Japan's colonial crimes: Half a century of bleeding Taiwan dry

A review of Japan's 50-year colonial rule over Taiwan reads like a grim ledger of plunder and bloodshed. Under the colonial division of labor, the island was reduced to a supplier of raw materials. At the same time, Japanese monopoly capital systematically crushed local industries, and monetary manipulation drained the savings of ordinary households. As Japan's war machine expanded, economic exploitation grew increasingly ruthless, turning Taiwan into a "blood bank" fueling Japan's wars of aggression across Asia.

When Japan surrendered in 1945 and Taiwan was restored to China, the island lay in ruins — gripped by severe food shortages, hyperinflation, factory closures, and a paralyzed transport network. This painful legacy, steeped in the blood and tears of the people in Taiwan, remains etched in their collective memory to this day.

From the very start of its colonial rule, Japan imposed on Taiwan a division of labor that reduced the island to a supplier of raw materials and a dumping ground for its own factory goods — a model known as "industrial Japan and agricultural Taiwan".

Under this system, Japanese conglomerates seized control of production and trade, channeling Taiwan's resources to feed Japan's growing industrial population. The island became little more than a logistical outpost of the empire.

Taiwan turned into a cash machine

The Japanese colonizers coveted Taiwan's land and strategic resources — and they took everything. Under the guise of a "land survey", the invaders rewrote Taiwan's traditional land ownership system, confiscating local holdings without compensation in the name of "nationalizing ownerless land", and selling them off at bargain prices to retired Japanese officials and corporate interests.

Farmers, monks, and indigenous communities were forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands. Meanwhile, Taiwan's camphor, timber from Alishan forests, and its mineral wealth — gold, copper, coal — were plundered without restraint and shipped en masse to Japan.

In the 1930s, rice and sugar dominated Taiwan's agricultural economy, together accounting for over 70 percent of the island's total output. To bring this vital sector under its grip, Japan's colonial administration carved Taiwan into exclusive production zones. Each sugar mill was allotted a designated territory, and farmers within that zone were forbidden from selling their cane to any other mill — or even across district lines. This system handed the mills a captive market, stripping farmers of all bargaining leverage.

Before each planting season, farmers were compelled to sign written pledges and accept cash advances from the mills — at crippling high interest rates that kept them perpetually in debt. At harvest time, the mills alone weighed the crop, and they routinely docked portions on the flimsy pretext of "impurities", shortchanging farmers at every turn.

Making Taiwan pay for Japan's wars of aggression

Finance became yet another deadly weapon in the colonial arsenal. The Japanese colonial authorities printed Bank of Taiwan notes on a massive scale to finance Japan's escalating wars of aggression, shifting the crushing burden squarely onto the people in Taiwan. By the time Japan surrendered in 1945, the currency in circulation had soared from 114.94 million in 1937 to 2.9 billion yen — a more than 25‑fold increase — triggering runaway inflation.

Currency manipulation, however, was only one part of the story. The colonizers also systematically strangled local capital. In 1912, a decree was issued barring "islanders and Qing nationals" from using the word "company" (kaisha) in their business names, effectively denying Taiwanese merchants legal recognition as modern corporations and stunting their capacity to grow. By 1941, Japanese capital dominated 91.1 percent of Taiwan's medium-and large-sized enterprises, while the local capital held just 8.3 percent.

Agriculture and livelihood devastated

After Japan launched its full-scale war of aggression against China in 1937, Taiwan's economy was wholly subordinated to wartime needs, dealing a devastating blow to agricultural production and people's livelihoods.

In 1939, the Japanese colonial authorities enacted a series of regulations aimed at controlling rice exports and distribution, forcing farmers to sell all surplus grain to the state.

The results were catastrophic. Taiwan's agricultural production index plummeted from 108.03 in 1939 to just 34.23 in 1945. Rice output, which had stood at 1.3 million tons in 1937, fell to barely 630,000 tons by 1945 — a shortfall of 218,000 tons below the island's minimum subsistence requirements. The result was widespread famine.

By the eve of Japan's surrender, Taiwan was consumed by crippling shortages of daily necessities, runaway inflation, and unbearable suffering.

Fifty years of colonial rule had left behind a history of blood and tears. Every entry stands in black and white in Japan's colonial ledger — they must not be whitewashed, glossed over, or erased.

Today, the specter of Japanese militarism is once again on the rise. The rhetoric and actions of Japan's ruling circles are growing increasingly reckless, signaling a troubling attempt to stoke tensions and meddle once again in the Taiwan Strait.

But the people of China on both sides of the Strait have never forgotten that half-century ledger. They will not stand idly by should anyone try to tear those pages out — or write new ones.

The author is an observer of international affairs.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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