Making Natives:
Japanese Colonial Policy and the Creation of Formosan Indigeneity
Scott Simon, Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Ottawa
Paper given at the annual meeting of the Japanese Studies Association of Canada in
Kamloops, British Columbia, October 14, 2006. Comments and suggestions are
welcome at ssimon@uottawa.ca
Abstract: Japanese colonialism has often been credited with bringing modernity to
Formosa in terms of education, public health, transportation, agriculture and industry.
This paper shows how Japanese administration also contributed to the creation of
indigen eity through policies modeled on the American experience. These policies
included the settlement of tribes into reserves, Japanese language and cultural
education, and the expropriation of natural resources. Formosan indigenous peoples,
especially the Sediq/Taroko nation (still considered to be part of the Atayal at the
time), responded with violent resistance, but were ultimately subdued . In the long run,
the combined experiences of Japanese education and resistance against Japanese rule
forged a strong ethnic identity as Taroko.

The Japanese experience had a lasting effect on Formosan indigenous nations,
especially since the subsequent Chinese Nationalist regime merely continued or
modified Japanese colonial policy. The continuation of the reserve land system was
important as the material base that kept communities intact amidst rapid economic
and political change. The subjective experience of colonization and a land policy
based on American models also gave Formosan indigenous nations the position to
participate in a global indigenous social movement as First Nations. This paper
explores how the Japanese occupation and subsequent social memory of the
experience continue to shape the Taroko relationship with the state and their
involvement in a global movement for indigenous rights.

Making Natives:
Japanese Colonial Policy and the Creation of Formosan Indigeneity

For two years now, I have been conducting anthropological field research with
the Taroko nation of Formosa, formerly known as part of the Atayal nation. This
summer, I went up into the mountains with my friend Ichiro (a pseudonym), his

teenage son, and two other scholars to discuss the establishment of an international
Aboriginality Sustainability Network linking scholars and indigenous rights activists
around the world. We stayed in the hamlet of Skadang, about 1200 meters above sea
level, in the work shed that Ichiro had built just behind a fire -cleared field and not far
from the old Japanese police station. Pointing out the cement block in front of the
police station , he said, “That is where they used to raise the Japanese flag.” He also
showed us the place where his father had died when his vehicle fell off a crevice. Late
at night, after a hot meal of wild chicken and way too much whiskey, Ichiro fetched

three headlamps and proposed that he, his son, his loyal dog, and I observe nocturnal
flying squirrels.
With headlamps tied to our heads and wearing rainboots to prevent us from
slipping, we marched upwards through the rainforest. We sometimes followed the
streams and sometimes followed the path that Ichiro carved out of the dense
vegetation with his so-called fandao , or “ savage knife” (蕃刀). 1 Ichiro asked us to
shine the lights up into the trees, as it would reflect back from the eyes of the squirrels.
Twice, we saw the reflection of eyes staring back down on us from the trees. Twice,

the eyes merely stared down at us and then slowly faded away without making a
sound. On the way back, I tripped over something concealed under the vegetation. I
landed on my arm and twisted my wrist. Since I could still move my fingers, we

1

The craft of making the blades was learned from the Han during the Qing Dynasty, but they are now
sold to tourists as traditional aboriginal crafts.

1

assumed it was a minor injury. It was only the next day, seeing a doctor just to “make

sure,” when we discovered I had suffered a broken wrist. I had to have surgery,
installing steel pins to set the bones in place. Just before coming out of the anesthesia,
I dreamt that a voice was telling me remember the Taroko people and work with them
in their struggle.

