Today, I happened to read a book describing Taiwan’s history and was suddenly reminded of a netizen’s defense of Japan’s bloody massacres during the Japanese colonial era in the article “Japanese Confidential File: Japan massacred $400,000$ Taiwanese during the occupation period!! The covered-up history of Taiwan..”
This netizen believes that Japan merely took over Taiwan and did not attack Taiwan, meaning she wants to self-hypnotize and help the Japanese clarify that Japan only attacked China and was actually kind to Taiwan.
Japanese invasion of China
Seeing this kind of argument that “as long as they attacked China, it was fine” utterly sickens the editor of Taiwan Next Society. This is the ugliest side of some Taiwanese people. Therefore, the editor will use the information I have seen to supplement the record.
In fact, long before the Sino-Japanese War, Japan had been coveting the island of Taiwan for decades. One year, Japan finally seized an opportunity. The Japanese government used the name of the Ryukyu Kingdom as a pretext to send troops to attack Taiwan, which was a perfect, two-birds-with-one-stone scheme by the Japanese government.
Later, when the Japanese army prepared to use overwhelming force to brutally slaughter the Indigenous Taiwanese, the Qing Dynasty realized the severity of the situation and urgently dispatched reinforcements to Taiwan to resist the Japanese invasion. At the same time, Western nations also universally condemned the Japanese military’s acts of aggression, which finally prompted Japan to withdraw its troops.
However, the Japanese military never abandoned its intention to occupy Taiwan, as this was for the same reason Japan occupies the Diaoyu Islands: Taiwan was Japan’s greatest strategic springboard for conveniently invading Southeast Asia and Mainland China, and it was preparation for conquering other races.
Japanese forces invading Chinese cities and bombing innocent civilians.
But it was only after the Japanese military finally withdrew from the island of Taiwan that the insidious strategy of the Japanese government was truly revealed to the world.
The Japanese government not only demanded war reparations from the Qing Dynasty (the first time I’ve ever seen an aggressor demand money from the invaded after losing!! The Qing government was just as soft and rotten as the KMT), but it then took the opportunity to softly detain the Ryukyu King and annex the Ryukyu Kingdom’s original territory (today’s Okinawa area).
I do not believe any Taiwanese person has a good reason to defend Japan’s imperialist mindset of invading other nations — unless he or she is born believing to be an Imperial Subject (kōmin) with a divine mandate (we used to call such people Hanjian [Chinese traitors]; now, they are called Taiwanese-slave Imperial Subjects).
Map of Japanese occupation of Chinese territory reported by foreign media
Japan’s covetousness for Taiwan has never ceased for a single day. Whether it was the initial Mudan She Incident, the subsequent Sino-Japanese War, the deliberate blurring of treaty content after Japan’s defeat, or even the recent move to abandon collective self-defense, all demonstrate the military imperialist mindset deeply embedded in the Japanese psyche.
You can like the Japan of today, but you absolutely must not treat war as a game, fail to understand the underlying motives and desires, and must not forget the bloodstains left by history.