The Taiwan of to-day is a military and commercial outpost of the
Japanese Empire. The visitor who erroneously mistakes it for anything
else exposes himself to surprise if not to disappointment. The Japanese
rule Formosa for the benefit of the Formosans exactly so far, and not a
hair’s-breadth farther, as it is to the advantage of Japan and the
Japanese to do so. Though it may appear otherwise on paper, the
supremacy of the civilian authority is quite nominal, and one constantly
feels the influence of the real military rulers underneath. Let a
dispute on policy arise between these two factors and there is never the
iota of a doubt as to which one will impress its will over the other.
Economically the island is as strictly under Japanese exploitation for
the Japanese as it is politically under the rule of Japanese
militarists.
What are erroneously called Formosans make up the great bulk of the
population of the island. When the Japanese came thirty years ago this
Chinese element, whose connection with the island for the most part
dates back only a few generations, was reckoned at three million; to-day
the “Formosans of Chinese race holding Japanese registration” number
about half a million more than that. The most casual observer cannot but
quickly note that these so-called Formosans are really exiled
Celestials. Their temples, their graves, their superstitions, their
costumes, almost their every point of view toward life or death are
those of China, of the adjoining Fukien coast in particular, modified
only in minor degrees by their longer or shorter sojourn in this
semi-tropical isle. I found no one ready to testify that there are still
in Formosa Chinese or Hakkas of cannibalistic tastes; but few on the
other hand were ready absolutely to deny it. Such things still exist
here and there in China, at least in times of famine. As in China, too,
and by no means confined to the lowest classes, in fact probably less
prevalent, per capita, among them, is the equally unpraiseworthy
practice of living on a wife’s immorality. The Chinese are always
picturesque in their phrasing, and the house in which such things occur
is known among the neighbors as the “half-closed gate,” while the man
who hires out his women is gently referred to as a “guest husband.”
Those Formosan Chinese who can afford the expense involved, or who
cannot otherwise acquire the male heir necessary to carry on their
precious family and the worship of its ancestral tablets, take
concubines. Class distinctions are also much the same as across the
channel; actors, barbers, butchers, chiropodists, funeral musicians and
servants are regarded with contempt, as outcasts whom no respectable
woman will marry. Among countless other details going to show that the
Formosans are merely transplanted Chinese is the fact that they will
tell missionaries who come to work among them what extraordinarily
distinct Chinese they speak, what wonderful linguists they must be to
have learned the miserable language of the speakers so perfectly—and
then turn around to ask the missionary’s teacher what on earth these
western barbarians are trying to say.
[Illustration: Formosan school-girls waiting for classes to begin in an
ancient temple of Confucius which the Japanese have turned into a
school]
[Illustration: After all, girls are girls, whether they go to school in
Ward No. 1 or in a former temple of Confucius in Formosa]
[Illustration: A group of reassembled Formosan classmates in a small
interior town, ranging now in social scale from shopkeepers to
professors in the capital]
[Illustration: All the Japanese have left of the old city walls of
Formosa is here and there an ancient gate for decorative purposes]
I ran across several of the Protestant missionaries, of British
nationality, scattered about Formosa, and one day I chanced upon a
Spanish priest who had been nearly forty years in the island. These two
branches of proselyters were far more in agreement upon the good and bad
effects of Japanese rule than is ordinarily the case on controversial
questions between the two principal divisions of Christianity. The
delight at speaking his native tongue, which he had to a noticeable
degree forgotten, partly accounts no doubt for his greater
picturesqueness of language and the emotion that spread in ripples down
the long white beard of the padre of—but I must not be too specific.
Suffice it to say that he had been stationed in one of the larger
interior cities since some years before the Japanese took over the
island.
He had found all Japanese with whom he had ever come in contact
intellectually slow as compared with the Formosans, even when they were
better educated. Yet the more stupid Japanese always gets any available
government job first, he went on, can rise higher, and is paid from
fifty to eighty per cent. more for the same work than Formosans. Until
quite recently the Japanese man who married a Formosan became himself a
Formosan, but the Formosan woman who married a Japanese did not attain
Japanese citizenship. Japanese life, the padre asserted, is ostentatious
with modern superficial improvements,—roads, schools, hospitals, sewers,
running water, electricity, the telegraph and the telephone—he spoke of
these things with the scorn which the Spanish as a race still feel for
them—but as soon as you dig under the surface of all this.... There is
far more immorality of all kinds than in the old pre-Japanese days.
Merchant ethics are much lowered; Formosan girls of the class which a
generation ago would have been immaculate in social behavior parade the
streets in gay, insufficient garb, most of them ready at anything like
sufficient provocation to give or sell their favors to any male who
longs for them.
I had myself seen no small number of these Formosan “flappers,” girls
above the peasant and coolie class, gaudy and conspicuous in their
numerous hair ornaments, their flower-embroidered silk jackets, and
trousers reaching hardly below the knees—perhaps this was what the padre
referred to as “insufficient”—their silk stockings ending in little
gay-colored cloth shoes. There is scarcely any foot-binding, by the way,
among the younger generation in Formosa; the Japanese do not actually
forbid it, but the southern coast of China, from which most “Formosans”
come, is not greatly given to the custom so nearly universal elsewhere
in the former Manchu Empire. But from personal experience I only knew
that there was more spontaneous gaiety, more freedom of life in the
Western sense, among this new generation of the downtrodden sex. The
padre insisted that I had not delved deeply enough into the situation.
Perhaps I lack the keen Latin flair for such things. There are also in
Formosa, it seemed, many Japanese women of not the strictest morals, but
as they confine their affections to their own race, the priest was
evidently not much worried by them.
