹

It is noteworthy that both of these auxiliary forces were brought under direct Japanese control in 1903. In the case of the “able-bodied” militia corps, this happened when the pao-chia bureaus and branches, established by local Taiwanese managers with Gotō’s approval in 1898, were abolished and a reconstructed hokō system was formed under the jurisdiction of the civil police. Thereafter, until 1943 when it was disbanded, the sōteidan functioned as an appendage of the police system.⁵⁰ Similarly, the private aiyü bands were absorbed as government-directed units and eventually, along with the mountain police, assigned to an aboriginal affairs office.⁵¹ After armed resistance had been crushed, the colonial authorities clearly endeavored to maintain full control over all community and private paramilitary bodies.

Colonial rule in Taiwan was patriarchal in nature by virtue of the supreme power vested in the governor-general. Since that high official remained aloof from the inhabitants as a rule, it was the local police who most often personified an authoritarian or even draconian type of colonial regime.⁵³ Their constant vigilance and harsh exactions, along with their active involvement in a multitude of duties and services extending well beyond those relating to law and order, became familiar features of civil authority. The commanding influence exercised by local patrolmen was most often apparent in village areas. There, besides attending to vexatious security and tax matters, they enforced regulations pertaining to agriculture, hygiene and sanitation, and a variety of other matters. They also intruded into private households during their investigations and pried into the conduct and personal affairs of the residents.⁵⁴

In order to maintain such tight control over the Taiwanese population, the civil police made steady use of town and village headmen between 1897 and 1909, then ward or section chiefs (kuchō) until 1920. Moreover, they co-opted members of various community associations (merchant, agricultural, and the like) to do their bidding.⁵⁵ Above all, the police made able use of the hokō system after it came under their direct authority in 1903. According to Hui-yu Caroline Ts’ai, the hokō system was the “key factor” that enabled the colonial administration to exercise effective control over the Taiwanese inhabitants without further increasing the size of the police force.⁵⁶

Although the hokō (including the sōteidan militia) functioned under strict police authority, the hokō communities seem to have enjoyed a measure of self-government, at least according to the colonial authorities. Each unit abided by a hokō compact (kiyaku) allegedly drawn up by household representatives at its inception, and ho assemblies met annually to “elect” hokō heads when necessary and to negotiate the household fees to be assessed during a given year. In reality, however, the compacts were based on procedures determined beforehand by the authorities. Also, the selection of ho and kō heads was controlled by the police, and the annual household fee assessments likewise required local police supervision and approval.⁵⁹ Hence, instead of promoting self-government, the hokō compacts really served as basic covenants by which tight control over the Taiwanese was enforced and legitimized. In effect, each household was bound to a hokō constituency, and every registered Taiwanese inhabitant obligated to his or her designated household and to the household head, who most often was the senior male member.

The hokō system served as an auxiliary arm of the civil police force from 1903 on. Therefore, as time passed, the hosei and kōchō became more involved in the many services performed by the police. Already the pao heads, enrolled under the pao-chia bureaus, had participated in the 1898–1903 land-tenure investigation along with the local police.⁶⁰ Thereafter, the hosei engaged in a much wider range of large-scale undertakings initiated by the colonial authorities, but carried out by hokō units or contingents under police supervision. These included malaria prevention campaigns and projects requiring conscripted labor for the construction of roads, buildings, and other public works.⁶¹ Such massive undertakings helped foster allied hokō offices managed by paid hokō clerks. These offices were more uniformly established throughout the colony soon after ward or section jurisdictions were created in 1909. They administered to extensive ho-unit complexes within the police precincts, where the clerks also supplemented ward or section-level administration handled mainly by the police.⁶² The widespread distribution of these offices, located in or nearby police stations and substations, indicates that the hokō system had become an integral part of the local police network well before 1915.

The hokō system was burdensome to the Taiwanese. From early on, hokō labor service proved especially onerous when large contingents of villagers were conscripted for lengthy intervals to construct “hokō roads.”⁶³ Thereafter, the “hokōmin” designation, ascribed to all registered Taiwanese inhabitants—men and women, the young and old—continued to be repugnant to most. Not only were the Taiwanese exposed to oppressive colonial measures and police brutality, but they were assessed household fees and subjected to fines and corporal punishment for petty violations.⁶⁴ In effect, the hokō system was highly discriminatory in nature. Only the Han Taiwanese (together with Ami and other accultu-rated aborigine households) were required to be registered under the system; Japanese and foreign residents, along with the mountain tribes, were exempt. Nevertheless, despite the resentment and occasional outcries from more outspoken Taiwanese, there does not appear to have been any well-organized local opposition to the hokō system per se.

This is understandable, for the system required the Taiwanese to be submissive in their dealings with the colonial authorities and police. It also enabled the police to keep tabs on criminals and unruly sorts and, in fact, to bring an end to the collective violence (banditry and communal feuds) that had long plagued Taiwanese society. From the perspective of the Japanese officials the hokō system was beneficial as well because it not only helped them introduce reform measures but allowed them to mobilize a sizable body of compliant local elites. By 1905, the combined number of hosei and kōchō, together with the sōteidan chiefs and deputy-chiefs, totaled around 58,000, or about 5 percent of the Taiwanese population.⁶⁵ This number comprised the greater proportion of the native elite that served the Japanese in both formal and informal capacities. Such a select group also included government schoolteachers, junior grade patrolmen, and minor officials in the bureaucracy, as well as supernumeraries and clerks attached to colonial offices.

The need to maintain a substantial native elite was apparent to the colonial authorities, for Taiwan remained an “occupation colony” in which a small minority of naichijin prevailed over a much larger subject population. In 1905, for example, the Japanese residents (exclusive of the military) numbered only 57,335, fewer than the hokō functionaries in service at the time.⁶⁶ Although this resident population increased nearly fivefold in size by 1935, the Japanese presence in Taiwan was still minimal except in a few major cities. Hence, from the outset of Japanese rule, the authorities constantly had to rely on the services of compliant local servitors in order to control and manage the colony.

The initial group of Taiwanese servitors consisted of a marginal set of collaborators, along with local spokesmen, who cooperated with the Japanese mainly to protect their neighborhoods and villages from armed conflict. Among the latter type were merchants and gentry holdovers who managed bureaus (pao-liang chu) to protect law-abiding inhabitants and, subsequently, the pao-chia bureaus and branches. Some of these managers were appointed to minor posts later on or else served as hokō functionaries, as did other inhabitants who had been pao and chia heads.⁶⁷ Meanwhile, as part of an appeasement plan complementary to his pacification policy, Governor-General Nogi began, in 1897, to bestow “gentlemen’s” (shinshō) awards on Taiwanese deemed outstanding because of their wealth, social status, or community service. Kodama and Sakuma made further use of this award system to induce many more reputable and ambitious sorts to render unswerving support to their regimes. By this means, there came into being a formal body of local elites subject to regulation and close supervision by the colonial authorities.⁶⁸

Kodama and Gotō expanded upon Nogi’s appeasement plan in other ways as well. In particular, they initially made a concerted effort to cultivate a larger range of gentry holdovers besides the relatively few who held informal appointments or had been awarded shinshō medals. Between 1898 and the end of 1900, Kodama also made rare personal appearances in four major cities to honor the family elders of such local elites. His imperial-like bearing at these ceremonial occasions made a favorable impression not only on the Taiwan literati but also on the general populace.⁶⁹ In March 1900, Kodama further endeavored to mollify and enlist the support of the gentry holdovers by staging an elaborate conference for a select number of them. There, in a conciliatory manner, he called upon his guests, as traditional scholars, to engage in the cultural transformation taking place under his administration. Gotō, in turn, urged the gentry holdovers to help promote the “new learning” being introduced in Taiwan by his government schools and heralded this learning—a fusion of Chinese neo-Confucian doctrine with Meiji-style education—as the foundation for cultural advancement in the colony.

The Taiwan gentry holdovers, however, were not a very cohesive group. The conference participants were impressed by the material improvements they beheld during guided tours of the Taipei area, but otherwise reacted differently to the speeches and proposals made at the eight-day affair. In particular, many had mixed feelings about modernization and cultural change, especially as advanced by the government schools. Those supportive of the old shobō schooling, in fact, seemed resentful of Gotō’s design to fuse traditional Chinese training with more modern Japanese instruction.

Kodama and Gotō must have been disconcerted by such resentment and the lack of accord among their distinguished guests. For this 1900 Yōbunkai conference, convened purportedly to “uplift culture” (yōbun, or yang-wen), marked the last time that their administration endeavored to solicit support from the remnant scholar-gentry group on essentially an islandwide basis. Although Gotō made good use of the gentry participants as native informants in preparation for the investigation of local customs and usages his office conducted the following year, the colonial authorities now realized that they would have to rely more fully on the growing body of shinshŋ elites under their control to help advance their plans and undertakings.⁷⁰

Again, anxiety and resentment were induced by discriminatory colonial measures. These pertained to a wide range of matters, including education, intermarriage with Japanese, and requirements that Taiwanese firms acquire Japanese business partners.⁷³ Many such measures were based on colonial ordinances (ritsurei) authorized by the governor-general. Among the harshest were the 1898 Bandit Punishment Ordinance, which in practice was applied only to the Taiwanese, and the 1904 Fine and Flogging Ordinance that related specifically to Taiwanese offenders. The latter law was abolished in 1921, but the notorious bandit punishment law, although never applied after 1916, remained in effect throughout the rest of the Japanese period.⁷⁴ However, the 1898 Hokō Ordinance, which lasted until 1945, fostered more continuous hardship and long-standing resentment among several generations of island inhabitants. Indeed, well-informed Taiwanese came to regard the hokō system and their hokōmin identity as hallmarks of servitude and inequality universal to modern colonialism.

The profound economic change brought about under Japanese rule also created widespread concern. Already by 1905, a much heavier per-capita tax burden had been imposed on the subject population as a consequence of Gotō’s many costly projects.⁷⁵ Other sensitive issues developed as Taiwan was incorporated into Japan’s capitalist economy, and agricultural production was basically com-moditized by allotting a large proportion of the cultivated land to sugarcane and rice production, primarily for export to Japan. These developments affected prices, wages, and profits, often adversely in the case of Taiwanese farmers, laborers, and entrepreneurs—all of whom had little or no control over market conditions.⁷⁶ Such adversities became apparent early on with respect to Taiwan’s modernized sugar industry. Taiwanese sugarcane producers, engaged in small family farming of the type enhanced by the land-tenure reform, had to deal primarily with large Japanese sugar companies. As these Japanese enterprises gained more control over the industry, in part because of the preferential treatment they received from the colonial government, the small farmers operated at more of a disadvantage. Some even had to part with their lands. Meanwhile, most Taiwanese sugar mill owners soon lost out to highly capitalized Japanese interests.⁷⁷

Taiwanese living in the security of cities and the larger towns, however, had begun to accommodate themselves to colonial rule and foreign or modern ways. In fact, a Western observer claimed (in 1909) that the urban dwellers were “fast becoming Japanned.” They rode bicycles, made use of modern innovations like the telephone and public post offices, and were starting to wear wooden getas, the conventional Japanese footwear. He also noted that the Taiwanese language was being “marvelously altered and enriched” by new expressions derived from combinations of Japanese and foreign words. The hairstyles and attire displayed by young Taiwanese males also reflected a degree of accommodation by that portion of the urban population. Although some still wore the traditional Chinese queue, others had short haircuts and appeared in Western dress but with the prominent cuffs and collars popular among the Japanese.⁸⁰

It was during this period that a younger generation of educated Taiwanese was beginning to participate in community affairs. Born and raised near the end of Ch’ing rule in Taiwan, its members had received some or most of their schooling under Japanese governance. They were often the most susceptible to modernization and change. Many became active in local reform societies formed for the purpose of stamping out the “bad customs” identified by the colonial authorities: most notably, footbinding among Hokkien women, and queue wearing by adult Taiwanese males.⁸¹ This educated generation was especially concerned about the need for modern educational facilities for their areas and the discrimination they and their offspring faced in regard to matriculation in the few government schools. As a consequence, more Taiwanese commenced to enter primary and secondary schools in Japan. In the mid-island area of Taichung (Taichü) local leaders also began campaigning for the inauguration of the Taichü Middle School, despite the reluctance of Japanese officials to authorize this first middle school for Taiwanese males.⁸²

The Taichü school controversy called attention to local dissatisfaction with the unwarranted discrimination and abuse evidenced by the Sakuma regime. Prominent Japanese in Tokyo, in turn, became alarmed by reports of brutal conduct by the Taiwan authorities for, after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Japan desired to present a liberal image to its Western allies as well as a benevolent one to those Asian colonies under European and American rule.⁸³ Expressions of indignation from both the home country and Taiwan soon led to what proved to be an anomalous event in the island colony—an active, though brief, assimilation movement of liberal pretensions involving joint Japanese and Taiwanese participation.

In December during his second trip, Itagaki formally inaugurated an assimilation society, the Taiwan Dōkakai, to advance his movement. The results were impressive at first. Crowds gathered wherever he appeared, and within a week or so the society attracted a membership of more than three thousand Taiwanese from communities about the island, as well as forty-five resident Japanese. Enthusiastic Taiwanese at these public gatherings seemed to fancy the idea of “becoming Japanese” so as to gain equal treatment with the resident naichijin and acquire the full constitutional rights enjoyed by Japanese citizens in the home country. Among this following were many of the younger generation of educated Taiwanese, including some who had received shinshō awards.⁸⁶

Since Itagaki was an eminent figure in Japan, the colonial authorities allowed his movement to continue without interference. Following his final departure late in the month, however, the Taiwan Dōkakai came under relentless attack by the colonial establishment: the officials and police, government-run newspapers, and powerful groups among the Japanese residents. Its leaders were arrested and some well-known Taiwanese members detained or harassed. Finally, in late January 1915, Governor-General Sakuma disbanded the society some three months before his own recall, and the assimilation movement was brought to an end.⁸⁷ Thus under a notoriously harsh colonial regime this threat to the hegemony, which the resident naichijin had exerted over the native hontōjin for almost twenty years, was promptly removed, at least all but in memory.

