“Rule by law”

As soon as Japan took over Taiwan in 1895, the Meiji government was confronted with the question of how to define the colony in her empire. How was Taiwan to be defined in Japan’s imperial structure? How did the 1889 constitution regulate a land that was to be turned over to Japanese rule in 1895? What were to be the fundamental principles of Japanese rule in Taiwan? That is, how did the Japanese government regulate in political terms the operation of this new territory? As Japan’s first colony, Taiwan played a key role in redefining Japan’s prewar constitution, which had come into effect only six years earlier. Essentially, to make colonial rule in Taiwan effective, Japan had to grapple with implementing colonial administration from scratch. And since Japan had no prior experience in colonial rule, she had to consult Western models. The Government-General of Taiwan, on the other hand, was left to grapple with colonial rule in its daily operations, and an effective rule was both a factor and a reflection of colonial administration. In this chapter, I focus on the legal tradition of modern Japan, paying specific attention to prewar administrative law and its introduction to Taiwan.