I returned my field site in the village of Cyakang, where the people long ago took
up farming corn and peanuts in the valley. Seeing my arm in a cast, the villagers
delighted in offering explanation s for why I would fall on the mountain. My
hypothesis, that it might have had been caused by a combination of fatigue, poor
eyesight and the whiskey we had drunk a few hours earlier, convinced no -one. Some

of them blamed Ichiro for neglecting to carry out the proper rituals to the ancestors
before entering the forest. Others said that I had certainly violated gaya, the moral
order of the universe, through some kind of immoral sexual contact. When I insisted

that I had not committed adultery, one man laughed and said, “That is what you say,
but the proof is there in your broken arm.” There was strong consensus that we should
have turned back the first time a pair of eyes disappeared without making a sound –

since that could not possibly be a squirrel. It was the village witch, with her ability to
know such things, who finally offered the explanation that satisfied most people.

“ Why did you break your wrist?” she asked rhetorically before answering:
“ Because our Taroko ancestors love you.” She explained that many Japanese soldiers
died during skirmishes with the Taroko in the place where I was injured. The first two
sets of eyes, she said, were not squirrels at all, but rather visible signs of the Japanese
ghosts that were following me with the intent to kill. I merely broke my wrist, rather
than falling off a crevice, because a Taroko ancestor had intervened to save me. When
I told her about my dream, she realized that I had been saved by Ichiro’s father and

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that he had spoken to me. He saved my life from the Japanese in order to keep me in
his community and to strengthen my relationship with his son. What intrigues me
most of all from this story, only one of many ghost stories I have heard about the

Japanese, is the constant reference to Japan more than sixty years after they left the
island.
Pax nipponica: the Military Conquest of Formosa
It is well known that Formosa was ceded to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki
in 1895 and that Japan stayed there until 1945. The occupation was much more than
the simple transfer of title from o ne state to another, however, for the simple reason

that the Chinese state had never administered the entire island. In the words of
Yosaburo Takekoshi, member of the Japanese Diet, the Chinese policy toward
Formosan indigenous peoples had been to “govern them by leaving them strictly

alone” (Takekoshi 1907: 212). Only six years after the Japanese took possession of
Formosa, he reported:
The entire area of Formosa is estimated at about 14,000 square miles, of which
nearly half is still in the hands of the savages, outside the reach of our
Government…. (Land) above 1,500 and below 3,500 feet is clothed with dense
forests teeming with large and valuable trees, among which camphor trees may
be specially mentioned. This timber belt covers about 5,230,000 acres. It is
supposed also to be rich in deposits of gold, iron and kerosene oil. But, at
present, it is occupied only by the savages, and only the agricultural resources of
the coast plans are exploited. In my opinion, the golden key to the exhaustless
wealth of the island will only be obtained by opening up the savage districts
(Takekoshi 1907: 212).
By the time, Takekoshi wrote his report, the Japanese had established somewhat

precarious trade relations with most of the Formosan tribes, whose “ mental
condition,” he said, “ has undergone a remarkable transformation ” (Takekoshi 1907:
221). 2 The notable exceptions were the “ fierce tattooed savages” (Takekoshi 1907:

2

He continues to say: “The human skulls which they were accustomed to use to adorn their abodes
have been removed and monkey skulls put up instead. Some, with the permission of the authorities, are
endeavoring to make a living by felling the trees, which grow so luxuriantly on the land which they

3

211) of the Atayal tribe. Describing Ichiro’s ancestors who saved my life, he wrote,

“ They mostly live in mountain recesses, are extremely ferocious and attach great
importance to head-hunting. This group is more uncivilized than any of the others”
(Takekoshi 1907: 219). The challenge facing Japan was to finish their possession of
Formosa by pacifying 104,000 “savages,” of whom 20,527 were estimated to be
Atayal (Takekoshi 1907: 227). The Japanese reinforced the guard lines that had been
established under Qing rule to separate the Chinese settlers of the plains from the
savages of the mountains; and further modernized these lines with the use of electric

fences to keep both Han Chinese and indigenous Formosans in their place. As the
Japanese subsequently pushed their way into indigenous territory, the native peoples
fought back. By 1903, Japan had already seen 1,900 Japanese killed in 1,132 incidents
with the indigenous peoples of the island (Takekoshi 1907: 229).