Colonial Governance and Peacetime Experiences (1915–1936)

Although Akashi and Den shared a strong belief in the need for assimilation, they differed markedly with regard to their assimilationist outlooks and agendas. Akashi advanced a limited form of assimilation whereby a certain number of Taiwanese would be Japanized, but not in a complete sense. He favored segregation in the colony so as to maintain the status quo between the dominant Japanese residents and the subordinate colonial inhabitants. Unlike Itagaki, Akashi envisioned assimilation not as a means to bring about equality for the Taiwanese but, rather, as a way by which Taiwanese with suitable training could be integrated into Taiwan’s growing economy and be made more susceptible to Japanese national interests. Akashi’s education rescript of 1919 evidenced his restricted version of assimilation as it applied to administrative policy. His rescript continued to enforce strict segregation between Japanese and Taiwanese students by welding the government schools for Taiwanese into a single, coordinated system, yet one that offered the Taiwanese better educational advantages, especially in the field of vocational training.⁹¹

Den, on the other hand, promoted a much broader version of assimilation when, on assuming office, he announced that the Japanization of Taiwan and the assimilation of the Taiwanese people were to be his major goals. In this respect, Den followed Hara Kei, who had been an early proponent of fusion and integration for Taiwan and its inhabitants at the outset of Japanese rule.⁹² Subsequently, Den attempted to overcome discriminatory colonial practices, which, he felt, obstructed the assimilation process. This led him to replace Akashi’s education rescript, featuring segregation, with his own 1922 rescript that inaugurated an integrated school system in the colony. Under this decree all government schools became accessible to both Taiwanese and Japanese students. Admission to the common and primary schools was to be based on each student’s background in spoken Japanese instead of on ethnic or racial distinctions.⁹³

Den recognized that education played a crucial role in the assimilation process and, like Akashi, insisted that Taiwanese had to be trained properly in order to become Japanese. Den, however, proposed to assimilate the entire Taiwanese population, not merely that portion receiving education in government schools. Therefore, he declared that acculturation (kyōka) must be extended well beyond the instruction offered through formal schooling. In the hands of the colonial authorities, kyōka amounted to a form of political and cultural indoctrination whereby Taiwanese of all ages were to be imbued with the sacred Japanese spirit and inspired to change their life-style and learn Japanese, the national language.⁹⁴ These elements of indoctrination remained among the cardinal assimilationist objectives proclaimed by the colonial government for the rest of the Japanese period.

Nevertheless, the eight civilian governors-general, who succeeded Den in consecutive reigns until September 1936, related to the issue of assimilation in different ways. Their varied responses reflected not only their personal convictions and experiences in colonial service but also the tension between the ideals of assimilation and the compulsion to maintain Japanese supremacy that had resurfaced in the colony as a result of the conflicting policies, involving segregation or integration, invoked by Akashi and Den.⁹⁵

Meanwhile, the authority of the Taiwan governor-general had diminished somewhat by the time Den Kenjirō became the eighth incumbent in 1919. Factional and party politics in Japan, along with the entrenched interests of bureaucrats and other influential residents in the colony, had an offsetting effect on the pronouncements of that chief executive. When civilians were appointed to that high office as a result of reforms initiated by the home government, the post lost a degree of formal power as well. At the beginning of Den’s reign, his office was no longer entrusted with the command of the Taiwan garrison. Instead, direct authority was shifted to a new post, that of a commander-in-chief designated to head the garrison’s army and naval staff. This duplication of supreme military authority in the colony continued until 1944, when the commander of the Taiwan garrison became concurrently the last governor-general.⁹⁶

Moreover, the extraordinary legislative power enjoyed by the Taiwan governor-general since the 1896 enactment of Law 63 was reduced. Law 3, enacted by the Diet in 1921 to replace Law 31 (a 1906 revision of Law 63), allowed for a wider application of homeland law (naichihō) to Taiwan. Consequently, from 1922 to 1945, many more Diet statutes were extended to the colony, while fewer ritsurei were issued by Den and subsequent governors-general, or continued in effect from the previous reigns.⁹⁷

In the meantime the Taiwan governors-general were gradually brought under closer supervision of the home government in Tokyo. Earlier, they had been mainly subject to the surveillance of the premier and the bureaus he headed although, as high officials of the shin ’nin rank, they were ultimately responsible to the emperor for the outcome of their colonial policies and administrations. Under the party government of Hara Kei, though, Den and his immediate civilian successors were also held more fully accountable to the various ministries and the Diet. Eventually, in 1929, the office of the Taiwan governor-general was placed under the direction of the newly created Ministry of Colonial Affairs in an attempt to centralize control over Japan’s colonies and, finally, after 1942, under the jurisdiction of the Home Ministry in a further effort to bring about a more integrated colonial empire.⁹⁸ These post-1919 developments, including the Law 3 enactment, suggest that as the supervisory power of the home government increased and the authority of the governor-general was reduced by reform, Taiwan’s political integration with metropolitan Japan became more feasible and more in keeping with the assimilationist ideal of an eventual merger and the “extension of the Japanese homeland” (naichi encho) to the island colony.⁹⁹

Within the colony, however, the Taiwan governor-general still wielded considerable power. He maintained firm control over his subordinates heading the civil bureaucracy and police and authority to formulate and implement colonial policies as he saw fit. The system of self-government (chihōjichi), introduced to the colony after 1920, failed to diminish his executive power. The few Taiwanese elites and Japanese residents added to the consultative council (hyōgikai) within the government-general were his own appointments. Hence this part-time assembly remained merely an advisory body. Neither did the reduction of his extraordinary legislative power deter the Taiwan governor-general from shaping the contents of the colonial law. He continued to issue ritsurei when Japanese laws needed to be altered, so as to fit the special conditions in the colony or when appropriate Diet statutes were lacking. His use of executive ordinances and decrees (furei) also enabled him to regulate the colonial courts. Since the governor-general also approved the appointment of all judges and public prosecutors in Taiwan, he in fact retained full control over the colonial judiciary.¹⁰⁰

His office maintained even stricter supervision over the foreign resident population, composed largely of Westerners and sojourners of Chinese registry. From early on, the few Western merchants were permitted to trade only in the six principal ports of Taiwan, and their businesses were subjected to further restrictions. Foreign missionaries, together with their churches and schools, also remained under his scrutiny. The several Presbyterian and Dominican secondary and higher-level schools were constantly investigated and tended to be regulated in a discriminatory manner as private schools, compared to the favored government schools—a practice that dated back to the Gotō era. Tighter control was placed over missionary establishments after 1931, when ultranationalistic influences began to pervade the colonial regime in Taiwan.¹⁰²

In the meantime, the Taiwan governor-general kept watch over the influx of mainland Chinese, whose numbers grew decade by decade and eventually peaked at more than 60,000 in 1936.¹⁰³ This group, consisting chiefly of laborers from Fukien and Kuangtung, merited close security, for some of its organized members engaged in demonstrations and strikes in the cities. Moreover, the colonial authorities feared that these sojourners would spread Chinese nationalistic sentiment among the Taiwanese inhabitants. The governor-general attempted to control this Chinese immigrant population by various means, including its enrollment in the hokō system along with the Han Taiwanese. Eventually, in 1931, a compromise was worked out whereby the alien Chinese residents were registered, instead, in an overseas Chinese association, the Chung-hua Hui-kuan, that functioned under the auspices of the consul-general of the Republic of China stationed in Taipei.¹⁰⁴

The Taiwan governor-general also continued to exert considerable influence in southern coastal China and portions of Southeast Asia. After Kodama failed to launch an assault on Fukien, as planned in 1900, none of his successors attempted to initiate further military actions overseas. Nonetheless, that high colonial post has been described as the “claws and teeth” of Japanese imperialism because of the aggressive economic and political operations it directed toward these nearby Asian regions.¹⁰⁵ In coastal Fukien and Kuangtung, such actions involved the advancement of Japanese interests and investments, including those of the Taiwan Bank and its overseas branches, as well as the control and protection of resident Taiwanese of Japanese registry designated as sekimin. As sizable Taiwanese communities developed in Amoy, Foochow, and Swatow, the office of the Taiwan governor-general increased its efforts to supervise the sekimin and to provide “cultural advancement” for their communities by sponsoring special schools, hospitals, and newspapers.¹⁰⁶

The Taiwan governor-general worked closely with the Japanese consuls posted in these Chinese treaty ports in conjunction with its operations there. Hence there developed a close rapport that resulted in a series of annual consular conferences hosted by the governor-general in Taipei, beginning in 1915 and lasting through the early 1920s. These were held to deal with matters relating to Taiwan and South China and were attended by Japanese consuls stationed in Canton and Hong Kong as well, and even (in 1923) by those serving in the distant southwestern province of Yunnan, a gateway to the Southeast Asian interior.¹⁰⁷

The Taiwan governor-general conducted similar types of operations in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian areas where Taiwanese tended to trade. There his office worked closely with the local Japanese consulates in a joint effort to maintain surveillance over the overseas Taiwanese, or kyōmin. The governor-general also contributed in other ways to the Japanese penetration of Southeast Asia in terms of economic gain and preparation for future military conquests. Since Taiwan was still regarded as a base for Japan’s southward expansion, it was especially fitting that the various governors-general sponsored surveys of the resources and economic potential of portions of Southeast Asia, the South Seas (Nan’yō), and South China, as Akashi endeavored to do when he added a foreign affairs research section to his office in 1919.¹⁰⁸ Others followed suit in such overseas investigations until, by the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, the Taiwan governor-general had amassed a first-rate research collection relating to these regions.¹⁰⁹

Meanwhile, under the civilian governors-general, colonial rule in Taiwan was modified somewhat during the 1920s. Direct police involvement in local administration was curtailed in urban areas, and elements of self-government were introduced on various levels. Moreover, the colonial law codes were revamped. Most of the harsher punishments ordained by ritsurei enactments were (or already had been) abolished or suspended, and the Japanese Code of Criminal Procedure of 1922 became effective in the colony by 1924. A year earlier, most provisions of Japan’s civil and commercial law codes became applicable in Taiwan.¹¹⁰ Such significant changes in governance reflected not only moderate influences emanating from Taishō Japan but also accommodation by the colonial authorities to economic and social development in Taiwan and, in general, to the more orderly conditions there. For with the exception of the brief Wushe (Musha) incident of 1930, when aroused Atayal tribesmen killed and injured some three hundred and fifty Japanese, armed resistance to colonial authority had ceased.¹¹¹ Local administration continued to be strict, however, and not all modifications in governance had liberal overtones. Special criminal statutes, relating to public order and peace preservation, were introduced from Japan, for example.¹¹² These severe enactments also included governmental responses to the peaceful resistance developed in the colony: in particular, to the new modes of protest staged by leaders among the younger generation of Taiwanese.

Under this three-tier system of local government, a certain amount of decentralization occurred as more authority was delegated to the ranking officials in charge of these various jurisdictions. Such developments were evident in the governance of the municipalities (eventually nine in number) headed by mayors. These civil officials functioned under the direct supervision of the provincial governors, while the police were detached from the municipal administrations. Yet, despite Den’s general aim to separate civil administration from the police, such a division failed to materialize in the county jurisdictions. Hence in the subcounty townships and administrative villages (as well as in the chō townships and sections)—that is, in predominantly rural areas where the bulk of the Taiwanese population lived—police involvement in local affairs continued to be pervasive until the end of Japanese colonial rule.¹¹⁴

The 1920 governmental reorganization also enabled the hokō system to assume an important coordinating function at the county level in conjunction with the joint type of police and civil administration. Subsequently, county hokō associations, consisting of allied hokō and sōteidan functionaries, were formed as liaison bodies. Meanwhile, the township and village structure allowed the allied hokō offices to play a greater role in countryside administration. Not only did the hokō clerks become engaged in an increasing number of local matters involving the colonial authorities and police, but their offices came to operate as virtual community centers rivaling in some respects the role long played by community temples in Taiwan.¹¹⁵

This latter development occurred, as Hui-yu Caroline Ts’ai indicates, when new townships and village administrative boundaries replaced those of the old settlements and thereby helped to bring about the decline of “natural villages.”¹¹⁶ In the process rural communities were often split among several local jurisdictions, and their household units assigned to different hokō offices operating within separate police zones. Such jurisdictional adjustments contributed to the formation of communities more closely attuned to institutions introduced or co-opted by the colonial government, such as school districts and agricultural cooperatives, in addition to the spread of allied hokō offices centrally located in or nearby police stations and substations. ¹¹⁷

Taiwan: Adminstrative Divisions, 1920–1945 (showing the colony’s five provinces [shŭ] and three subprovincial jurisdictions [chō], including Bōkotō, estab. 1926)

On the other hand, a much larger portion of the Taiwanese population was obliged to participate in government-sponsored associations designed to bring about extensive cultural and social change deemed essential to the assimilation process. Around 1915, the colonial authorities had already begun to pre-empt societies and movements devoted to the reform of “vile customs and social practices” organized by Taiwanese leaders. This happened in the case of the antifootbinding and queue-cutting campaigns that had been launched by local reformers around the turn of the century.¹²⁰ Following the education rescripts of 1919 and 1922, various officials urged that more such reform societies be formed so that moral and social instruction, as well as Japanese language training, might be extended beyond the classroom. Indoctrination, as prescribed by Den Kenjirō, was also emphasized. During the early 1930s political training was intensified, while the number of local reform associations increased and became more highly regulated.

The Taiwanese historian Wang Shih-ch’ing has described how a local assimilationist venture that began in his home area of Shu-lin (near Taipei city) in 1914 ultimately developed into a regimented, colonywide movement by 1937. Initially, a Shu-lin reformer founded a Common Customs Society (T’ung-feng hui) in support of Itagaki’s assimilation movement. Two years later, nearby society branches were established with the encouragement of the governor-general and the police. The society continued to expand and then, in 1925, experienced phenomenal growth when the T’ung-feng hui was organized throughout Taipei at the provincial and county levels with closely regulated chapters in the cities, towns, and villages. Operating under these society chapters were affiliated associations for male household heads, their wives, and youths (male and female). This structure was extended throughout the colony after the Taiwan Youth Corps was established by the government in 1930, and the local youth associations were incorporated in that organization. By 1931, the “T’ung-feng hui” title appears to have been dropped, and the new designation, “United Instructional [Kyōka] Association,” suggests that colonial assimilationist measures now entailed a massive amount of indoctrination among the Taiwanese population at large.¹²¹

Finally, in 1936, the entire associational structure was merged with a newly formed buraku (village community) system and managed by the Buraku shinhō-kai (Village Community Promotion Association). The buraku system, similar to the hokō system, was based on household membership and had liaison agents on government levels extending from the provinces and chō down to the townships, administrative villages, and sections. However, the buraku units were formally attached to the civil administration instead of to the police.¹²²

Thus, by 1937, most Taiwanese were enrolled in two complementary control systems as well as in subsidiary adult and youth organizations. From the local Taiwanese perspective, the distinctions between the hokō communities and those of the buraku must have been blurred. Indeed, there is evidence that hosei and hokō clerks performed buraku services as well.¹²³ To the colonial authorities, however, there were distinct differences, including the fact that the hokō system had long nurtured segregated localities where the Taiwanese speech and local Chinese customs were preserved. The buraku system, through Buraku shinhōkai management and local supervision by reform-minded civil administrators, was supposed to perform a more integrative function throughout the colony, in keeping with Japanese assimilationist objectives.

