Research On Got? Shinpei's Colonial Rule In Taiwan

In 1898,on the verge of collapse of Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan,Goto Shinpei,with a medical background,followed Kotama Gentaro,the fourth governor of Taiwan,to Taiwan working as a civil affairs officer there.With Kotama Gentaro's authorization,Goto Shinpei arrogated executive power,legislative power,judicial power and military power,and exercised privilege of the governor.Consequently,Japanese colonial system in Taiwan was established,and the foundation was laid for Japan to plunder Taiwan's economy and natural resources.This thesis is a detailed review of Goto Shinpei's colonial rule in Taiwan.In the political aspect,he performed local administrative reforms in 1898 and 1901 respectively,and formed a centralized autocratic system of the governor's palace with the Ministry of Civil Affairs as the center.The civil affairs officer became the chief executive of the governor's office,with jurisdiction over people in Taiwan.As a result,a kind of"police-centered politics" was established and the feudal Bao Jia system was reused.Goto Shinpei also took advantage of the chains of monopoly interests to cultivate "royal gentries".He let them share monopoly interests and gave them sinecures to participate in local affairs administration,making them the political forces of the colonial authorities infiltrated into the whole Taiwan.They helped the police suppress the anti-Japanese armed movements through inducement,fraud and even slaughter,as to eliminate those destabilizing factors.In the aspect of economy,Goto Shinpei conducted a land survey.He impressed lot of hidden fields as the "official fields" of the colonial authorities for Japanese industrial capitalists,performed a reform of land rent,imposing heavy duties on it.He also exercised monopoly of opium,salt and camphor,laying an economic foundation for the ahead-of-time financial independence of the governor's office.To gain an overall control of Taiwan's economy,Goto Shinpei founded Bank of Taiwan,unified currency,weights and measures.He also utilized authoritarian politics of the governor's fice to expel foreign and mainland capitals,imported Japanese surplus capitals to monopolize sugar industry.As a consequence,the industrial development structure of Taiwan was distorted and Taiwan was gradually directed to the development orbit of Japanese policy of southing invasion.During the term of Goto Shinpei,he extracted the maximum natural resources and economic interests of Taiwan,established a relatively perfect rule system for his successors,and paved the way for the further continuous economic plundering of Taiwan.In the aspect of culture,xx focused on the primary education of the school-age children in Taiwan,which was based on a third-rail system discrimination.He only developed the education of medicine and agriculture there,and restricted the development of other disciplines,and implemented the policy of assimilation for the purpose of cultivating the laborers who had the lowest level of knowledge and could help the colonial rulers plunder economic interests loyally.In Japan and Taiwan,a lot of academic researches with mixed responses have been conducted on Goto Shinpei,but there are only a few related researches in China.Based on historical data in Japan and Taiwan,this thesis tries to further the research on this area.Through a review of the content of Goto Shinpei's rule,this thesis analyzes Goto Shinpei's administrative concepts and sinister means,decomposes his sin of ruling Taiwan,and exposes the essence and fundamental purpose of his colonial rule.The research conducted in this thesis points forcefully that through using the record left by Goto Shinpei's colonial rule in Taiwan,today's Japanese politicians,right wingers and independence activists in Taiwan propagate the beneficial theory of colonization,advocate militarism and recognize the evil intentions of aggression and expansion.We can realize profoundly that the infrastructure construction showed off by Goto Shinpei was in fact a tragic history of the people in Taiwan,and those constructions were not for the interests of people in Taiwan out of those ruler's good intentions,but for Japanese's plundering of Taiwan's economy and natural resources,and for serving Japanese capitalism development.This thesis aims to give people insights of the historical origin and essence of Japanese overseas colonial expansion,make people guard against the reactivation of Japanese militarism,tell Taiwanese people how to avoid misconceptions and promote cross-strait peaceful reunification as well.