Many of these incidents happened in the Atayal territories in eastern Formosa. In
1903, for example, the Japanese encroached upon Nan’ao Atayal land, using electric
fences to push back the indigenous peoples and protect workers cutting down
camphor trees. The Atayal fought back, leading to the death of several Japanese (藤井
1997: 188). In 1906, they used Bunun tribespeople to suppress the Atayal of Wushe in

the central mountains (藤井 1997: 192). After 36 Japanese were beheaded by the
Taroko Atayal in 1906, the Japanese focused their attention on that area, even using
naval bombardments to stop the tribal people from collecting salt- water from the

ocean (藤井 1997: 206). The goal was to make them dependent upon trade with the
Japanese for salt.
In 1910, the Japanese Governor-General Sakuma Samata launched the “Five Year
Plan to Subdue the Barbarians.” The fiercest resistance came from the Atayal people of
claim as their property. Many of them know the use, and have learned to appreciate, the value of silver
coins” (Takekoshi 1907: 211).

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the Taroko Gorge. Using the electric fences to restrict the movement of the aborigines,

Japanese military forces slowly encircled their villages and encouraged them to
surrender to Japanese forces. In what is now remembered as the Taroko Incident of
1914, Japanese troops attacked the people of the Taroko Gorge by coming in

simultaneously from Hualien City in the South and Wushe through mountain passes
from the West. Japanese forces totaled 11,479 men with advanced weaponry. The
Taroko were 1,600 families scattered throughout 97 mountain hamlets. Of slightly
more than 9,000 people, only about 3,000 were young men ready for battle (藤井 1997:
266). In spite of the fact that they were outnumbered in forces and disadvantaged in
technology, the Taroko resisted fiercely for 74 days before surrendering to the Japanese.
Memories of those 74 days of resistance nourished a Taroko national iden tity that

persists to this day (Simon 2007).
Within the Taroko Atayal, however, three sub -groups also developed during the
Japanese period, and the Japanese know how to manipulate these differences to their

advantage. These groups were the Truku, Teuda, and Tkedaya. The nomadic Teuda,
for example, often invaded Truku hunting territory and were punished with

head-hunting. The Teuda thus surrendered earliest to the Japanese in exchange for
protection from the Truku ; and sometimes aided the Japanese military. In 1930, under
the leadership of Mona Ludaw, the Tkedaya of Wushe rebelled against the Japanese.
136 Japanese were killed in this event, later known as the Wushe Incident. The
Japanese then used the Teuda to put down the Tkedaya.3 Memories of these betrayals

established group hostilities that persist to this day and are reflected in political
factionalism (Simon 2006).

The « Indians » of Formosa : Following US Examples
3

In the collective memory of all three groups, there were many such conflicts between them. This is
only one example.

5

Shortly after the Japanese arrived on Formosa, J.W. Davidson, American consul

to the island, had observed the problems Japan faced with the indigenous peoples
there and provided them with materials on U.S. Indian policy (藤井 1997: 151).

From this, they borrowed the ideas of terra nullius, that the land was unoccupied if
not used productively; and that the “ civilized ” colonizers had the right to pacify

“savages” and develop such land (藤井 1997 : 281). In practice, this meant that the
Japanese, like the Americans, had to find ways to expand their own commercial use of
the territory, while limiting the natives eventually to what would become reserve land.
For the Japanese, that meant expanding their presence in what the Qing Court had
identified as savage territory.
In September 1896, Ordinance No. 30 required all persons, with the exception of
those doing so for business purposes with district authority get permission from the
Chief of the Pacification Office to cross the “Savage Border.” Law No. 7 of 1900
stated that only “savages” could occupy, use, or lay claim to Savage Territory. The

Japanese state, however, reserved the right to grant permission for such use
(Takekoshi 1907 : 211). In a policy of “ using savages to rule savages”, they legalized

the Qing Dynasty distinction between “ cooked savages” who had given up
head-hunting and taken up settled agriculture; vs. “ raw savages” who continued
head-hunting and led a nomadic life in the mountains. The former were given formal
property rights; whereas the latter were not. Their land was legally considered to be
imperial land , although the fact that only « savages » actually used it was tolerated at
first (藤井 1997: 157).