The Japanese also planned for the assimilation of the aboriginal inhabitants, but primarily through schooling. Well over a fourth of this native population, totaling over two hundred thousand by 1935, lived in designated villages scattered in the hills and lowlands, where some of the children attended elementary and even secondary schools.¹²⁴ Yet the large majority were members of the mountain tribes and continued to dwell within the guarded reserves in Taiwan’s rugged interior. Special police, assigned to posts there, served as teachers as well as doctors, counselors, and, above all, disciplinarians. The education they imparted to the mountain children consisted of moral and social training, schooling in practical subjects related mainly to agriculture and trade, and instruction in the Japanese language and national spirit. The latter form of instruction was not only crucial to the Japanization process but also important because for the first time members of the diverse mountain tribes were able to share a common idiom and national sentiment. In general, this elementary type of schooling better enabled the colonial government to control and domesticate the mountain people, especially after they were forced to move from remote habitants to settlements nearby the police stations and outposts.¹²⁵

Taiwanese overseas settlements were essentially business communities. In China these communities consisted mainly of merchants and shopkeepers, along with their staffs and family members. The sekimin settlements were initially limited to the treaty ports near the ancestral areas of most Han Taiwanese: that is, Amoy and Foochow in coastal Fukien, and Swatow in eastern Kuangtung. In 1907, only 335 Taiwanese of Japanese registry were recorded in these three treaty ports. Their numbers there increased appreciably during World War I and, by 1936, totaled around 12,900. In all three ports the Taiwanese outnumbered the Japanese residents.¹²⁸ After 1931, some merchants began to relocate in Shanghai until almost seven hundred registered Taiwanese resided in the International Settlement in the mid-1930s. Taiwanese businessmen had also started to trade in Manchuria by 1926, and a Taiwanese community emerged in Dairen (Ta-lien) after the Mukden Incident of 1931. The northward advance of Taiwanese entrepreneurs was sparked by the increased Japanese commercial and military activity in Shanghai and Manchuria, and was further stimulated by new Japanese shipping services introduced between Taiwan and the ports at Shanghai and Dairen. After 1932, more Taiwanese business connections developed in Manchukuo, by way of Dairen, chiefly because of the continuing Japanese presence there and the expanding market for Taiwan tea.¹²⁹

In Fukien and Kuangtung the sekimin identity at times proved to be ambiguous and detrimental to the community residents. A few of the Taiwanese émigrés, among the many who fled to these two coastal provinces in 1895, became prominent entrepreneurs in the local treaty ports. There they associated with the Japanese consuls and colonial agents much like the sekimin did, but without having attained Japanese registry. Members of the wealthy Pan-ch’iao and Wu-feng Lin families, with established residences in Amoy and Foochow, were prime examples.¹³⁰ On the other hand, some opportunistic local Chinese managed to acquire Japanese registry so that they might gain extraterritorial privileges by virtue of the sekimin designation. Eventually, too, a sizable group of Taiwanese ronin operated within the treaty-port communities. These thugs became notorious for their dealings in narcotics, prostitution, and organized crime, and cast a bad light on the other residents and their sekimin identity.¹³¹

Meanwhile, Taiwanese continued to reside in metropolitan Japan under different circumstances than those they encountered in China as foreign nationals or in Taiwan as colonial subjects. In Japan they were regarded as citizens and neither placed under the supervision of Japanese consuls nor required to hold passports or visas. As Japanese citizens, they were also accorded equal status, at least in a formal sense, and did not suffer the blatant discrimination that they experienced as hokōmin in their colony. Taiwanese residents, in effect, were able to live more freely in the cities of Japan, where they congregated, and to associate with Japanese in a less restrained manner. As a consequence, Taiwanese students and long-term residents there adapted to Japanese ways more readily than their counterparts in Taiwan and elsewhere.¹³³ Nevertheless, assimilation, leading ostensibly to full Japanization, was rare even among those who settled in Japan. Well-acculturated Taiwanese, on the contrary, seem to have become acutely aware of their own distinctive traits and island background while living in Japan, and some evidenced strong feelings of being a different people and of a separate nationality.

Before the turn of the century few Taiwanese colonials ventured to Japan, except for several Christian medical students and a handful of shinshō sightseers. The Taiwanese essentially began to “discover” their new home country during the Osaka Exhibition of 1903, when some five hundred local elites toured the exhibition and made side trips to Tokyo under joint governmental and private sponsorship.¹³⁴ Thereafter, a steady flow of Taiwanese travelers reached Japan by way of the Japanese steamship lines serving the colony, while students from Taiwan began to increase appreciably after 1915. By 1922, at least 2,400 Taiwanese students were reportedly enrolled in educational institutions in metropolitan Japan. This number expanded to almost seven thousand in 1942.¹³⁵ However, these official figures did not include all the Taiwanese students attending various public and private institutions in Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Neither did the published reports indicate the graduates and professionally trained Taiwanese who continued to reside in Japan. Altogether, this larger student and ex-student grouping, together with merchants and wealthy individuals who took up long-term or permanent residency, comprised a Taiwan population in metropolitan Japan that well exceeded the official counts. Around 1945, the total number of Taiwanese living there may have grown to between twenty and thirty thousand.¹³⁶

Much of this resident population was concentrated in Tokyo, where a greater number of schools and institutions of higher learning were located. Educational opportunities there continued to attract many Taiwanese because of the limited access to schooling and the even fewer chances to receive advanced education or specialized training in the colony. Within Tokyo’s cosmopolitan environment, a new Taiwanese intelligentsia was spawned. Composed of students and intellectuals, as well as professionals and members of the educated elite from the colony, this group was influenced by modern ideas and trends current not only in Japan but in China and the West. In 1920, leaders among the Taiwanese intelligentsia began to establish associations and publish periodicals. Through such means they soon became leading spokesmen of the Taiwanese community in Japan. More significantly, they fostered political and cultural movements extending from the métropole to the colony.

These movements initially flourished in the liberal climate of the postwar era after the inception of the New People’s Society (Shinminaki) in March 1920. Founded by a group of Taiwanese students in Tokyo with the support of Lin Hsien-t’ang and other wealthy individuals, the society soon attracted a following in Japan and Taiwan by publishing a monthly magazine, the Formosan Youth (Taiwan seinen).¹³⁷ The first several issues featured articles on political, economic, and social issues. Over the next several years, language and literary concerns also became standard topics. Thereafter, the Formosan Youth, under various names and in different formats, continued to promote reform and peaceful resistance to colonial rule and to be heralded as the prime mouthpiece of the Taiwanese.¹³⁸ In addition, the magazine and its successor publications endeavored to introduce deep-rooted cultural and social change to Taiwan, much like the influential periodical New Youth (Hsin Ch’ing-nien) had done during the New Culture and May Fourth movements in China.

With this motive in mind the backers of the Formosan Youth changed the name of their magazine to the Taiwan People’s Journal (Taiwan mimpō) so as to attract a wider reading audience. The Taiwanese readership further expanded a few years later when they were permitted to shift the site of their publication from Tokyo to Taiwan and the Journal was transformed from a weekly to a daily newspaper. The change of location, accomplished by 1927, signified that the center of Taiwanese activism had gravitated more to the colony.¹³⁹

The Taiwan Cultural Association helped to launch a new mode of Taiwanese drama. Performances in the colony now reflected recent developments in Chinese and Japanese theatrical production as well as the influence of political and social change and the Western impact in East Asia. Generally, though, audiences tended to distinguish contemporary plays from traditional drama more in terms of the modern themes portrayed rather than changes in dramatic or stage techniques.¹⁴² After 1920, the study of Taiwanese folklore and modern styles of music and dance was also advanced by the association.

Over roughly the same period, literary and feminist movements spread among the Taiwanese students and intellectuals in Japan and the colony. Again, the Formosan Youth and Taiwan People’s Journal played an important role in these developments. These publications were especially well suited to help launch the literature movement, for they featured both Chinese- and Japanese-language sections.¹⁴³ This enabled Taiwanese writers to introduce the popular style of pai-hua (vernacular) already in use in China or else to compose in Japanese and adhere more to the current Japanese literary fashions. After 1930, various literary circles and their short-lived journals appeared in Taiwan and carried on the creative efforts and translation work fostered by the new literature movement during its early phase. For several years a Taiwanese vernacular movement also strove to replace classical Chinese, pai-hua Mandarin, and Japanese with a written equivalent of the local southern Fukien dialect.¹⁴⁴

The new literature movement peaked in 1934. By that time Japanese literary standards and styles prevailed, for the younger generation of Taiwanese writers were generally more proficient in the Japanese language by virtue of their educational background.¹⁴⁵ Nevertheless, the new literature helped to create a more distinctive Taiwanese cultural identity: a modern one, tinctured with nationalistic overtones, that set off Taiwanese intellectuals and the island homeland they represented from their Japanese and Chinese counterparts in the colonial and East Asian setting.

The Taiwanese feminist movement developed around 1920 as well and figured in the cultural and intellectual ferment of the period. Modern feminist issues had already become of concern to Taiwanese (mostly males) studying abroad in China and metropolitan Japan. Women’s movements flourishing in these countries further influenced feminist activities in the colony. Between 1920 and 1932 more widespread interest in the Taiwanese movement was aroused through spirited articles calling attention to the major problems that impeded female emancipation in the colony: namely, old-style marriages, unequal economic and educational opportunities for women, and the lack of suffrage rights.¹⁴⁶ Local support was also derived from lectures and other activities sponsored by the Taiwan Cultural Association and, subsequently, through alliances with the Taiwan Farmers’ Union (Taiwan nōmin kumiai) and the Taiwanese Communist Party during the heyday of radical Taiwanese politics in the late 1920s and early 1930s.¹⁴⁷ Basically, though, the Taiwanese feminist movement remained a middle-class campaign that relied on the active participation of educated Taiwanese women and, in particular, female teachers employed in schools throughout the colony.¹⁴⁸

Meanwhile, the first of a series of Taiwanese-inspired political movements developed on the founding of the New People’s Society in 1920. In that year the possibility of full assimilation and fusion with metropolitan Japan became unacceptable to most of the new intelligentsia after the unpopular Law 63 was again extended by the Imperial Diet, but this time for an indefinite period. In protest, the leaders of the New People’s Society rejected the options of integration with Japan or restoration to China then being debated and, instead, opted to advance home rule by establishing a parliament in Taiwan.¹⁴⁹ They reckoned that, through enactments by an elected colonial legislature, not only could the Meiji constitution and Japanese laws be made to prevail in Taiwan but Taiwanese customs and other worthwhile attributes of the native culture might also be preserved. In effect, moderate Taiwanese spokesmen, while professing loyalty to Japan, now ventured to demand a separate and more equal standing for their people, culture, and island homeland within the Japanese empire.

The Japanese residents in Taiwan, however, strongly objected to a popularly elected legislative body in which their representatives would be vastly outnumbered by those of the Taiwanese. Governor-General Den Kenjirō, despite his liberal inclinations, thus was compelled to oppose the Taiwanese demand for a colonial parliament. Thereafter, other governors-general reacted negatively too, as did Japanese officials in Tokyo, including the prime minister, who in 1926 suggested as an alternative that the Taiwanese might be granted representation in the Imperial Diet.¹⁵⁰ In addition to opposition from powerful officials the proponents of a Taiwan parliament faced coercive pressures in the colony. For this reason some members of the New People’s Society were reluctant to engage in political affairs. Eventually, in 1923, the more active leaders created a new organization, the League for the Establishment of a Taiwan Parliament (Taiwan gikai kisei dōmeikai) to head their movement.¹⁵¹

Meanwhile, moderate members, fearful of police retaliation for such radical conduct, had withdrawn from the Popular Party during the previous year. Their leaders, in turn, created a more conservative organization, the Taiwan Federation for Local Autonomy (Taiwan chihōjichi renmei) for the sole acclaimed purpose of improving the existing system of colonial self-government. After 1931, the federation was the only Taiwanese political organization registered in the colony.¹⁵⁶ It claimed to represent the entire Taiwanese people and focused attention on some of the sensitive issues of colonial governance, such as the hokō system and the restricted form of self-government introduced to Taiwan after 1920. However, the federation failed to gain universal suffrage for the Taiwanese, even in the municipal elections held in 1935 when the long-awaited local autonomy reform was introduced with few of the democratic innovations that had been anticipated. Hence, according to Edward Ti-te Chen, self-government in the colony remained “in essence, a rigged system in favor of Japanese residents.”¹⁵⁷ Subsequently, in September 1936, the new governor-general, Kobayashi Seizō, advised even this conservative and largely discredited Taiwanese organization to disband, which it did voluntarily in August 1937, following the outbreak of war with China.¹⁵⁸

In retrospect, it is remarkable that Taiwanese cultural and political movements should have grown so radical in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when Japanese rule at home and in the colonies was becoming more repressive and ultranationalistic in tone. Noteworthy, too, was the determination of the new Taiwan governor-general to put an end to the islandwide Federation for Local Autonomy, which had attempted to advance self-government and universal suffrage, essentially under a Taiwanese label, until the eve of the wartime period.

