Taiwan Under Japanese Rule, 1895–1945

Taiwan, including the P’eng-hu islands (Pescadores), was ceded to Japan in 1895 at the conclusion of the Sino- Japanese War of 1894–95. This sudden act ushered in a fifty-one-year period of colonial rule in Taiwan that is now undergoing a major reassessment. Until recently, appraisals of the Japanese period generally reflected two contrary frames of reference: a positive perspective highlighting the achievements brought about under a colonial regime, and an anti-imperialist orientation featuring harsh Japanese rule and the hardships suffered by the island’s subject population. ¹ Sinophiles and exponents of Chinese nationalism subscribed to the latter view in keeping with their anti-Japanese sentiment. This led to a highly biased historiography by which resistance to colonial rule was emphasized and constructive measures were often slighted or ignored. In postcolonial Taiwan, after the colony’s retrocession to China in 1945, the Japanese period tended to be discredited as a dark age or as a mere cipher wedged between Taiwan’s late Ch’ing and Nationalist eras, when Chinese mainlander governance prevailed.