After 1903, the Japanese took land cadastres, and required the indigenous people
to register land ownership; with unregistered land becoming de jure state property.
Since few indigenous people registered land, this provided the legal justification for
Japanese companies, with state permission, to exploit the forests for camphor and
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hinoki trees. In practice, the Japanese companies usually negotiated with local
communities and permitted them to continue their practices of hunting and gathering.
The Taroko communities continued their practice of mov ing through the forest
following the availability of game animals. The people of Skadang, for example, had
moved into their location in search of a new territory in the late 19th century. The

name Skadang, meaning “ tooth ”, was chosen because they had found an old tooth
while digging at that spot.
Although the Japanese encouraged indigenous communities to move to the plains

and take up agriculture, they permitted them to stay in the forests if they preferred (顏
and 楊: 2004). Some of the communities moved down into the plains at that time,
forming new agricultural communities such as Cyakang and Bsngan. Twenty-eight
village refused to relocate, including Skadang (寥 1977 : 109). The land identified for

their use became reserve land based on the American model, and has remained the
material basis of their communities to the present day.4

The relatively tolerant practice of letting indigenous communities stay in the
mountains lasted until the Wushe Incident of 1930. After that event, the Japanese

forced the remaining Taroko to relocate to combined settlements, often in the plains,
that could be better controlled by Japanese authorities. Using the familiar colonial
strategy of divide and conquer, they sent groups of people from the same community
to different villages; and combined disparate groups together in those new villages.
People from the mountain hamlet of Lusaw, for example, were forced to integrate into
Cyakang, Bsngan and other communies. Among the three Taroko communities not

forced down the mountains at that time was Skadang. Due to the exceptional fertility

4

The most important legal change since then was in 1966 when the Republic of China did a land
census and required aboriginal people to register land ownership as individuals. Since then, they have
been able to buy and sell reserve land, but only to other aborigines. Although this is an important
change, it is outside the scope of this paper.

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of their mountain land, they were encouraged to practice agriculture there, and the

Japanese even provided them with a road (寥 1977 : 79).
The people of Skadang were ultimately forced to move down to Bsngan, but long
after the Japanese left. They were relocated in the late 1970s by the Republic of China

state to make room for the establishment of the Taroko National Park. A lthough most
of it is overgrown with plants and no longer usable, the remnants of the Japanese-built
road remain; this is, in fact, where Ichiro ’s father fell to his death. Nonetheless, the
National Park authorities refuse to let the people of Skadang settle permanently in
their own village or reconstruct a permanent road – which they perceive as a violation
of their human rights. In fact, some of them even use the word colonial to describe
their current situation.
Conclusion : Assessing the Impact of Colonialism
The Japanese left Formosa after defeat in the war in 1945, to be replaced by the
Republic of China regime. It is not the responsibility of the anthropologist to make a
moral judgement of colonialism – especially in such a case where arguably one
colonial regime has merely been replaced by another. Our job is rather to analyze the
effects of colonialism on local society. In addition to the obvious impacts of railroads
and irrigation systems, there are also political institutions such as reserve land that

exist (albeit with certain modifications) to the present day. This agricultural land, on
which communities subsist by growing corn, peanuts, betul nuts, and other crops, has
given the communities a material base an d kept them together. Even for individuals