The Wartime Period (1937–1945)

Military events during Kobayashi’s four-year reign (1936–40) indicate the positive effects of his nanshin policy. Taiwan served as a major staging area for the conquest of Canton in late 1938, and for the naval occupation of Hainan island in February 1939.¹⁶² By 1940, the main Fukien ports and the entire Taiwan strait were controlled by the Japanese navy, and the way had been cleared for the invasion of Southeast Asia through the South China Sea. A full year before this major incursion began, Kobayashi was replaced by Admiral Hasegawa Kiyoshi, who was on active duty and involved in strategic planning for a military advance southward.¹⁶³

Admiral Hasegawa’s appointment, in late 1940, came at a time when Japanese leaders realized that it would probably be necessary to seize the American, British, and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia in order to secure oil and other vital wartime resources. Accordingly, the vision of a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” (Dai Tōa kyōeiken) was heralded in Tokyo in an effort to legitimize Japan’s penetration southward and territorial expansion elsewhere.¹⁶⁴ Moreover, both services were now in agreement that war with the United States and Britain seemed inevitable. A joint planning and logistical center was established in Taiwan, and the colony subsequently assumed an important role in Japan’s southern military ventures after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, which sparked the Pacific War.¹⁶⁵

Hasegawa’s tenure as governor-general (November 1940 to December 1944) lasted until the final eight months of the Pacific War. At the outset of this “decisive conflict” (kessen), Taiwan served primarily as a launching center for Japanese air and naval attacks on Luzon until the surrender of the Philippines in May 1942.’¹⁶⁶ Then the colony functioned as a rear staging area for more distant military conquests that reached Burma and the borders of India by the end of that year. In 1943, however, the tide of war began to turn against Japan, and Taiwan suffered as a consequence. Concern over the serious damage inflicted on Japanese shipping by Allied submarines eventually led Hasegawa to propose that Taiwan become self-sufficient and prepare for the loss of sea contact with Japan proper. In addition, the colony began to experience massive U.S. air raids on its industries, ports, and military installations during the latter part of 1944.¹⁶⁷ Taiwan faced mounting shortages and a decline in morale among the colonial population by the time Hasegawa was relieved of office at the end of that year and Andō Rikichi became the nineteenth and last governor-general.

General Andō was serving as the commander of the Taiwan military garrison at the time of his appointment.¹⁶⁸ As governor-general, he retained command over the garrison and reigned as the supreme military authority in the colony, as had the earlier Taiwan governors-general before Den Kenjirō assumed office in 1919. Andō also relied on a deputy civil administrator to handle domestic affairs, much like other governors-general had done since the Kodama-Gotō era, including the two wartime incumbents who preceded him.¹⁶⁹ The Andō administration engaged in what may be termed a holding operation for, by 1945, Taiwan was virtually an isolated colony in Japan’s diminishing wartime empire. Preparations were made for a long siege, and the entire population readied to defend Taiwan at all costs from an anticipated invasion.¹⁷⁰ Despite the desperate situation, made worse by more U.S. air strikes, Andō maintained order and tight discipline in the colony until the emperor’s decision to surrender unconditionally to the Allied powers was announced on August 14. Ten weeks later, on October 25, 1945, General Andō signed documents “restoring” Taiwan and P’eng-hu to Nationalist China.¹⁷¹

While nanshin directly involved Taiwan in Japan’s expansionist designs, the other two policies introduced by Governor-General Kobayashi also had a lasting impact on the colony and its people during the wartime period. Industrialization entailed the development of Taiwan’s economy and infrastructure for Japan’s military needs. Basically, heavy industry was to be introduced in key areas where vital raw materials from Southeast Asia were to be processed, then shipped to industrial centers in metropolitan Japan. Imperialization (kōminka), on the other hand, called for the complete Japanization of the colonial population, in particular, the Han Taiwanese. As dictated by the kōminka movement that Kobayashi set in motion, Taiwan’s inhabitants were to be transformed into imperial subjects (kōmin) fully loyal to the emperor and at one with Japan’s national polity, or kokutai. Neither policy was essentially new to the colony by the time of Kobayashi’s appointment. Japan had already begun to plan for an industrial base in Taiwan, and broad assimilationist policies had been advanced by colonial officials since the 1920s. During the wartime period, though, the two policies were implemented in a more intense manner by the government-general and local authorities, and also through the initiative of Japan’s leaders in Tokyo as the home government sought to integrate the inner (naichi) colonies with metropolitan Japan.¹⁷²

Official planning for the industrialization of Taiwan, in preparation for war, commenced at a major Taipei conference held in 1935. There blueprints were produced for new industries that would process bauxite, iron ore, crude oil, and rubber from Malaya and the East Indies. More seaports and electrical generating facilities were also called for to accommodate the upsurge of heavy industry.¹⁷³ This conference was followed up, in 1938, by the formation of a commission in Taipei to bring about rapid industrialization about the island. The commission advanced further plans for electrification and transportation as well as for upgrading Taiwan’s prime industries, including mining.¹⁷⁴ A number of notable accomplishments resulted from such planning. Massive hydroelectric installations were constructed and new harbors created. Modern industrial complexes were then formed at seaports where water transportation and abundant power were available, as highlighted by the large Japan Aluminum Company plants that began operating at Hua-lien and Kao-hsiung in 1940.¹⁷⁵

The creation of a wartime industrial base represented Taiwan’s final stage of economic development as a Japanese colony. Initially, during the first three decades of colonial rule, sugar and rice production had been emphasized and Taiwan viewed as an agricultural appendage of metropolitan Japan.¹⁷⁶ The industrial sector remained very small. By the mid-1920s light industry began to make substantial gains, especially in food processing, because of the rise in agricultural productivity and the greater availability of investment capital. Only a few large, modern industrial firms existed, however, and most of them were Japanese sugar companies. In contrast, many of the numerous small enterprises (mainly food processing, handicraft, and other local industries) now tended to be owned and operated by Taiwanese.¹⁷⁷ Heavy industry, introduced during war, brought on an advance in modern technology, as signified by the greater number of large plants with power-driven machinery. Yet differences in economic opportunity continued to prevail between the largest favored companies, under Japanese ownership and management, and small firms in the hands of Taiwanese investors. Under this colonial arrangement, heavy wartime industry was capitalized by Japanese investment derived from banking and credit institutions in the colony and business interests in Japan, including zaibatsu (conglomerates).¹⁷⁸

Industrial growth, paralleled by other wartime needs, brought about a much larger work force in Taiwan’s nonagricultural sector. In 1935, somewhat over 68,000 workers were employed in 7,000 factories (mostly of small size). By mid-1943, the number of skilled laborers in manufacturing plants increased to around 147,000, while the total male and female workers employed in the nonagricultural sector (also including mining, transportation, communications, and services) rose to some 214,000. An additional civilian work force of this magnitude became engaged in construction and military-related employment.¹⁷⁹ The increase in specialized openings in many fields led to the hiring of Taiwanese laborers and lower-level managers for positions that had previously been allotted to trained Japanese residents.¹⁸⁰ Industrial and military needs had other consequences as well. The urban population grew when villagers were drawn to factory jobs in cities. Enrollments in elementary and vocational schools also peaked, partly because of the greater demand for skilled labor.¹⁸¹

The wartime demand for labor led to a variety of efforts to mobilize the Taiwanese for productive services. In 1939, the governor-general established a labor cooperative association to coordinate its mobilization efforts and, in April 1940, created a Patriotic Youth Corps (Hōkōku seinentai) to secure voluntary labor for the construction of new plants and industrial sites.¹⁸² Meanwhile, the hokō system continued to supply village conscripts for social service campaigns. Already throughout the early 1930s, such campaigns had involved sizable segments of the rural population in plague prevention and sanitation drives as well as in additional road and bridge construction. After 1937, the use of hokō labor increased when wastelands were reclaimed and construction of military airports and defense installations was undertaken.¹⁸³

A more complete mobilization plan was introduced early in 1941, after Hasegawa Kiyoshi took over as governor-general. Hasegawa proposed to mobilize Taiwan’s labor force and material resources under a controlled economy so that industrial output could be augmented and domestic consumption restricted.¹⁸⁴ He also sought to advance public services so that the colony’s entire population and governing structure would be involved in the war effort. In keeping with these objectives, the Imperial Subjects’ Public Service Association, or Kōmin hōkōkai, was founded in April, in commemoration of Japan’s 2,600th anniversary and unbroken imperial line.¹⁸⁵ This patriotic colonial organization was designed to guide the kōminka movement and to garner the support of Taiwan’s population of nearly 6 million for the impending “decisive conflict” with the Allied powers. Under Hasegawa’s direction the Kōmin hōkōkai also responded to the home government’s call for tighter control over the economy and social life of the colonies.

The Kōmin hōkōkai was the most extensive organization formed in Taiwan during the war. The association functioned at each level of formal government, while within the townships it maintained urban ward units (kukai) and rural village units (burakukai). Also fundamental to the association’s local operations were its many public service teams (hokōhan), each corresponding to a kō, or neighborhood grouping of about ten families. These teams increased in number as the association reached more remote areas and totaled 70,380 by April 1944. ¹⁸⁶ The Kōmin hōkōkai incorporated Japanese residents in its memberships as well. In several cities with large naichijin neighborhoods, Japanese civilians were assigned to separate block units (chōkai).¹⁸⁷ Thus the association fostered segregation in some major urban centers, despite the strong assimilationist bent of the kōminka movement and contrary to the fact that Taiwanese leaders were co-opted within its structure at all levels, as had happened to an extent in the buraku system managed by the Buraku shinhōkai.

In effect, the Kōmin hōkōkai created informal networks within and between local communities. This enabled the colonial authorities, along with association leaders and public service teams, to reach adult and youthful Taiwanese at their job sites and places of study and training, as well as within their own ethnic neighborhoods. The association was instrumental in increasing the tempo of wartime indoctrination and propaganda, as evinced by the many patriotic demonstrations and donation drives that ensued during the early 1940s. The colony’s carefully monitored newspapers and radio broadcasting further helped to muster Taiwanese support of the war effort, as did the activities of the Youth and Young Women’s Corps.¹⁸⁹ Meanwhile, the workings of the buraku and hokō systems, in conjunction with the activities of the Kōmin hōkōkai, enabled the colonial authorities to regiment more fully the inhabitants within their households and neighborhood or village units. Clearly, wartime rule in Taiwan took on a totalitarian cast, especially when one takes into account other major control mechanisms then in effect: namely, strict household registry, constant surveillance by the police and special security agents, and the presence of local paramilitary units along with the large Japanese military contingents stationed in the colony.

Over the last months of war, Governor-General Andō made further use of such controls when he ordered the entire civilian population—Japanese, Taiwanese, and aborigine—to carry on a united, last-ditch defensive effort. Then, in June 1945, a new “volunteer corps” (giyŭtai) was established with rural and urban branches throughout Taiwan. Although termed a voluntary service organization, the Taiwan Giyŭtai law introduced compulsory military conscription to the colony for both men and women. In anticipation of its enactment, the hokō system was abolished on June 17, and the Kōmin hōkōkai soon thereafter, when giyŭtai squads were formed to bolster Taiwan’s defenses and to engage in vital public labor.¹⁹⁰ Thus Japanese rule also assumed a much more militaristic guise in Taiwan before its conclusion there in August.

Kōminka policy embraced a number of government-sponsored assimilationist programs and reforms. These were implemented through colonial directives and staged mainly through a series of campaigns and local drives during the war. In effect, such sustained imperialization efforts constituted a highly regulated movement guided centrally by the governors-general. Kobayashi’s first kōminka measures were introduced in April 1937, when the Chinese-language sections of the colony’s newspapers were abolished and classical Chinese was removed from the elementary school curriculum.¹⁹² These measures foreshadowed a national language (kokugo) program, initiated later that year, which discouraged the use of Chinese and reportedly increased the percentage of Japanese speakers among the Taiwanese population from some 37 percent in 1937 to 51 percent in 1940. However, the fluency of many of the adults, after only a minimum of language instruction, is doubtful. Even members of some model “national language” families (kokugo katei), designated from among well-educated Taiwanese households, were hardly conversant in Japanese.¹⁹³

In order to imperialize the Taiwanese more thoroughly the Kobayashi regime launched a name-changing (kaiseimei) campaign early in 1940. This kōminka program involved replacing Chinese names with Japanese ones as a means to detach the Han Taiwanese from their descent groups and ancestral areas in China. Publicly, however, the government heralded name changing as an opportunity for colonial inhabitants to demonstrate that they were devoted subjects and “true Japanese.” The bestowal of full Japanese names was acclaimed a great honor and carried out on a selective basis among approved Taiwanese households, as was the case with “national language” family conferrals. Name-changing procedures were rigorous and required formal application by household heads on behalf of their respective family members and then official investigation of the Japanese names chosen. Although less stringent regulations were announced in 1944, only about 7 percent of the Taiwanese had adopted Japanese names by the time the war ended.¹⁹⁴ A version of the kaiseimei campaign was conducted among the aboriginal population as well. In all, a higher percentage of these non-Han inhabitants appears to have complied with modified name-changing procedures under more lenient requirements.¹⁹⁵

The military recruitment campaigns and drives amounted to a special wartime project. Active participation by the Youth and Young Women’s Corps had a strong impact, as did the patriotic appeals directed at young people. They were told that the highest honor for Japanese subjects was to fight and die for the emperor and that military service was one of their “three great obligations” (sandai gimu) as citizens, the other two being compulsory education and taxpaying.¹⁹⁷ Military service, though, was not made compulsory in Taiwan until 1945. Hence recruitment depended mainly on persuasion and incentives, fostered by the colonial government and its informal structures, as well as by pressures exerted within the family and community or at school and among youthful peer groups. In this respect, military recruitment resembled such other major kōminka activities as national language family conferrals and the name-changing campaign: recruitment was also conducted on a voluntary, rather than a mandatory, basis as a rule, and the end result—military duty by avowedly loyal and patriotic colonial subjects—was also viewed as an essential part of the Japanization process.

The kōminka movement had a harsher cast as well. From the outset Governor-General Kobayashi and his subordinates undertook to root out characteristics of the Taiwanese culture declared to be “un-Japanese” or otherwise objectionable and, whenever possible, to replace them with Japanese ways. Previously, the colonial authorities had tolerated or even sought to preserve many of the Chinese traditions and practices deeply ingrained in Taiwanese society. Now, suddenly, such overtures to cultural accommodation were cast aside, and overbearing kōminka reforms imposed instead.

Meanwhile, other kōminka reforms were directed at Taiwanese customs and practices. Efforts were made to have marriages arranged in the Japanese manner and Shinto wedding ceremonies performed at shrines. Japanese-style funeral services and burial practices were encouraged as well, including cremation for purposes of sanitation and land conservation. Moreover, traditional Taiwanese operas and puppet plays were banned, as were fireworks and the burning of gold and silver paper foil at temples. The daily Taiwanese life-style was directly affected by measures that discouraged the wearing of Chinese attire in public, betel-nut chewing, and noisy commotions.²⁰¹ Altogether, such kōminka reforms, including those calling for the common use of Japanese speech and name changing, impinged on Taiwanese households throughout the colony.

