Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. xiv, 266 pp. (Tables, maps, B&W photos.) US$25.00, paper. ISBN 9781501767708.
For several decades scholars have debated the nature of Japanese colonialism, and the extent to which it differed from British, Dutch, French, Spanish, and American colonialism in other parts of Asia. The fact that two parts of the Japanese empire, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan, have been extremely successful in promoting rapid economic growth since the 1950s has encouraged some scholars to argue that the legacy of Japanese control was in some sense more developmental than that bequeathed to their former colonies by the other colonial powers. The purpose of this monograph is not to add to the debate on colonial legacies, but rather to argue that, while from the 1900s onwards both the Japanese military and the Foreign Ministry prioritized the northern advance into both Korea and Manchuria, Taiwan was more than just an imperial accessory, peripheral to Japan’s broader strategic ambitions in Northeast Asia. The island served as a pivotal gateway for Japan’s contested southward advance, culminating in the Pacific War which lasted from 1937 to 1945. This argument is developed in two parts. The first deals with Japan’s overseas colonial subjects as gateway actors, addressing the role of Taiwanese in both South China and Southeast Asia, while the second examines Taiwan as a wartime gateway, and looks at the role of Taiwanese as adjuncts to the Japanese military, playing a liaison role between the Japanese and the conquered populations of both China and Southeast Asia. A short epilogue examines postwar legacies, after the abrupt termination of Japanese rule and the return of the island to the KMT government, which in the years after 1945 proved a more brutal colonial power than the Japanese had been.
Japan annexed Taiwan from China after its victory in the first Sino-Japanese war, and while key Japanese officials emphasized its gateway role from the beginning, establishing control over the local population proved difficult and expensive. Costs of establishing law and order, and an effective government had to be paid from the Japanese budget, and in 1898 some officials in the metropolitan government even suggested that the island should be sold off to another foreign power. Author Seiji Shirane points out that there were also rivalries within the imperial camp. Only when Taiwan began to pay its way as a producer of agricultural products needed by the metropolitan economy, especially rice, was its value appreciated even by those who argued that Korea and Manchuria would in the longer run be greater colonial assets. Unlike Koreans, the Taiwanese themselves proved to be rather reluctant to move in great numbers either to China itself, where they were often regarded as Japanese spies, or to Southeast Asia, where they were not always welcomed by the various colonial governments, or to independent Thailand. By 1935, over 12,000 Taiwanese were residing in the Chinese treaty ports of Xiamen and Fuzhou, the nearest to the island. Very few settled in the other treaty ports or in Southeast Asia. In 1935, Shirane estimates that there were only 960 Taiwanese people in Southeast Asia, of whom 628 were in the Netherlands Indies. But the Dutch authorities were not keen to treat migrants from Taiwan on the same terms as migrants from Japan, who were arriving in greater numbers in the 1930s, and were treated as Europeans. The Japanese authorities in Taiwan were sceptical about the utility of Taiwanese as credible representatives of imperial Japan in Southeast Asia. The small numbers of Taiwanese migrants tended to associate with other overseas Chinese whom they resembled in appearance, and with whom they could converse in Hokkien or another Chinese dialect.
The utility of the Taiwanese as soldiers became more apparent after 1937, first in China and then in various parts of Southeast Asia. They were useful as interpreters, but as Shirane argues, there were always problems. The Japanese often doubted the loyalty of the Taiwanese troops in China, and their pay and rations were lower than for Japanese soldiers. Taiwanese comprised quite a large proportion of the officials in the urban government of Xiamen, and they were also recruited by the Japanese navy as police officers, teachers, and health workers. Taiwanese agricultural experts and health workers proved useful on the island of Hainan, where their familiarity with tropical agriculture and tropical diseases such as malaria was useful to the Japanese as they tried to develop what was a backward and undeveloped region of China. Younger Taiwanese who had known only Japanese rule were often quite willing to cooperate with the Japanese army both in China and in Southeast Asia. But their treatment of both local anti-Japanese populations and of the European and Australian prisoners of war was often brutal, although they claimed after the Japanese surrender that they would have been killed if they had refused to obey orders. A few were shot by the allies or given long prison sentences but most of the 200,000 Taiwanese who had served with the Japanese military were sent home without punishment. However, at home they were often treated with suspicion by the KMT government, which considered most Taiwanese to have been pro-Japanese and willing collaborators during the war. They were often denied civilian employment in Taiwan, and relations deteriorated even further after the rebellion in February 1947. Martial law was only lifted in 1987.
Shirane does not have much to say about the causes of the economic miracle of the post-1950 years, which ultimately led to the abolition of martial law and the advent of democracy. He does discuss the largely unsuccessful attempts by Taiwanese to gain proper compensation for war service from the Japanese government. Taiwanese comfort women, although relatively small in number, only received some compensation in the 1990s. But as relations with the government on the mainland have become more hostile in recent decades, many Taiwanese now view Japan as a friend and ally. Shirane points out that since the end of martial law there has been a rapid development of scholarship on the Japanese colonial era in Japanese and Chinese as well as by authors writing in English. His book contains 60 pages of detailed notes on sources and further reading in several languages which will be of great use to those seeking to understand the fascinating story of this small island under Japanese colonialism, and its remarkable economic and political transformation since 1950.
Anne E. Booth
SOAS University of London, London