who migrate to the cities in search of better paid work, it gives them a community to
return to and a sense of collective identity. Without these reserves, the indigenous
communities of the east and central parts of Formosa might have met the fate of the
plains aborigines in the west during the Qing Dynasty – death by violence and
assimilation for the survivors. Policies based on U.S. models thus created
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communities with an indigenous identity similar to that of North America. This
historical legacy, what scholars of institutional history call “path dependency” (North
1990: 93), makes it possible and natural for the indigenous peoples of Formosa to
participate in a global indigenous peoples’ movement.
Other effects are also strong. During their battles against the Japanese, the Atayal
Taroko forged an identity based on resistance. After years of lobbying, this identity
was finally legally recognized in 2004 by the ROC Executive Yuan, making them the
12th official indigenous nation recognized by the state. Tribalism still exists, however,
and there remain hostilities between the Teuda, Tkedaya and Truku. The Truku, in the
numerical majority, have embraced their new identity as members of a Taroko
indigenous nation . Many Teuda and Tkedaya, however, perceive the legal change as
Truku hegemony. Some still call themselves Atayal and others prefer the ethnonym
Sediq. Memories of their struggles during the Japanese period are still mobilized by
politicians who manipulate these differences for their own benefit. The old practice of
divide and conquer has not ceased.
Within the villages themselves, people still identify with their community of
origin before the Japanese forced them to relocate. This has created factions in the

communities that are mobilized at election time, as I observed by doing field research
in both Bsngan and Cyakang. These divisions make it difficult for the villagers in

these settlements to cooperate with people from other factions. Bsngan, for example,
has five main factions, who are divided into five Christian congregations and tend to
be spatially segregated. The newcomers to that group are the people from Skadang,
who received land on the flood plains when they were relocated. Many conflicts have
arisen in that village, mostly based on competition for resources provided by the
Taroko National Park since they have to apply for them under the name of separate

“ development associations.” These problems, which many Taroko humbly refer to as
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a cultural inability to cooperate, are actually after-effects of colonial rule and remain

obstacles to the effective organization of both development projects and resistance in
the communities. An example is the struggle against Asia Cement (Simon 2002), in
which one group of Taroko protested to reclaim land that had been occupied by that
company. They received little support from other factions in the village. Asia Cement,
on the other hand, is aware of the importance of these subgroups and hires employees
from all factions.
*****
Just outside the village of Cyakang lies a barren plot of land surrounded by
verdant fields of corn, peanuts, and other plants. The village witch explains that land
was formerly the site of the village Shinto Shrine. During the Japanese period, the
villagers prayed there, then clap ped their hands and pulled a rope attached to a bell.
Sometimes the bell would then ring a second time by itself, indicating that the prayer

had been heard and would be answered. Sometimes the bell was silent, meaning that
the prayer would not be answered. When the Japanese left, the Chinese came and tore
down the Shinto Shrine. The villagers have since tried to grow crops on that land, but
no matter what they plant, the land remains barren and empty. Just like the Japanese
ghosts who roam the mountains, the Shinto deities, no longer objects of veneration,
still maintain some power over the land. The Japanese have left Formosa, but their
presence is still felt.

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References in western languages :
North, Douglass C. 1993 . Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic
Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simon, Scott. 2002. "The Underside of a Miracle: Industrialization, Land, and
Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples," Cultural Survival Quarterly 26 (2): 64- 67.
Simon, Scott. 2006. « Identité autochtone et la lutte pour l’autodétermination: Le cas
des Trukus de Formose ». Conference paper given at the conference « L’
autochtonie en question : regards croisés France / Québec », Paris, France, 13- 14
June.
Simon, Scott. 2007. “ Paths to Autonomy: Aboriginality and the Nation in Taiwan,” in
Carsten Storm and Mark Harrison (eds.), The Margins of Becoming. Identity and
Culture in Taiwan (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, sous presse).
Takekoshi, Yosaburo. 1996 [1907]. Japanese Rule in Formosa, translated by George
Braithwaite. Taipei: SMC Publishing.

References in Chinese:
顏愛竟•楊國柱. 2004. 原住民族土地制度與經濟發展 . 板橋市：稻鄉.
寥守臣. 1977. “泰雅族東賽德克群的部落遷從與分佈（上，下）”中央研究院
民族所研究集刊 44: 61-206 and 45: 81-212.
藤井志津枝. 1997. 日本治理台灣的計策 ? 有砲火的戰爭(一). 台北市： 文英
堂出版社.

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