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Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1894 for a compensation of the Sino-Japanese war between Japan and China, and it belonged to Japan as its colony for fifty-years until the end of World War II in 1945. Japan established a Taiwan Governor’s Office in Taipei, the capitol of Taiwan, and gradually built up a hierarchical political system in the country.
Taiwan Governor’s Office, whose focus was mainly on the benefit of Japan, was not welcome by Taiwanese people throughout the colonial period. However, it was also true that the colonial government greatly contributed to improve people’s lives and environment in Taiwan, and developed an industrial infra-structure, which later enabled Taiwan’s industrial and economical revolution after the Word War. As an interesting and significant evidence for the fact, a lot of people in Taiwan at the present time still hold positive attitudes toward Japan and Japanese people despite such a colonial history.
Although quite a few numbers of studies have focused on the colonial history of Taiwan, few of them have ever focused on Japanese officials living in Taiwan during the period. Therefore, the present study focuses on how Japanese people, especially Japanese officials of the colonial government, lived in Taiwan at that time and how their lives and/or thoughts changed through the colonial era.
The present study divided the colonial period into three parts, which are; Meiji-period, Taishou-period, and Showa-period. And, it focuses on what Japanese officials’ lives in Taiwan were like by collecting as much information as possible including interviews to Taiwanese people who went through the colonial era.
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