I just happened to see a book describing the history of Taiwan today, and it suddenly reminded me of a netizen’s defense of the bloody massacres committed by Japan during the Japanese occupation in the article “Secret Japanese Files: Massacre of 400,000 Taiwanese During the Occupation of Taiwan!! The Covered History of Taiwan.”.
This netizen believes that Japan only took over Taiwan, did not attack Taiwan, meaning she is trying to hypnotize herself and help the Japanese clarify that Japan only attacked China and was actually a good person towards Taiwan.
Seeing this kind of argument that as long as you attack China, everything will be fine is utterly disgusting. This is the ugliest side of some Taiwanese people. Therefore, I’m adding some information I’ve seen to supplement this.
In fact, long before the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan had coveted Taiwan for decades. One year, Japan finally seized an opportunity. The Japanese government used the name of the Ryukyu Kingdom to send troops to attack Taiwan. This was a perfect scheme by the Japanese government to kill two birds with one stone.
Later, when Japan sent troops to massacre the Taiwanese aboriginal people with overwhelming force, the Qing Dynasty realized the gravity of the situation and urgently dispatched troops to reinforce Taiwan to resist the Japanese invasion. At the same time, Western countries also condemned Japan’s war of aggression, which finally forced Japan to withdraw its troops.
However, the Japanese military never abandoned its intention to occupy Taiwan, for the same reasons it had for occupying the Diaoyu Islands. Taiwan was Japan’s largest strategic springboard for invading Southeast Asia and mainland China, and also a pre-war preparation for conquering other races.
Japanese troops invading Chinese cities and bombing innocent civilians
But only after the Japanese troops finally withdrew from Taiwan did the Japanese government’s insidious schemes truly come to light.
The Japanese government not only demanded war reparations from the Qing Dynasty (the first time I’ve seen an aggressor demand money from the invaded after losing a war!! The Qing government was as weak and corrupt as the Kuomintang), but also took the opportunity to place the Ryukyu king under house arrest and annex the Ryukyu Kingdom’s former territories (present-day Okinawa area).
I don’t think any Taiwanese person has any good reason to defend Japan’s imperialist mentality of aggression against other countries—unless they were born believing they were destined to be subjects of the Emperor (we used to call such people traitors, now we call them Taiwanese slaves and subjects of the Emperor).
Map of Japanese occupation of Chinese territory reported by foreign media
Japan’s covetousness of Taiwan has never ceased, from the Mudan Incident at the beginning, to the First Sino-Japanese War, to Japan’s deliberate obfuscation of the treaty after its defeat by China, and even the abandonment of the right to collective self-defense in modern times—all of these demonstrate the deeply ingrained military imperialist mentality of the Japanese.
You may like Japan now, but you absolutely cannot treat war as a game, failing to understand the underlying motives and desires, and you should never forget the bloodstains shed in history. **
The Mudan Incident of 1874, in which the Japanese army kidnapped the Ryukyu Kingdom to invade Taiwan