The kōminka movement appears to have been generally unsuccessful in the long run. Few Taiwanese were transformed into “true Japanese” by way of the imperialization process, and local resentment was stirred by harsh and demanding kōminka measures. Above all, it was simply not feasible to assimilate fully such a large colonial population, especially in only a few years. The results of the wartime imperialization process can be better gauged, however, when “Japanization” is construed more realistically as a way by which the Taiwanese were to be rapidly acculturated rather than completely assimilated. In this respect, kōminka indoctrination efforts seem to have been relatively effective under controlled conditions.

Colonial military enlistments in Taiwan were derived from among the younger generation of inhabitants whose formative years roughly spanned the wartime period. This generation of adolescents and young adults also contributed to the domestic war effort as a low-paid or voluntary labor force and by their continuous involvement in “spiritual mobilization” activities spurred by the kōminka movement and the Kōmin hōkōkai.²⁰⁴ Among the Taiwanese, this younger generation rendered more active public service as a rule than did the senior generations in good measure because of the more extensive public school training its members received at an early age. The number of Taiwanese boys and girls who gained at least an elementary education increased at a steady rate between 1937 and 1945. By 1944, nearly three out of every four children were enrolled in primary schools after attendance had been made compulsory the previous year.²⁰⁵

Attempts were made to indoctrinate these young Taiwanese students more thoroughly during the war period than had been done in the past. They were still taught about the divine origin of Japan’s imperial rulers and the superiority of the Japanese race. In addition, though, they were subjected to propaganda about Japan’s wartime mission and urged to assist in the development of the new order being created by the Japanese military. School conditions also enabled Taiwanese youngsters to allot more time to Japanese studies. Eventually, in 1941, Taiwanese and Japanese primary schools in the colony were unified under a single public system, and a standard curriculum was adopted so that education offered there might keep pace with that provided in elementary schools throughout the home country.²⁰⁶ Hence many of the younger Taiwanese generation became functionally literate in Japanese and more familiar with the Japanese culture than were their parents and elders. Moreover, wartime needs served to bring Taiwanese students into closer contact with their teachers and Japanese classmates, especially after 1942, when public service brigades were made mandatory for both students and staff at all levels of education in Taiwan.²⁰⁷

Once assigned to military duty, members of this younger generation accommodated to the wartime political culture. In their service units they were not subject to colonial hokō controls and no longer suffered the inferior hokōmin identity. Instead, as loyal kōmin, they could feel more on a par with the ethnic Japanese. Moreover, when dispatched overseas in military or civilian capacities, they came into contact with less “Japanized” colonials from elsewhere, as well as with unacculturated inhabitants of Japan’s newly acquired territories. Under these circumstances, some members, along with older Taiwanese, came to believe that they and their people, and indeed Taiwan itself, deserved an equal or even an exalted standing within Japan’s wartime empire by virtue of the degree of Japanization that the Taiwanese had undergone.

In Taiwan, though, the great majority of Taiwanese hardly entertained such visionary notions of the future under Japanese rule. Many still harbored opposition sentiments embodying Taiwanese or Chinese nationalistic ideals. Another fifty thousand by 1945 were serving the colonial government in various capacities and could be expected to uphold the style of Japanese hegemonic rule that had long prevailed in Taiwan.²¹⁰ Meanwhile, the Taiwanese inhabitants, by and large, had really no other recourse during the war period than to remain loyal and obedient, so tight was the security and so restrained were their leaders. The moderate and radical spokesmen of the past were now in custody or else had been co-opted within the structures of the Buraku shinhōkai and Kōmin hōkōkai. The Taiwanese people even lacked a means to express their opinions and grievances in the press. There were no longer any independently managed newspapers in the colony, such as the Taiwan People’s Journal, which had previously served as their mouthpiece. The wartime successor to its sequel, the Taiwan New People’s Journal (1930–32), was but an organ of the Kōmin hōkōkai and lasted only from 1941 to 1944.²¹¹

During the war, the Taiwanese sekimin experienced great tension. They had to remain loyal to Japan, or at least seem to do so within the confines of their business communities, yet at the same time they incurred rebuke from local Chinese inhabitants harboring strong anti-Japanese sentiments. They were also blamed for the pernicious activities of ronin members, who worked closely with Japanese agents and the occupation forces. Everywhere in China, it seemed, the Taiwanese were regarded as spies or Chinese traitors (Han-chien).²¹³ The larger sekimin settlements in southern coastal China were continually caught up in such strife. There the Taiwanese had to obey the dictates of Japanese consuls and naval officers, as well as conform to directives issued from the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo. As a consequence, sekimin communities in Fukien suffered considerable loss of life and property damage over the first two years of the war, when a Kuangtung army division, and then the provincial governor and local Chinese authorities, endeavored to clear out the Taiwanese from Amoy, Foochow, and other seaport areas of the province.²¹⁴

Despite these setbacks, the sekimin population appears to have increased on the mainland over the wartime period. Some 80 to 90 percent of the estimated one hundred thousand Taiwanese civilians residing there, before 1945, consisted of such registered Japanese subjects concentrated mainly in Canton, Hong Kong, and the older coastal settlements of Fukien and eastern Kuangtung. Taiwanese sekimin also conducted business in occupied areas of the lower Yangtze and North China, including Shanghai and Peking, as well as in Manchukuo.²¹⁵ The smaller segment of Taiwanese residents were students, intellectuals, or merchants, who had elected to remain or seek refuge in China during or before the war. Around a thousand of these belonged to various Chinese Nationalist organizations in the unoccupied areas, and many were active in the anti-Japanese resistance.²¹⁶ After the late 1943 announcement of the Cairo Declaration, in which the Allied powers demanded the complete restoration of all Chinese territories lost to Japan (including Taiwan and P’eng-hu), more Taiwanese became directly involved in Kuomintang politics. A few of their representatives visited the Nationalist wartime capital in Chungking and urged that Taiwan again be made a separate province of China after its retrocession.²¹⁷ By then, other Taiwanese involved in the resistance movement had already begun to declare that their people were actually devoted Chinese brethren, rather than traitors and Japanese lackeys, in an effort to improve the tarnished Taiwanese image that had long been ascribed to the sekimin residents.²¹⁸

Again, in 1945, major concessions were made to the Taiwanese and Koreans by the hard pressed imperial government. An enactment passed by the Diet on March 21 stipulated that a designated number of representatives from each of their colonies was to be elected to the Diet’s lower house (five from Taiwan and twenty-three from Korea). The elections were to be held in their respective colonies and conducted in accordance with the limited franchise granted to qualified male adults.²²¹ Then two days later, an imperial rescript called for the appointment of a few notable Taiwanese and Koreans to the upper house (three and seven members, respectively). Selections were made on April 3, but because of the critical military situation, a special session of the Imperial Diet was not convened as scheduled, nor were Diet elections ever held in Taiwan for representatives in the lower house over the last few months of the war.²²²

These 1945 concessions seemed to indicate that wartime leaders in Tokyo were still endeavoring to integrate the naichi colonies with metropolitan Japan. However, they raised questions about the future status of Taiwan under Japanese rule. Would Taiwan remain a colony, or would it perhaps become a prefecture? This latter alternative appeared feasible not only to ardent assimilationists, who had long proposed that Taiwan and its inhabitants be fused with the home country, but also to those who might yet favor home rule. Lin Hsien-t’ang was one of the three Taiwanese appointed to the House of Peers, and there was speculation that an elected prefectural assembly would be forthcoming in Taiwan so that the prime goal of the Taiwanese home rule movement—gaining a separate and more equal standing for Taiwan and its people—could be achieved.²²³ Aside from such speculations, though, these late wartime concessions demonstrated Japan’s determination to retain possession of Taiwan, its oldest colony, even as the Japanese empire was disintegrating.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese overseas were troubled by the war’s sudden end. In China, the sekimin came under attack, as did those on military duty. On Hainan island, where the largest contingent of Taiwan servicemen was stationed, many were slain by Chinese troops or else perished from disease and starvation before the survivors managed to make unheralded returns to Taiwan. Instances of suffering and suicide among Taiwanese servicemen and nurses posted elsewhere in China, as well as in the Pacific and Southeast Asian sectors, were also reported when war veterans from these far-flung areas began to be repatriated, but again without fanfare or tokens of honor.²²⁶

Despite such incidents and alarming reports from abroad, the Andō regime maintained order in the colony. During the subsequent weeks, most of the population refrained from further acts of violence, and the Taiwanese people more eagerly anticipated the inauguration of Chinese rule over their island homeland. Then they had time to reflect on the negative aspects of colonial governance, particularly during the war. Consequently, huge numbers of enthusiastic Taiwanese turned out to greet the Chinese Nationalist forces as they started to arrive by ship in mid-October. Soon thereafter, on October 25, widespread public celebrations were held when Taiwan and P’eng-hu were formally retroceded to China in accordance with the terms of the Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation that had been drawn up by the major Allied powers: the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. By virtue of these wartime pronouncements and General Andō’s signature, it appeared that Japan’s island colony had been shifted to the side of the victorious Allies as well as “restored” to Nationalist China. Clearly, Taiwan and its people were about to enter a new, postcolonial era.

However, the vicissitudes of colonialism were such that the Taiwanese never had control over their own destiny. In 1895, Taiwan had suddenly been ceded to Japan, much to the consternation of the inhabitants, and painful years of resistance and accommodation had ensued. Thereafter, the Taiwanese were not granted home rule and allowed only a limited measure of self-government. They were not allotted representation in the Diet before March 1945, nor were they appointed to high office in the imperial government.²²⁷ Subsequently, as an outcome of another international war, their colony was retroceded to China in an equally abrupt manner. This time the transference of rule again occurred without a semblance of self-determination by the Taiwanese people or their leaders. The inhabitants were not even given a chance to indicate their preferences for citizenship, as had been done in 1895, despite the fact that most had loyally supported Japan’s war effort and had suffered wartime deprivations and casualties, although to a lesser extent than in 1895.²²⁸ As a consequence, the Taiwanese once more came to be governed by “outsiders"—only this time they would be dominated by the Kuomintang and mainlander Chinese instead of by Japanese colonial authorities and naichijin residents.

Notes

1. From the beginning of the colonial period, Western observers tended to adhere to a positive, pro-Japanese perspective and to comment favorably on the order, the effective administration, and the modernization and economic progress brought about under Japanese rule. For example, see James W. Davidson, The Island of Formosa Past and Present (London and New York: Macmillan, 1903). Post-1945 studies by most Western scholars have likewise commended the material accomplishments by the Japanese and noted Japan’s success in managing Taiwan’s resources for its own interests, as does George W. Barclay, Colonial Development and Population in Taiwan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 6–8.

2. These perceptions have developed from a Taiwanese historiography that emphasizes Taiwan’s own discrete identity and unique past. Many Taiwanese scholars now maintain that Taiwan’s history should no longer be studied from either a China-centered perspective or a dominant Japanese orientation. The new Taiwanese “historiography” has recently been set forth in a major article: Chang Yen-hsien, “T’ai-wan shih yen-chiu te hsin ching-shen” [The new spirit of Taiwan historical research], T’ai-wan shih-liao yen-chiu, no. 1 (February 1993): 78–86.

3. Edward I-te Chen, “Japan’s Decision to Annex Taiwan: A Study of Itō-Mutsu Diplomacy, 1894–95,” Journal of Asian Studies, 37, no. 1 (November 1977): 66–67.

4. Leonard H.D. Gordon, “The Cession of Taiwan—A Second Look,” Pacific Historical Review, 44, no. 4 (November 1976): 558–559.

5. A detailed account of the transference of Taiwan, translated from the Japan Mail, is contained in Davidson, The Island of Formosa, pp. 293–295.

6. Marius B. Jansen, “The Meiji State: 1868–1912,” in Modern East Asia: Essays in Interpretation, ed. James B. Crowley (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), p. 115.

7. Chen, “Japan’s Decision to Annex Taiwan,” pp. 71–72, argues that Itō and Mutsu wanted Japan to gain equality with the Western powers. Japan’s decision to annex Taiwan was not based on any long-range design for future aggression.

8. Edward I-te Chen, “The Attempt to Integrate the Empire: Legal Perspectives,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, ed. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 248–250.

9. Ibid., p. 251. For a discussion of the legal, constitutional, and colonial policy issues relating to “Law 63” and its successive revisions (Law 31 in 1906, and Law 3 in 1921), see Tay-sheng Wang, “Legal Reform in Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule (1895-1945): The Reception of Western Law” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1992), pp. 90–101.

10. The concept of assimilation and its implications under Japanese colonial rule until 1920 is treated in Mark R. Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Toward Colonialism, 1895–1945,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, pp. 96–104.

11. Hung Ch’iu-fen, “T’ai-wan pao-chia ho ’sheng-huo kai-shan’ yun-tung” [The Taiwan pao-chia and the movement “to improve living conditions,” 1937–1945], Shih-lien tsa-chih, 19 (December 1991): 70.

12. Strong sentiments with regard to the assimilation of the Taiwanese and the merger of Taiwan were still expressed in Japan by supporters of Itagaki’s Taiwan assimilation movement during 1914–15. Personal testimonies are included in “Taiwan dŋkakai ni okeru meishi no shoka” [Sentiments of celebrities in regard to the Taiwan assimilation society], comp., Hamaguchi Yŭkichi (unpublished draft, January 1919).

13. Yosaburo Takekoshi, Japanese Rule in Formosa (London: Longmans, Green, 1907), p. 18.

14. Harry J. Lamley, “The 1895 Taiwan War of Resistance: Local Chinese Efforts Against a Foreign Power,” in Taiwan: Studies in Chinese Local History, ed. Leonard H.D. Gordon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 24; Davidson, The Island of Formosa, pp. 301–304, 311–312.

15. Lamley, pp. 28, 56–67.

16. Ibid., pp. 23, 39–55; Gordon, “The Cession of Taiwan,” p. 562.

17. Lamley, pp. 31–46.

18. Ibid., pp. 56–61.

19. For a description of the Taiwan Republic and Governor T’ang’s role, see Harry J. Lamley, “The 1895 Taiwan Republic: A Significant Episode in Modern Chinese History,” Journal of Asian Studies, 27, no. 4 (August 1968): 739–754.

