Japanese Colonial Era

30-second overview: After the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, Japan ruled Taiwan for 50 years. Through the Government-General system, it implemented modernization encompassing infrastructure, education, industry, and other comprehensive reforms. Simultaneously, the Kōminka (imperial subjectification) movement sought to assimilate Taiwanese people. Throughout this period, Taiwanese launched multiple anti-Japanese movements until Japan's surrender at the end of World War II in 1945.

From 1895 to 1945, Japan's fifty-year rule over Taiwan brought rapid modernization alongside colonial repression and cultural assimilation policies. The interplay of these forces constitutes a foundational layer of contemporary Taiwanese society and culture.¹

The Colonial Governance System

The Government-General of Taiwan, based in Taipei, was the supreme governing authority. The Governor-General was appointed by the Emperor and held executive, legislative, and military powers. The "Law 63" framework authorized the Governor-General to issue legally binding ordinances. Under the police system, the hoko (保甲) mutual surveillance organization incorporated every household into a collective responsibility network, ensuring colonial control penetrated to the grassroots level.

Upon taking control of Taiwan in 1895, Japan faced armed resistance from the Republic of Taiwan. Local armed uprisings continued until the 1915 Xilai'an Incident, after which armed resistance largely ceased, and colonial rule entered a relatively stable period of modernization.

Administratively, the island was divided into prefectural districts (Taihoku, Shinchiku, Taichū, Tainan, Takao, etc.), and a comprehensive land survey established property rights across the island, providing the institutional foundation for modern industry and taxation.

Modernization and Infrastructure

In transportation, the north-south trunk railway was completed in 1908, connecting Keelung to Takao (present-day Kaohsiung), one of the largest colonial railway systems in East Asia at the time. Keelung and Kaohsiung harbors were simultaneously rebuilt into modern commercial ports, greatly expanding Taiwan's foreign trade capacity.

In hydraulic agriculture, Japanese engineer Hatta Yoichi designed and oversaw the construction of the Chianan Canal over a decade (1920–1930), converting 150,000 hectares of farmland on the Chianan Plain into a reliably irrigated zone. Hatta Yoichi remains highly commemorated in Taiwan to this day.² The Sun Moon Lake hydroelectric plant supplied the island's electricity needs.

In education, the public school system raised the school enrollment rate for school-age children from under 5% at the start of colonial rule to approximately 71% by the end of the Japanese period (1944 statistics). "Literacy rate" and "enrollment rate" are distinct metrics: the colonial government's literacy statistics were based on Japanese-language reading and writing ability, which ran parallel to the traditional Chinese-character literacy system; the two standards should not be conflated. Taihoku Imperial University (present-day National Taiwan University), established in 1928, was the predecessor of Taiwan's higher education institutions, but Taiwanese students' access to higher education and employment remained constrained by ethnic discrimination.

One key architect of modernization was Gotō Shinpei (Civil Administrator, 1898–1906), who applied a "biological theory of colonial governance," using scientific surveys as a precursor to the gradual transplantation of Japanese institutions, establishing the framework for Taiwan's railways, land surveys, and public health systems.

Social Movements and Cultural Resistance

Political resistance took new forms in the 1920s. The Taiwan Parliament Petition Movement (1921–1934), led by Lin Hsien-tang, sought political participation within the colonial system, submitting fifteen petitions to the Imperial Diet. Chiang Wei-shui co-founded the Taiwan Cultural Association with Lin in 1921, using cultural enlightenment to foster national consciousness, and later organized the Taiwan People's Party in 1927 to advance political organization.³

The 1923 Police Affairs Incident was a major act of colonial suppression: Japanese authorities arrested core members of the Parliament Petition Movement (including Chiang Wei-shui) on charges of violating the Peace Preservation Law, and the subsequent trial generated widespread public attention, resulting in guilty verdicts. The incident significantly raised the movement's public profile and accelerated the political polarization of Taiwanese society. The Taiwan Communist Party, founded in 1928 in Shanghai by figures including Xie Xuehong (as a peripheral organization of the Japanese Communist Party), advocated Taiwanese national independence and was immediately suppressed by colonial authorities, collapsing by 1931.⁴

Japanese scholar Yanaihara Tadao's 1929 work Taiwan Under Imperialism analyzed the exploitative structure of Japanese colonial rule through capitalist political economy and remains one of the most frequently cited critical works in colonial historiography.

The 1930 Wushe Incident was the largest indigenous armed anti-Japanese action during the colonial period, in which Seediq chief Mona Ludao led approximately 300 tribesmen in an uprising. The Japanese suppression and subsequent policies remain widely controversial.

In literature, writers such as Lai He, Yang Kui, and Lu Heruo wrote in vernacular Chinese and Japanese, expressing critiques of oppression and identification with the land within the colonial system, establishing the indigenous foundations of modern Taiwanese literature.

The Kōminka Period and Postwar Transition

After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the colony entered a wartime mobilization structure, and the Kōminka movement was implemented on a large scale.

"National language (Japanese) common use" restricted the use of Taiwanese Hokkien; "name changes" encouraged adoption of Japanese names; shrine visits were made compulsory; and Taiwanese men were conscripted as military auxiliaries or soldiers, with an estimated over 200,000 serving during World War II.

In 1945, Japan was defeated, and Taiwan came under Republic of China governance. The modern infrastructure, educated personnel, rule-of-law concepts, and administrative efficiency left from the Japanese period were important starting points for postwar Taiwan's development. The complication of ethnic identity—the cultural gap between the Japanese-speaking generation and mainland Chinese who arrived after the war—became one of the partial roots of postwar Taiwan's political conflicts.

Historiographical Perspectives: Colonial Modernization vs. Colonial Exploitation

Interpretations of the Japanese colonial period remain debated in academia. The "colonial modernization thesis" emphasizes the positive legacy of infrastructure, education, and public health systems, arguing that Japanese rule laid the material foundation for Taiwan's industrialization. The "colonial exploitation thesis" points out that land surveys dispossessed indigenous peoples and small farmers of traditional land rights, that the sugar and rice export structures served Japanese imperial needs rather than Taiwan's development, and that Kōminka policies systematically destroyed Chinese-language cultural heritage. Taiwanese historiography (such as Wu Mi-cha and Wakabayashi Masahira) tends to integrate both perspectives, avoiding reductive affirmation or negation.

Terminology note: "日治" (Japanese rule) and "日據" (Japanese occupation) reflect different historiographical positions in Taiwanese scholarship; the former is more academically neutral, while the latter emphasizes the nature of colonial occupation. This article uses "日治" without presupposing a political stance.

References

Further Reading

• 乙未之役 (zh only) — The starting point of the colonial era: the 1895 Japanese landing and the resistance of the Republic of Taiwan
• 清治時期 (zh only) — Taiwan's history before Japanese rule