What Colonialism Did For Taiwan (& Japan)

In 1895, Japan acquired Taiwan island from the Qing Empire as their first colony. For the next fifty years, Japan occupied Taiwan - infusing it with their traditions, culture, and expertise.

The colonial legacy of the Japanese occupation period was deep and long lasting for both colonized and colonizer. In this video, we are going to talk about what happened during those fifty years. And what it did for both the Taiwanese and Japanese people.

Links:

[woolfel]

my maternal grandfather also grew up in Taiwan during Japanese occupation. He spoke fluent japanese and got a masters in chemistry in Tokyo. There are lots of things that show the influence of Japanese culture on taiwan. One of my favorite dishes Taiwanese oyster noodle soup is made with dashi stock. There's quite a few Taiwanese dishes with Japanese influence.

[mahoslash]

Great discussion.
I always joke that these were the lost 50 years.
Taiwanese kids were rarely educated about this era while grandparents were too scared to mention about this period.
My grandmother was natively borned during this era, but she was also too scared to mention about it after the nationalists came to Taiwan. Japanese food were also banned at our grandparents house since my grandfather was a railway police from China and he really hated the Japanese.
This caused a really interesting situation where none of us grandkids knew our grandmother can speak fluent Japanese until my brother and I passed the Japanese proficiency test after my grandfather passed away.
My grandmother was so thrilled that her grandkids can speak Japanese that to our surprise she start speaking in Japanese whenever she met me and my brother.
Heck, if we knew granny can speak better Japanese than anyone we knew, we should have asked her to teach us years earlier.

[mandelbro]

Great to get these histories from the perspective of an everyday Taiwanese capable of being impartial regarding colonialism.
Thanks for the balanced approach, as an Aussie, I learned a lot.

[Zethalai]

I appreciate your ability to cover difficult topics with a focus on the facts, but not lacking human sensitivity. Very touching tribute to your grandfather at the end.

[rexus]

Great video on a complicated topic. Another major 'export' from Taiwan was lumber. In the '70s and '80s, the period is usually referred to as "Japanese Occupation". Today, the language is much softer: "Japanese Administration".

[delilah]

Taiwanese look favorably to Japan and the thumbnail you used still stands today as their Presidential Office. Traveling to other cities in Taiwan like in Alishan Forest (Chiayi) and Taichung and you can still see old Japanese-era buildings that were still being used today

[yunus]

Love it.
It must have taken a lot of effort to cover this sensitive topic without irritating anyone. I took a class about history of Taiwan in NTU. I remember my professor was trying hard to not offend anyone.

[caonabocruzG]

The book "A taste of Freedom" by Peng Ming-Min gives details about the colonial time in Taiwan, specially in academia.
Universities like National Taiwan University had a Japanese system. He explains how organized it was but also how hard people from Formosa had to struggle to get a higher education. Great read, I highly recommend it.
Nice vid! Regards from Taoyuan.

[god-son-love]

My grandfather from my father's side spoke Japanese fluently. When he went to Japan, Japanese thought he spoke with a provincial accent. He never told us anything about his early life during Japan colonization. My grandfather from my mother's side escaped communists from mainland. He never told us anything about KMT martial law era.

[silentone]

Great vid. It’s great to get a deep dive into history outside the anglosphere. Really enjoying your work 😀

[kaneinkansas]

Land reform throughout East Asia turned out to be an important prelude to industrialization. It forced the wealthy to go into and expand industry - but it also allowed for enough farmers to make enough money to buy the products that came out of those factories. The East Asian industrial policy practice was to combine industrial protection with export promotion. You need local demand to provide enough demand volume to justify creating firms large enough to have economies of scale, no matter what you are buying. Allowing farmers to own their own land, allowed them to achieve enough disposable income to buy the products that came out of the factories. There was also one other benefit: farm income was strong enough to slow the migration to cities. If one looks at Latin American cities during the power WWII era, their cities were swamped by migration to the cities of surplus population creating vast expanse of urban slums.