20. Ibid., pp. 754–758; Davidson, The Island of Formosa, pp. 362–364.

21. Kabayama’s proclamation, dated October 27, 1895, was addressed to the inhabitants of T’ainan. Nisshin-eki Taiwan shi [History of Taiwan in the Sino-Japanese War], comp., Wakumoto Otokuchi (Taihoku: Taiwan nichi shimpō, 1930), pp. 177–178. Later, on November 18, the governor-general issued a more formal pacification announcement. Sugiyama Seiken, Taiwan rekidai sōtoko no chiseki [Administrative record of Taiwan’s successive governors-general] (Tokyo: 1922), p. 27.

22. A detailed study of the partisan resistance over these seven years is one by Weng Chia-in (Angkaim), T’ai-wan Han-jen wu-chuang k’ang-Jih shih yen-chiu [Taiwanese armed resistance under the early Japanese rule (1895–1902)] (Taipei: National Taiwan University, 1986). According to Weng, pp. 92–93, from the end of 1895 through 1902 there were attacks on fifty-four Japanese installations and ninety-four incidents staged by partisans.

23. Ibid., p. 95.

24. Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, Chinese translation by Huang Ying-che (Taipei: Tzu-yu shih-tai, 1989), pp. 78–79.

25. Ibid., p. 93. Davidson, The Island of Formosa, p. 365, estimates that the number of Taiwanese killed in 1895 may have totaled 6,760.

26. Davidson, The Island of Formosa, p. 364.

27. Wu Wen-hsing, Jih-chü shih-ch ’i T’ai-wan she-hui ling-tao chieh-ts ’eng chihyen-chiu [Study of the elite stratum of Taiwanese society during the Japanese period] (Taipei: Cheng-chung shu-chu, 1992), pp. 27–33.

28. Ibid., p. 31.

29. Among them were prominent gentry leaders, such as Ch’iu Feng-chia, Lin Wei-yuan, and Lin Ch’ao-tung of the powerful Wu-feng Lin family, who had offered support to Governor T’ang and his resistance effort.

30. Weng Chia-in, T’ai-wan Han-jen wu-chuang, pp. 135–169. The author also discusses the incipient Chinese nationalism that developed in China and Taiwan as a consequence of the Sino-Japanese War and Ch’ing defeat, as well as local religion that helped inspire Taiwanese resistance.

31. Kodama remained in Taiwan for only several years until around 1900, and during subsequent intervals to 1906. Therefore, the actual governance of the colony often rested in Gotō’s hands. Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, pp. 82–83.

32. Ibid., pp. 87–93; Chang Han-yu and Ramon H. Myers, “Japanese Colonial Development Policy in Taiwan, 1895–1906: A Case of Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship,” Journal of Asian Studies, 22, no. 4 (August 1963): 441–442. Light push cart railway lines were introduced in Taiwan in 1895, soon after the Japanese takeover. “In most cases daisha routes preceded steam railroad lines and improved roads,” according to Ronald G. Knapp, “Push Car Railways and Taiwan’s Development,” in China’s Island Frontier: Studies in the Historical Geography of Taiwan, ed. Ronald G. Knapp (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1980), p. 209.

33. Davidson, The Island of Formosa, pp. 633–644, 624–626; Lin Man-houng, Ssu-pai nien lai te liang-an fen-ho: i-ke ching-mao shih te hui-ku [Analysis and synthesis of four hundred years on both sides of the strait: A retrospection of economic-trade history] (Taipei: Tzu-li wan-pao, 1994), pp. 32–33.

34. Chang and Myers, “Japanese Colonial Development Policy,” pp. 443–446; Davidson, The Island of Formosa, pp. 452–455. The long-range effects of the Japanese colonial strategy to make Taiwan an agricultural appendage of Japan, vis-á-vis sugar and rice production, is discussed in Samuel P.S. Ho, Economic Development of Taiwan, 1860–1970 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 29–32. Mainly by means of sugar and rice exports to Japan, along with finished products and services imported or purchased from Japan, an “export surplus” was created and in part reinvested to increase Taiwan’s productive capacity. Taiwan’s controlled trade with Japan, based on the colony’s exports of its major agricultural products (except rice) and natural resources (camphor, in particular), has recently been interpreted more in terms of the expulsion of foreign capital and the penetration of Japanese capital, along with the subordination of Taiwanese merchants who had shared in this export trade during the late Ch’ing. Chih-ming Ka, Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan: Land Tenure, Development, and Dependency, 1895–1945 (Boulder: Westview, 1995), pp. 65–69.

35. Chang and Myers, “Japanese Colonial Development Policy,” p. 446; Chih-ming Ka, Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan, pp. 50–54.

36. Ka, Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan, pp. 58–62.

37. Chang and Myers, “Japanese Colonial Development Policy,” p. 446; Ka, Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan, pp. 54–56.

38. George H. Kerr, Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895–1945 (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1974), pp. 80–84.

39. Barclay, Colonial Development, p. 16, table 3, for the 1905 count of the Han Taiwanese only; p. 13, table 2, for the 1943 estimate of the entire subject population, including the aborigines. Kerr, Formosa, p. 73, cites a June 4, 1900, figure for the Han Taiwanese.

40. For an account of elementary common schools and other schooling administered by Gotō, see E. Patricia Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 1895–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 18–44.

41. Ibid., pp. 34–38.

42. Ibid., pp. 38–43.

43. See note 25.

44. Some authors only list six major insurrections. However, Weng Chia in T’ai-wan Han-jen wu-chuang, pp. 144–146, lists thirteen cases of armed resistance against the Japanese during the 1907–15 period.

45. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 79–80.

46. Ibid., pp. 102-105; Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, pp. 101–102.

47. Huang, Taiwan sōtokufu, pp. 57–58.

48. Ching-chih Chen, “Police and Community Control Systems in the Empire,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, p. 215. By 1901, the civil police system had assumed its permanent form under Japanese colonial rule and, according to Chen, some 920 police substations existed about the island.

49. For an account of the aiyü guards and their background, see ibid., pp. 216–220. For the sōteidan refer to Hui-yu Caroline Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control: The hokō System in Taiwan Under Japanese Rule, 1895–1945” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1990), pp. 74–82. Kerr, Formosa, p. 102, refers to Sakuma’s use of the sōteidan in his campaign, but under the title of “auxiliary Youth Corps.”

50. The development of the hokō system and its sōteidan militia by 1903 is described in Hung Ch’iu-fen, “Jih-chu shih-ch’i T’ai-wan te pao-chia chih-tu (1895–1903)” [Taiwan’s pao-chia system during the early Japanese period], Chin-tai shih yen-chiu chi-k’an, 21 (June 1992): 439–471. For the inception of the sōteidan, see p. 469. In 1943, it was incorporated in the wartime Civilian Guards. Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” p. 65.

51. Ching-chih Chen, “Police and Community Control Systems,” pp. 218–219.

52. Takekoshi, Japanese Rule in Formosa, pp. 18–19; Chen, “Police and Community Control Systems,” pp. 216–217.

53. Takekoshi, Japanese Rule in Formosa, p. 147. The powers of the Taiwan governor-general, as of 1905, are listed on pp. 22–23.

54. Ibid., pp. 147–149. The civil police also exercised strict supervision over the registered inhabitants in the towns as well as in the Taiwanese neighborhoods within cities. In such urban communities they enforced ordinances and codes, and promoted campaigns endorsed by the colonial government.

55. Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 168–169. For the network of “occupational associations” developed under the Gotō administration, see Kerr, Formosa, pp. 62–64.

56. Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 46–47.

57. The duties and responsibilities of hokō heads are discussed in ibid., pp. 102–106.

58. Ts’ai Hui-yu (Caroline), “Jih-chih shih-tai T’ai-wan pao-chia shu-chi ch’u-t’an, 1911–1945” [Notes on Hokō Secretaryship in Taiwan under Japanese Rule, 1911–1945], T’ai-wan shih yen-chiu, 1, no. 2 (December 1994): 9–11. The household registers maintained by the colonial police, however, continued more detailed information about Taiwanese households than did the registries kept by the hosei and hokŋ clerks. For a description of the household registers compiled by the police (some of which have been preserved), see Arthur P. Wolf and Chieh-shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), pp. 16–33.

59. The early hokō compacts and regulations are described in Hung, “T’ai-wan te pai-chia chih-tu (1895–1903),” pp. 450–452; and Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 87–102.

60. Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 61–62.

61. The “operational functions” of hokō and sōteidan units also related to local security and campaigns against opium smoking. Ibid., pp. 102–26, 151–56. By 1919, according to Ts’ai, “the hokō system was used to assist in virtually every important aspect of colonial administration.” Ibid., p. 163.

62. Ibid., pp. 228–234.

63. So-called hokō roads were usually the fourth-grade local feed routes. Ibid., p. 338. Hokō laborers were also conscripted for more extensive bridge and highway projects as well as to maintain railway lines. Ibid., pp. 336–342.

64. Such Taiwanese protests, along with Japanese arguments favoring the hokō system, are set forth in Ide Kiwata, Jih-chu hsia chih T’ai cheng [Taiwan government under Japanese rule], translation of the 1936 Japanese edition by Kuo Hui (Taipei: T’ai-wan sheng wen-hsien wei-yuan-hui, 1956), pp. 962–964.

65. This total of 58,000 is derived from Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” p. 67, table 1.2, and represents about 5 percent of the Taiwanese population in 1905, as indicated in Barclay, Colonial Development, p. 16, table 3.

66. Barclay, Colonial Development, p. 16, table 3. Mark R. Peattie has noted that within the Japanese colonial empire most of the territories “were essentially occupation colonies where a minority of Japanese colonials existed amid a sea of indigenous peoples.” See his “Introduction” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, p. 11.

67. Harry J. Lamley, “The Yōbunkai of 1900: An Episode in the Transformation of the Taiwan Elite During the Early Japanese Period,” in Jih-chu shih-ch ’i T’ai-wan shih kuo-ch’i hsueh-shu yen-t’ao-hui lun-wen chi [hereafter, cited as 1992 Conference Volume], comp. National Taiwan University, Department of History (Taipei, 1993), pp. 121–124. More details on Taiwanese elites who early became compliant colonial servitors are found in Wu Wen-hsing, Jih-chŭ shih-ch Y T’ai-wan, pp. 53–65.

68. Lamley, “The Yōbunkai of 1900,” pp. 125, 129–132; Wu Wen-hsing, Jih-chu shih-ch’i T’ai-wan, pp. 63–75.

69. Lamley, “The Yōbunkai of 1900,” pp. 128–129.

70. Ibid., pp. 132–142.

71. These campaigns focused mainly on queue wearing by adult males, footbinding among the womenfolk, the use of opium, and allegedly superstitious practices.

72. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 86–88.

73. Marriages with Taiwanese were prohibited by law before 1932. Barclay, Colonial Development, p. 16 n12 and p. 214. The formation of pure native-owned joint-stock companies was also illegal. Chih-ming Ka, Japanese Colonialism, p. 80.

74. Tay-sheng Wang, “Legal Reform in Taiwan,” pp. 116–118; 133, 139.

75. This tax burden was heavier than that imposed on the people of Japan or that incurred under Ch’ing rule. Chih-ming Ka, Japanese Colonialism, p. 54; Takekoshi, Japanese Rule in Formosa, p. 136.

76. Chih-ming Ka, Japanese Colonialism, pp. 62–74.

77. Ibid., pp. 74–82.

78. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 47–48, 108. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao had visited the Wu-feng Lin family. Harry J. Lamley, “Assimilation Efforts in Colonial Taiwan: The Fate of the 1914 Movement,” Monumenta Serica, 29 (1970–71 ): 510–511.

79. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 106–107; T’ai-wan shih-chi yen-chiu hui, comp., T’ai-wan ts’ung-t’an [Collected chats about Taiwan] (Taipei: Yu-shih wen-hua, 1977), pp. 476–478.

80. Rev. D. Ferguson, “Formosan Chinese,” Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, 40, no. 9 (September 1909): 494–496.

81. For a detailed account of the anti-footbinding and queue-cutting movements, see Wu Wen-hsing, “Jih-chu shih-ch’i T’ai-wan te fang-tsu tuan-fa yun-tung” [Taiwan’s anti-footbinding and queue-cutting movements during the Japanese period], in T’ai-wan she-hui yu wen-hua pien-ch ’ien, comp., Ch’u Hai-yuan and Chang Ying-hua (Taipei, Institute of Ethnography, Academia Sinica, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 69–108. These popular movements lasted until 1915, when the colonial authorities began to enforce hokō regulations against these practices.

82. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, pp. 65–66, 68–71.

83. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 105–6.

84. Lamley, “Assimilation Efforts,” pp. 507–511.

85. See note 12.

86. Lamley, “Assimilation Efforts,” pp. 512–514.

87. Ibid., pp. 514–516. See also the account by Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, pp. 66–71, who associates Itagaki’s assimilation movement more closely with the campaign in support of the Taichŭ Middle School.

88. Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, p. 107.

89. Kerr, Formosa, p. 115; Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, p. 108.

90. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, pp. 83–84.

91. F91. Ibid., pp. 84–90.

92. Ibid., pp. 92–93.

93. However, because of opposition by Japanese authorities, integration was limited on the elementary school level, and Den’s 1922 rescript only brought about “completely integrated schools from the secondary level up.” Ibid., pp. 94–99. Also, according to Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, pp. 102–103, integration through Den’s educational reform “actually reduced the number of Taiwanese who received higher training in the colony” due to the stiff competition from Japanese.

94. Ibid., pp. 93, 146.

95. Ibid., p. 107.

96. Edward I-te Chen, “Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa: A Comparison of the Systems of Political Control,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30 (1970): 135–136.

97. Tay-sheng Wang, “Legal Reform in Taiwan,” pp. 98–108.

98. Chen, “Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa,” p. 133.

99. Ibid., p. 157. See also Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes,” pp. 102, 124. Subsequently, after the governors-general of Korea and Taiwan, as well as the governor of Karafuto, were brought under the control of the Minister of Home Affairs in 1943, a substantially integrated colonial empire was created. Then all three colonies were under the direct governance of Tokyo in a manner almost similar to the way préfectoral government in Japan operated under central authority. Edward I-te Chen, “The Attempt to Integrate the Empire: Legal Perspectives,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, pp. 264–265.