Certainly Formosa has made rapid strides for the better in most things
material, he admitted; certainly the Japanese had done away with
banditry and made it safe for any one, whom they are willing shall do
so, to go anywhere in the island—outside the wire fence that incloses
the head-hunters. Even the Protestant missionaries who were there before
the change, often harsh but fairly just critics, in a position to know
whereof they speak, hasten to bring the Japanese that mead of praise.
But “in matters moral and spiritual,” some of them go on, “we fear there
has been no progress”; or, “materially Formosans are undoubtedly better
off under the Japanese; morally they are undoubtedly worse.”
Prostitution, for instance, virtually unknown in polygamous Formosa, was
introduced by the new rulers, as was to be expected, legalized through
the Japanese form of segregation, and “has brought moral disaster to
many of the inhabitants of Taiwan, Japanese as well as Formosans.”
There are more than enough schools in Formosa, the priest went on,
sumptuous ones at that—for the Japanese. There have never been enough
for the Formosans, and wherever it is possible to avoid building new
ones for them they are assigned to old Confucian temples and the like.
Primary schools for the Japanese and the Formosans are separate, but the
Formosan children must learn Japanese, since teachers are forbidden to
give their classes in the “Formosan language,” a Fukien dialect most
nearly resembling that of Amoy. In other words, no Formosan child can go
to a government school unless he can speak Japanese, and henceforth,
according to a new ruling, no more private schools can be opened. There
are still a few tutor schools, but even in these some Japanese must be
taught. The Catholics have given up attempting to have schools for their
parishioners in Taiwan, and in the humble opinion of the Spanish padre
the Protestant missionaries are wasting money on them. It is forbidden
to mention religion in the class-room. The Protestant mission school in
Taihoku is quite an institution, however, and there the Formosan
language is mainly used. But, as in Korea, the knowledge of the old
classics is rapidly disappearing from the island. Missionaries
vehemently assert that a Formosan university is badly needed, because
Formosan youths sent to Japan to complete their education come back
badly corrupted in morals. The Japanese probably have another idea on
the subject, such as,—what is a little looseness of morals compared with
a chance to impress with the greatness of the “mother-country,” to
Japanize, the new generation in Formosa?
[Illustration: A well-to-do Formosan family in a typical upper-class
railway carriage, identical with those of Japan]
[Illustration: In third class there are usually several Formosan country
women with a striking head-dress suggestive of, yet on close examination
quite different from, those of the ladies of Japan]
[Illustration: To our Western eyes the women of Formosa are seldom
striking beauties]
[Illustration: Baby rides in Formosa much as he does in Japan]
Plagues have been wiped out, my Spanish informant continued, but there
is more consumption, and more diseases of the brothel. There are fewer
poor Formosans now than before the Japanese came, but fewer rich also.
Personally I should list this among the improvements, but the priest
gave it as an example of Japanese exploitation. The poor people have
more money in silver or paper under the new order of things, but not so
much in food. Perhaps so, yet one gets the impression that merely the
numerous good trains in which a formerly house-bound population may run
about the island at will tend to make life less drab; and certainly the
number of popular excursions and travels for pleasure bear out the
notion. One of the padre’s bitterest complaints was that all foreigners,
however long they may have been in the island and however altruistic the
labor they may have done for its people, are incessantly looked upon
with suspicion by the Japanese. Every time he left town to visit one of
his out-stations, when he went on any journey whatever, he had to give
the police authorities detailed information as to where, when, and why
he was going; and still they never failed to send spies behind his back
to ask whom he had talked with, what he had said, and so on to the end
of patience. Rumors, which, he had many proofs, were instigated by the
authorities, scared the timid natives away from Christianity; by their
spy methods, by making fun, or worse, of the children who go to church,
they made conversion impossible. Yet the same authorities constantly
assert that there is complete religious liberty wherever the mikado
rules—a yarn for outside consumption.
Certainly there were too many points of similarity between his
complaints and those one hears in Korea to dismiss them all as the false
impressions of an overworked zealot. The mass of the Japanese,
particularly those in official positions, do not look with favor upon
the advance of Western religion, and with it Western notions of
political liberty, in their possessions. On the other hand I have known
Protestant missionaries in Formosa to say that “we question whether any
country enjoys a larger measure of religious liberty than do the
Formosans. Unfortunately, like the people from which they sprang,
indifference to the moral demands of any practical religion are
manifest; often the most ardent devotees of what to them is religion are
the most immoral persons in their districts.”
Some Formosan men adopt the Japanese custom, especially the footwear,
and, being taller and more stately in appearance, look strange indeed. I
cannot recall ever having seen a Korean in _getas_ and kimono. Have the
Formosans forgotten the disgrace of being conquered; do they live
farther enough south to be more easy-going, or was there less of the old
Chinese culture and pride of race among these comparative immigrants, so
that they never did much care that they are ruled by an alien race?
Missionaries and other foreigners, long residents in the island and
familiar enough with its language to know something of the minds of the
people, assert that the Formosans really hate the Japanese, but that the
new generation is so used to them that, thanks to the passiveness, not
to say fatalism, in the Chinese character, they do not actively think of
what life would be without them. Besides, if they are at all in touch
with their ancestral home-land the former Amoy coolies who make up so
large a proportion of the population of Formosa probably prefer some
Japanese exactitude, much as it may grate on their nerves, to being
robbed or impressed into unpaid service by bandits and soldiers across
the channel. Thus, while there is very much of a “Korean question” and,
only two hundred miles south of Formosa, an active “Philippine
question,” there is apparently no longer a “Formosan question.”
Independence, if it is ever considered at all in Taiwan, is evidently
regarded as hopeless, not even worth thinking about.