The threat of Communism swamping all of East Asia forced the hands of the remaining non-communist regimes to implement land reform. This happened in all the countries that would safely become industrialized after 1950, including Japan itself, Taiwan as explained here, and South Korea, which was a little less well executed, but the threat of Communism so high still enacted. South Korea had and has huge agricultural tariffs (as I understand Japan still does too). Those high tariffs made it easy for farmers to make a profit from very small plots of land but also kept people down on the farm longer - putting less pressure on the cities - and also ensured high agricultural output. South Korea is size of Indiana, with a population of 50 million AND 70% mountains - yet it still grows enough, if barely, rice to feed itself - which ultimately is the first role of government (to make sure the local people don't starve).

It is a shame that Latin America's upper class were not forced to move off the land and quit being rentiers. It's also ashame that America's wealthy are buying up all the land and real estate. The U.S.'s future looks a lot like Latin America's past.

[holyrosecross]

日本人として台湾と良い関係が維持できることは感謝したい。
震災の時の多大な支援や励ましは日本人を救った。
日本は台湾の望む良い友人で有り続けたい。

友好は日台をさらなる高みに引き上げる。

[brucewilliams]

You did a good job of balancing the facts around the shared history of Japan and Taiwan. There was a lot of this that most people outside Taiwan and maybe Japan would have no appreciation for. Thanks for the video.

[evinoshima]

My father was an economist focused on asian development. He knew Lee Teng Hui and pointed out that unlike other countries that focused on industrial development, the focus in Taiwan (due to the Americans who had calculated that they could supply Taiwan with arms but not food in the event of a conflict with the PRC) led to full employment and rapid economic growth in the postwar period. Perhaps you could do a video on how Taiwan was able to rapidly develop after the war. A great deal of human capital had migrated there, I know a lot of companies were started by such people...

[herohero-fwvc]

In those days, living standard in Taiwan was higher than many aspects, it's still true today especially in food.

[gandalfgreyhame]

Well, I had posted, and then accidentally deleted an entire thread about the fact that some 100, 000 Taiwanese had served in the Japanese military during WWII.
Most of these were conscripted and were lower level foot soldiers or laborers or worked below decks in the ships of the Japanese navy.
I remember reading somewhere that there was one Taiwanese who was a POW camp guard during the war who was tried for war crimes after the war because of his cruelty to the POWs.

The brother of Lee Teng-hui died during WWII while in the Japanese navy. This became public knowledge in 2007 when Lee Teng-hui decided to pay his respects to his brother at the Yakusuni shrine to the war dead. This was controversial because some 14 executed war criminals are also enshrined in the Book of Souls at the shrine as well as another 1, 068 convicted war criminals from WWII.

In the book "Embracing Defeat", an account of the postwar aftermath after the surrender of Japan, it describes how Taiwanese in the Japanese military were instantly re-classified by the allies as Chinese and sent back to Taiwan (Taiwan became part of China again as a result of Japan losing WWII) while Japanese POWs had to stay in POW camps longer.

[markhonea]

I have been bingewatching asionomatry and it's so fascinating. While all this important history was happening I was entirely unaware of it, and much more recently I've been wondering how it all came about. Finding this channel has allowed me to learn more about these amazing developments than I ever thought possible. Thanks!👍🤓
Edit- I was referring to the semiconductor industry, as I wasn't around as early as this presentation is about.😏

[junkname]

I'm curious, where did you do your research to make this video? Would you care to credit your sources so we can find out more ourselves?

[pbice]

You forget to point out that, during the Japanese colonization, Taiwan's rice consumption per capita is decreasing because Imperial Japan needs more food to feed its people. The agricultural production is growing, but the population is growing too. Taiwan people are still hungry, especially farmers.

My grandfather is a son-in-law（入贅）and a tenant farmer（佃農）, who benefits from Farmland Rent Reduction (三七五減租) and Land to Tiller（公地放領）. My maternal grandfather（外祖父） is a land owner, who lost some land during Land Reform. As my parents (both born after WWII) told me, cannot get enough food during their childhood. My grandfather has 4 sons and 2 daughters, and my maternal grandfather has 4 sons and 3 daughters. Famers' land won't increase, but the family population will. The whole family has to work harder to get food and clothing, even kids have to share housework after school. During the Japanese colonization, my maternal grandfather hides several bags of rice in piles of straw, to prevent the Japanese to find them. If they find hidden rice, Japanese police will use clamps（夾棍）to beat farmers, even to make them incontinence（失禁）.

[ssnmr]

Love the pictures from the old times and yours from now, they provide a great view into the "has been" and "still is".