100. Chen, “Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa,” pp. 139–140.

101. Barclay, Colonial Development, p. 16, table 3, and 116–120.

102. Wang Shih-ch’ing, “Jih-chu shih-ch’i T’ai-wan wai-shih jih-chih” [Chronicle of Taiwan’s foreign affairs during the Japanese period], pt. 1, T’ai-wan wen-hsien, 12, no. 2 (June 1960): 264; Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, pp. 35, 124–125. For post-1931 control of the Presbyterian missions, see Murray A. Rubinstein, “Mission of Faith, Burden of Witness: The Presbyterian Church in the Evolution of Modern Taiwan, 1865–1989,” American Asian Review, 9, no. 2 (summer 1991): 78–80.

103. Wu Wen-hsing, Jih-chu shih-ch’i tsai T’ai “Hua-ch’iao” yen-chiu [A Study of the “Hua-ch’iao” in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation] (Taipei: Taiwan hsueh-sheng shu-chu, 1991), pp. 151–153, and p. 52, table 3.

104. Ibid., pp. 64–65. The Taipei Chinese consulate-general, in fact, was established in 1931, superseding the Chung-hua hui-kuan of the Republican period that was founded in 1923. Hsu Hsueh-chi, “Jih-chu shih-ch’i te Chung-hua Min-kuo T’ai-pei tsung-ling-shih-kuan” [The Taipei Consulate-General of the Republic of China during the Japanese period, 1921–1927], in 1992 Conference Volume, pp. 509, 513.

105. Wang Shih-ch’ing, “Jih-chu shih-ch’t T’ai-wan,” pt. 1, p. 237.

106. Ibid., pt. 1, p. 247: pt. 2, T’ai-wan wen-hsien, 12, no. 2 (June 1961): 106–109. For a more detailed account of the Taiwanese sekimin in Fujian, see Tai Kuo-hui, “Jih-pen te chih-min-ti chih-p’ei yu T’ai-wan chi-min” [Japan’s colonial management and the Taiwan chi-min (sekimin)], trans. Hung Wei-jen, in T’ai-wan te chih-min-ti shang-hen, comp. Wang Hsiao-po (Taipei: P’a-mi-erh shu-tien, 1985), pp. 239–269.

107. Wang Shih-ch’ing, T’ai-wan wen-hsien, pp. 108–109, 111.

108. Ibid., p. 109.

109. This collection was housed in the Government-General Library, founded in 1914. Its holdings are revealed in that library’s catalogues, especially those relating to South China and Southeast Asia issued in 1938 and 1943, respectively. Chang Wei-rung, “Jih-chu shih-ch’i T’ai-wan Tsung-tu-fu T’u-shu-kuan kuan-shih” [History of the Taiwan Government-General Library during the Japanese occupation] (unpublished paper presented at the Conference on Taiwan Historical Research and the Archives of the Taiwan Branch Library of the National Central Library, Taipei, October 21–22, 1993), p. 17.

110. Tay-sheng Wang, “Legal Reform in Taiwan,” pp. 134–135.

111. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 151–154; Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, pp. 131–134. According to Huang (p. 133), almost five hundred members of the mountain tribes were slain in reprisal over the next few months following this incident.

112. Tay-sheng Wang, “Legal Reform in Taiwan,” pp. 134–135.

113. Chen, “Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa,” pp. 141 and 142, table 3; Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 167–169, and 171, figure 4.1.

114. Ching-chih Chen, “Police and Community Control Systems,” pp. 217–218. According to Chen: “Until 1945 the police system remained highly centralized and widely dispersed in the countryside, with awesome authority to manage and to intervene in the life of the Chinese [Taiwanese]” (p. 218).

115. Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 175–177, 232–233.

116. Ibid., p. 176. Such boundary shifts usually occurred when “large-district” administrative villages, formed after the 1920 reform, caused previous administrative divisions to merge under larger demarcations. Ibid., pp. 176–177. In line with the formation of the “large-district” system, hokō associations (hokō kyōkai) began to be established on the county level. Subsequently, during the wartime period, hokō federations developed at the prefectural level as well. Ibid., pp. 235–236.

117. Of course, other factors also fostered community change and development: namely, advances in communication and transportation, economic growth, and the burgeoning Taiwanese population.

118. Chen, “Japanese Colonialism in Korea and Formosa,” pp. 149–155.

119. Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 183–192. Spirited hosei elections were held even a few years earlier in a few cities after allied hokō offices were allowed to sell opium permits. Ibid., pp. 265–275.

120. See note 81.

121. Wang Shih-ch’ing, “Huang-min-hua yun-tung chien te T’ai-wan she-hui sheng-hua kai-shan yun-tung” [The movement of social living improvement before “imperialization” (kōminka) in Taiwan: The case of Haishan area (1914–1937)], Ssuyuyen, 29, no. 4 (December 1991), pp. 1–13.

122. Ibid., pp. 16–18: Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 454–456.

123. Ts’ai Hui-yu (Caroline), “Pao-cheng, pao-chia shu-chi, chieh-chuang i-ch’ang— k’u-shu li-shih (san)” [Pao-cheng (hosei), pao-chia (hokō) secretaries, town and village substations—oral history] (3), T’ai-wan feng-wu, 45, no. 4 (December 1995): 100.

124. Barclay, Colonial Development, p. 16, table 3, cites the aborigine count in 1935 as 270,674. Not until the 1930s were they brought fully within the scope of the census. In 1934, the total number dwelling in aboriginal districts was estimated to be 148,472. Hideo Naito, A Record of Taiwan’s Progress, 1936–37 Edition (Tokyo: Kokusai Nippon Kyokai), p. 60.

125. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 165–167; A Record of Taiwan’s Progress, 1936–37 Edition, pp. 62–63.

126. For a discussion of the Taiwanese sekimin status and its derivation, see Tai Kuo-hui, “Jih-pen te chih-min-ti chih-p’ei,” pp. 242–249.

127. Mark R. Peattie, “Japanese Treaty Port Settlements in China, 1895–1937,” in The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895–1937, ed. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 191 and n31. Reference to the Taiwan public assembly in Fuzhou is found in Ch’en San-ching, Hsu Hsueh-chi, interviewers, Lin Heng-tao hsien-sheng fang-wen chi-lu [The reminiscences of Mr. Lin Heng-tao] (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1992), pp. 49–50.

128. Lin Man-houng, Ssu-pai nien lai te liang-an fen-ho, pp. 70–71.

129. Ibid., pp. 65–66, 69, 71.

130. Ibid., pp. 126–131; Ch’en San-ching et al., pp. 49–51. The activities of Lin Ch’ao-tung, senior head of the wealthy Fu-feng Lin family, after his crossing to Fujian in 1895, are described in Huang Fu-san, “Jih-pen ling T’ai yu Wu-feng Lin chia chih ssu-ying—i Lin Ch’ao-tung wei chung-hsin” [Japanese control of Taiwan and the responses of the Wu-feng Lin family—with focus on Lin Ch’ao-tung], in 1992 Conference Volume, pp. 93–99.

131. Tai Kuo-hui, “Jih-pen te chih-min-ti chih-p’ei,” pp. 255–256, 266.

132. Ibid., pp. 256–257, 262–264. Liang Hua-hung, “Jih-chu shih-tai T’ai-wan chi-min ts’ai Min sheng te huo-tung chi ch’u-ching” [Actions and circumstances of the Taiwan chi-min (sekimin) in Fujian province during Japanese times], in 1992 Conference Volume, pp. 479–485, also deals with the wartime period.

133. For example, note the experiences of Ch’en I-sung, who went to Japan as a young student in 1920. Wu Chun-ying, recorder, “Ch’en I-sung hui-i lu” (Reminiscences of Ch’en I-sung), pt. 1, T’ai-wan wen-i, 19 (October 1993): 110–165.

134. Taiwan kyōkukai zasshi, 18 (September 25, 1903): 21 (han-wen); Taiwan kyōkai kaipō, 52 (January 20, 1903): 57 (han-wen).

135. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, pp. 126–127; p. 128, table 12.

136. There seems to have been no accurate count. My estimate is based on Mendel’s statement: “Most of the approximately 25,000 Formosans living in Japan during the 1960’s had migrated before 1945 for economic reasons.” Douglas Mendel, The Politics of Formosan Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 147.

137. Ts’ai P’ei-huo et al., comp., T’ai-wan min-tsu yun-tung shih [History of the Taiwanese national movement] (Taipei: Tzu-li wan-pao, 1983, 3d printing), pp. 545–546.

138. Shao-hsing Chen, “Diffusion and Acceptance of Modern Western Artistic and Intellectual Expression in Taiwan,” Studia Taiwanica, 2 (summer 1957): 3. The Formosan Youth was renamed “Taiwan” in 1922. After the demise of the New People’s Society in 1923, the magazine was changed into a fortnightly, entitled Taiwan People’s Journal, and then, as a daily newspaper, retitled the Taiwan New People’s Journal, from 1930 to 1932 over the last two years of its existence. Hsuang Hsiu-cheng, “T’ai-wan min-pao” yu chin-tai T’ai-wan min-tsu yun-tung [The Taiwan min-pao and the modern Taiwan national movement] (Changhua: Hsien-tai ch’ao, 1987), pp. 1, 7–19.

139. Shao-hsing Chen, “Diffusion and Acceptance,” p. 3.

140. Edward I-te Chen, “Formosan Political Movements Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1914–1937,” Journal of Asian Studies, 31, no. 3 (May 1972): 489.

141. Ts’ai P’ei-huo et al., T’ai-wan min-tsu yun-tung shih, pp. 289–308.

142. Ch’iu K’un-liang, Chiu-chu yu hsin-chu: Jih-chih shih-ch’i T’ai-wan hsi-chu chih yen-chiu [Old drama and new drama: Study of Taiwanese plays during the period of Japanese rule, 1895–1945] (Taipei: Tzu-li wan-pao, 1992), pp. 289, 301–302.

143. Most periodicals and newspapers, catering to Taiwanese readers in the colony before 1937, were divided into Chinese and Japanese sections. These portions were of equal length in the Formosan Youth and Taiwan magazines, while the Taiwan People’s Journal and its sequel were published about two-thirds in Chinese. Huang Hsiu-cheng, pp. 14–29.

144. Douglas L. Fix, “Advancing on Tokyo: The New Literature Movement, 1930–1937,” in 1992 Conference Volume, pp. 270–271. For an extensive review of the Taiwanese new literature movement during the 1920–37 period, see Hsu Chu-ya, Jih-chu shih-ch 7 T’ai-wan hsiao-shuo yen-chiu [Research on the Taiwanese novel during the Japanese period] (Taipei: Wen shih che, 1995), pp. 52–108.

145. Fix, “Advancing on Tokyo,” pp. 276–277.

146. Yang Ts’ui, Jih-chu shih-ch’i T’ai-wan fu-nu chieh-fangyun-tung—i “T’ai-wan min-pai” wei fen-hsi ch’ang-yu (1920–1932) [The Taiwanese women’s liberation movement under Japanese rule—with the Taiwan mim-pō as a basis of analysis, 1920–1932] (Taipei: Shih-pao wen-hua, 1993), pp. 181–218.

147. Ibid., pp. 319–380. By this time issues of gender and class had become intertwined.

148. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, pp. 222–223. For a detailed study of female Taiwanese teachers in the common schools, and their increase in numbers to 457 (including teacher substitutes) in 1925 (totaling, in all, 15,126 from 1903 to 1943), see Yu Chien-ming, “Jih-chu shih-ch’i kung hsueh-hsiao te T’ai-chi nu chiao-shih” [Common school female teachers of Taiwanese registry during the Japanese period], in 1992 Conference Volume, especially pp. 572–573, and p. 574, chart 1.

149. Chen, “Formosan Political Movements,” pp. 481–483.

150. Ibid., pp. 486–487, 488–489.

151. Ibid., pp. 483–484. For a listing of the League’s regulations, see Ts’ai P’ei-huo et al., T’ai-wan min-tsu yun-tung shih, pp. 203–204.

152. Chen, “Formosan Political Movements,” p. 485, tables I and II, lists the number of signatures on each of the fifteen petitions, and indicates the divisions in educational background of 17,262 persons whose names appeared on one or more of these petitions.

153. Nonetheless, the league had managed to attract much more widespread sympathy for the movement, both in Japan and Taiwan, after some of the leaders were arrested by the colonial police in 1923. In the ensuing trials the league and its objectives were ultimately judged to be legal and not in violation of the constitution. Detailed accounts of this incident and its implications are found in Ts’ai P’ei-huo et al., T’ai-wan min-tsu yun-tung shih, pp. 201–244; and Chou Wan-yao, Jih-chu shih-tai te T’ai-wan i-hui she-chih ch ’ing-yuan yun-tung [The petition movement for the establishment of a Taiwan parliament during the Japanese period] (Taipei: Tzu-li wan pao, 1989), pp. 81–89.

154. For accounts of the sugar and tea fanners’ disputes, along with those of strikes and labor movements, again with involvement by radical Taiwanese intellectuals and youth, see Lien Wen-ch’ing, T’ai-wan cheng-chih yun-tung shih [A history of Taiwan political movements], ed. Chang Yen-hsien and Weng Chia-in (Taipei: Tao-hsiang, 1988), pp. 128–139, 250–257. Even before 1927, the Taiwan Culture Association was active in organizing farmers’ unions and helped in the formation of the islandwide Taiwan Farmers’ Union in 1926. Chen, “Formosan Political Movements,” p. 491. The Taiwanese Communist Party was created in Shanghai in 1928. Although influenced by the Communist movement in China, the Taiwanese party operated as a branch of the Japanese Communist Party. Ibid., p. 478 n2. An account of the Taiwanese Communist movement is found in Lien Wen-ch’ing, T’ai-wan cheng-chih yun-tung shih, pp. 213–220, followed by a briefer description of Taiwanese anarchism (pp. 221–223). The history of the Taiwanese Communist Party, until it was abolished in April 1932, is presented in Lu Hsiu-i, Jih-chu shih-tai T’ai-wan Kung-chan-tang shih (1928–1932) [A history of the Taiwan Communist Party during the Japanese period, 1928–32] (Taipei: Ch’ien-wei, 1992, 3d printing).

155. Chen, “Formosan Political Movements,” pp. 492–493. Chen notes that the Popular Party helped organize several labor unions and a labor union federation (formed in 1928) into which twenty-nine unions were merged. For longer accounts of the Taiwan Popular Party, see Ts’ai P’ei-huo et al., T’ai-wan min-tsu yun-tung shih, pp. 355–443; and Lien Wen-ch’ing, T’ai-wan cheng-chih yun-tung shih, pp. 225–257.

156. The politicized Taiwan Culture Association was suppressed in 1931 (as was the Popular Party). Ts’ai P’ei-huo et al., T’ai-wan min-tsu yun-tung shih, p. 353. A description of the Federation and its activities is in ibid., pp. 444–491.

157. Chen, “Formosan Political Movements,” p. 494.

158. Ibid., pp. 494–495.

159. Kerr, Formosa, p. 175.

160. Besides Meiji leaders and naval spokesmen, several of the early Taiwan governors-general urged that Japanese military strikes be launched from the colony. The second governor-general, General Katsura Tarō, pressed for a southward strike on Luzon in 1896. Then, in 1900, Katsura and Kodama Gentarō planned for a cross-channel operation to launch troops to coastal Fukien. Moreover, the “Kodama Report” of 1901 allegedly called for attacks on French Indochina. Ibid., pp. 42–49. Kobayashi’s three policies are cited in Wan-yao Chou, “The Kōminka Movement in Taiwan and Korea: Comparisons and Interpretations,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, ed. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 44.

161. Mark R. Peattie, “Nanshin: The ’Southward Advance,’ 1931–1941, as a Prelude to the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, p. 216. The national military policy referred to is the “Outline of National Policy,” drawn up in April 1936 and as modified in August of that year. Ibid., pp. 214–216.

162. Ibid., p. 217; Kerr, Formosa, pp. 190–191, 202.

163. For the circumstances concerning Kobayashi’s replacement, see Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, pp. 172–173; Kerr, Formosa, pp. 200–201.

164. This vision was so named by the new foreign minister in early August 1940. Peter Duus, “Introduction/Japan’s Wartime Empire: Problems and Issues,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, p. xxii.

165. Peattie, “Nanshin” p. 223; Kerr, Formosa, p. 207ff.

166. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 211–214.

167. Ibid., pp. 221–222, 228–229.

168. Actually, by this time the Taiwan garrison had been expanded to become the Tenth Military District (hōrnen). Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, p. 175.

169. In general, Taiwan’s three wartime governors-general have been rated better than their civil administrators, especially in the case of Morioka Jirō, who squandered funds during the Kobayashi reign. Ibid., p. 166.

170. An American invasion of Taiwan, planned by the U.S. Navy for February 1945, was abandoned and Okinawa was subsequently invaded instead. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 227–228.

171. Ibid., pp. 228–230, 232–234.

172. Chen, “The Attempt to Integrate the Empire,” pp. 241–242, 265. Edward Chen notes that in the late 1930s two contrasting terms were introduced in the official Japanese colonist vocabulary: “gaichi, referring to all colonies, and naichi, meaning metropolitan Japan.” Taiwan, Korea, and, eventually, Karafuto were placed under the control of the Ministry of Home Affairs since the legal integration of these three colonies with metropolitan Japan had been completed, at least in appearance.

173. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 173–174.

174. Lai Tse-han, Ramon H. Myers, and Wei Wou, A Tragic Beginning: The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 40.

175. Kerr, Formosa, pp. 173–174, 215; Ho, Economic Development of Taiwan, pp. 74–75.

176. According to Samuel Ho, the colonial government and the Japanese capitalists did little to diversify Taiwan’s economy, so fixed were they “on the image of Taiwan as an agricultural appendage to Japan” (Economic Development of Taiwan, p. 73).

177. Until 1924, Taiwanese were not allowed to organize or operate corporate businesses without Japanese partners or participation. Ibid., p. 38. A brief account of the food processing and other private industries operating in the colony is in ibid., pp. 71–73.

178. Ibid., pp. 86–87.

179. These figures and estimates are taken from Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning, pp. 38–39.

180. On the basis of a 1943 survey of male workers employed by industrial establishments with more than thirty workers, Samuel Ho maintains that “it was [still] the Japanese who provided the skills and know-how” for the operation of most of Taiwan’s large industrial and business enterprises (Economic Development of Taiwan, p. 81). The hiring of Taiwanese for skilled positions continued over the wartime period despite an increase of the naichijin population until at least 1943. The Japanese community in Taiwan had grown to 312,386 by 1940. Barclay, Colonial Development, p. 16.

181. Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning, p. 41. Barclay, Colonial Development, p. 116, table 24, indicates impressive gains in the Taiwanese populations of nine major cities from 1930 to 1940.

182. Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning, pp. 39–40.

183. For a more complete account of social service projects involving hokō labor, see Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 426–437.

184. Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning, p. 28.

185. This colonial association served as an extension of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei yokusan-kai) founded in metropolitan Japan the previous year to strengthen allegiance to the emperor in his wartime role. The general organization of the imperial rule association was duplicated in Korea and Karafuto, as well as in Taiwan. Wan-yao Chou, “The Kōminka Movement: Taiwan Under Wartime Japan, 1937–1945” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1991), pp. 48–49; Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 452–454.

186. Chou, “The Kōminka Movement,” pp. 50–51. For more details, see Ts’ai, “One Kind of Control,” pp. 454–469.

187. Ibid., pp. 457–458.

188. Ibid., p. 457. Wan-yao Chou notes that the Kōmin hōkōkai has been described as “being like the big rope … of a net holding together all of the net’s more than six million joints … , each of which was constituted by one individual of the population and each one of which was interconnected” (“The Kōminka Movement,” p. 53).

189. For reference to the wartime activities of the Youth Corps and Young Women’s Corps, see ibid., p. 53. Radio broadcasting began on a trial basis in Taiwan in 1925, and regular broadcasts commenced in 1928 under the Post and Telecommunication Section of the Taiwan government-general.

190. Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning, pp. 37–38; Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, p. 190.

191. Wartime kōminka policy also did not allow for conciliatory assimilationist measures that seemed primarily to benefit components of the colonial population, as happened in 1932, for example, when registered marriages between Japanese and Taiwanese were legalized. See note 73.

192. Chou, “The Kōminka Movement,” pp. 44, 49. A Japanization movement was formally designated in Korea under a different name in October 1937. Ibid., p. 42.

193. The colonial authorities had long maintained that speaking kokugo was a major prerequisite for “becoming Japanese.” Before 1937, they had already set up extensive language study and outreach programs in Taiwan. For the percentages of Japanese speakers among the Taiwanese population, also see ibid., pp. 52 and 54. A more detailed study of the national language program and national language families, including accounts of Taiwanese who mastered the Japanese language, is in ibid., pp. 55–100.

194. Ibid., p. 57. A more complete study of the name-changing campaign is in Chou’s “Renaming Oneself a True Japanese: One Aspect of the Kōminka Movement, 1940–1945, in 1992 Conference Volume, pp. 155–212.

195. Chou, “Remaining Oneself,” pp. 193–195.

196. Of this total, 30,304 died in service. Chou, “The Kōminka Movement,” p. 65. These figures, as well as those of the enlistments through the army and navy volunteer systems, are cited in Chou’s more recent article, “Jih-pen tsai T’ai chun-shih tung-yuan yu T’ai-wan-jen ti hai-wai ts’an-chan ching-yen” [Japan’s military mobilization and the Taiwanese overseas war experiences, 1937–1945], T’ai-wan shift yen-chiu, 2, no. 1 (June 1995): 93–96.

197. Chou, “The Kōminka Movement,” p. 65.

198. The Shinto “reforms” imposed by the Japanese are dealt with in Chou, “The Kōminka Movement,” pp. 40–43. Other Taiwanese scholars have also addressed the issue of household altars and Shinto shrines. See, for example, Ts’ai Chin-t’ang, “Jih-chu mo-ch’i T’ai-wan-jen tsung-chiao hsin-yang pien-ch’ien: i ’chia-t’ing cheng-t’ing’ wei chung-hsin” [Changes of Taiwanese religion and faith in the late Japanese period: as centered on the ’domestic ancestral hall’], Ssuyuyen, 29, no. 4 (December 1991): 65–83.

199. Ts’ai Chin-t’ang emphasizes that the Taiwan government-general tended to take a more moderate stand with regard to religious reforms than did the local officials (ibid., pp. 79–80). According to Chou, thirty-eight out of the sixty-eight jinja in Taiwan were built between 1937 and 1945 (“The Kōminka Movement,” p. 45). The Taiwan Grand Shrine was located in present-day Yuan-shan, in Taipei.

200. Chou, “The Kōminka Movement,” p. 43.

201. Ibid., pp. 44–46. Here Chou lists other “unsound” Taiwanese social customs of which the Japanese disapproved, as well as a sample of reform proposals set forth in one town (p. 46 n76).

202. Recently, Taiwanese and Japanese specialists on Taiwan’s colonial literature have discovered several Taiwanese authors of “kōminka” short stories published in the early 1940s. Lin Jui-ming, “Sao-tung ti ling-nun—chueh-chan shih-ch’i ti T’ai-wan tso-chia yu huang-min wen-hsueh” [Troubled souls—Taiwanese writers and kōmin literature of the decisive war period], in 1992 Conference Volume, pp. 443–461.

203. Chou, “Jih-pen tsai T’ai chun-shih tung-yuan,” Abstract (p. 26). In this article the author lists the many areas and places in China, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific where Taiwanese served on overseas military duty throughout the 1937–45 period.

204. Youthful involvement in wartime “spiritual mobilization” may best be ascertained by the many Youth Corps and Young Women’s Corps activities.

205. Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning, p. 34.

206. Ibid., pp. 33–34.

207. Tsurumi, Japanese Colonial Education, pp. 129–130.

208. Chou, “Jih-pen tsai T’ai chun-shih tung yuan,” p. 93. Chou translates kessho as “blood plea” in her dissertation and in her essay in The Japanese Wartime Empire.

209. Chou, “The Kōminka Movement,” pp. 63–65, 66. By the early 1940s, more than fervent wartime patriotism appears to have motivated the younger generation to volunteer for military service on a massive scale and to write blood pleas so frequently. Chou suggests that a degree of cynicism may have been involved. Even fake applications could be submitted without much fear of detection, for there were so many applicants for such a relatively small number of openings. Ibid., p. 64.

210. This figure is cited in Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning, p. 22.

211. Ts’ai P’ei-huo et al., T’ai-wan min-tsu yun-tung shih, pp. 569–570; Huang Hsiucheng, pp. 22–23. This wartime newspaper was renamed the Kōnan nippō.

212. Liang Hua-hung, “Jih-chu shih-tai T’ai-wan,” pp. 474, 481.

213. Ibid., pp. 482, 483.

214. At the outset of the war the local Japanese consuls directed the sekimin to actively support the Japanese military, but soon urged them to return to Taiwan after the Kwangtung troops and the governor began to take action against the Taiwanese residents. The latter were unable to leave, and many were arrested and killed. Sekimin residing in Chang-chou and Ch’uan-chou, the ancestral areas of most Taiwanese, were also apprehended and sent to areas in the interior where many were confined and perished. Ibid., pp. 481–482.

215. J. Bruce Jacobs, “Taiwanese and the Chinese Nationalists, 1937–1945: The Origins of Taiwan’s ’Half-Mountain People,’ “ Modern China, 16, no. 1 (January 1990): 85. Traces of Taiwanese residents in wartime Peking may be found in records of two Taiwan guilds (hui-kuari) established there late in the nineteenth century. Both were managed by a Fukien guild until 1937, when they began to be operated by native Taiwanese. Hu Chunhuan and Bai Hequn, Beijing de huiguan [Peking’s guilds] (Beijing: Zhongguo jingji chubanshe, 1994), pp. 110–111.

216. Jacobs, “Taiwanese and the Chinese Nationalists,” p. 86.

217. Ibid., p. 105; George H. Kerr, Formosa Betrayed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), pp. 46–47. Kerr suggests that these Taiwanese representatives were members of a loose association of six expatriate groups, formed in 1943.

218. Liang Hua-hung, “Jih-chu shih-tai T’ai-wan,” pp. 483–484.

219. Lai et al., A Tragic Beginning, pp. 187–188.

220. Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, pp. 187–188.

221. The male voters had to be at least twenty-five years old and affluent enough to pay a direct state tax of fifteen Japanese yen or more. Ibid., pp. 188–189.

222. Ibid., pp. 189–190.

223. George Kerr alludes to this sort of home-rule speculation, but in an inaccurate manner: “In a dramatic bid for support, it was announced that the island would no longer be considered a colony, [and] that general elections would be held in 1945 to establish a Préfectoral Assembly” (Formosa, pp. 229–230).

224. Ibid., p. 233.

225. There are now many published oral history sources that indicate such Taiwanese behavior at the end of the colonial period. See, for example, Ch’en San-ching, Hsu Hsueh-chi, interviewers, Lin Heng-tao hsien-sheng fang-wen chi-lu.

226. Chou, “Jih-pen tsai T’ai chun-shih tung-yuan,” pp. 121–123.

227. The successful Taiwanese collaborator Ku Hsien-jung had been appointed to the House of Peers in 1934, however. Ku served in a nominal capacity until his death in 1936. Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, p. 189.

228. George Kerr estimates that only a few hundred Taiwanese died in the bombing raids, but “some thousands had died because of the breakdown in public health and medical services” (Formosa, p. 230). Kerr does not mention the more than thirty thousand who perished while on military duty. See note 196 and Huang Chao-t’ang, Taiwan sōtokufu, p. 253, table 14. Most homefront casualties were caused by diseases that began to spread at a rapid rate in the colony during the war period when many inhabitants suffered from overwork and malnutrition (Ho, Economic Development of Taiwan, p. 98). See also Barclay, Colonial Development and Population in Taiwan, pp. 133–139, for a discussion of public health and the risks of death in Taiwan.

8

Taiwan Under Japanese Rule, 1895–1945

Annexation and Armed Resistance (1895–1897)

Colonial Reform and Taiwanese Accommodation (1898–1915)

Colonial Governance and Peacetime Experiences (1915–1936)

Taiwan: Adminstrative Divisions, 1920–1945 (showing the colony’s five provinces [shŭ] and three subprovincial jurisdictions [chō], including Bōkotō, estab. 1926)

The Wartime Period (1937–1945)

Notes