Griffis, William Elliot. "The Japanese in Formosa." Harper's Weekly 39 (4 May 1895): 423-424; 39 (21 December 1895): 1223-1224.

[P. 423] On March 21, 1895, telegraphic sparks from beneath Oriental seas were translated, "The Japanese have taken Fisher's Island." Three days later the Pescadores were occupied. The Fourth Army, after months of special preparation at Hiroshima, is now in possess of one or more points of Formosa−the island Beautiful. One thing certain in the peace negotiations is the permanent cession of this link in the chain of Japanese islands. What since the thirteenth century has been sentimentally is henceforth actually "Ko-Koku"−the Mikado's Empire.

Incredible as it may seem, Formosa has only recently belonged to China. First named by Portuguese, the Dutch were first to attempt settlement. Not until the seventeenth century did the Chinese government pretend to exercise even a shadow of authority over the island, and then in only a comparatively small part of the western or nearest half. Of course, so far as the Chinese had any idea of the extent of the island eastward, they claimed it. This was on the same principle that they claimed pretty much the whole earth, and in their serious state documents spoke of European and other end-of-the-earth nations as "vassals," and their envoys as "tribute-bearers." In Chinese geographical literature, Formosa was "discovered" in a year corresponding to A.D. 1430, the Japanese having been there long before. This "discovery" took place notwithstanding that the bold outlines of the Formosa mountain ranges can plainly be seen on a clear day from the mainland of China, Mount Morrison in the centre being 12,850 feet high.

There are many islands and groups on the earth's surface called Fishermen's, or Pescadores, but that group between Formosa and China is now in the focus of the world's attention. There are twenty-one islets, the largest of which, called Panghu and Fisher Island, are in the centre of the cluster, with an excellent harbor between them. Panghu is eighty-four miles in circumference. None of the islands rise over 300 feet above the sea, and most of the 10,000 ordinary inhabitants are fishermen or mere garden farmers; yet in these islands begins the modern history of Formosa. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century a succession of Japanese adventurers occupied them. In 1622 the bold sailors of the Dutch Republic hoisted the orange, white, and blue flag, and began the building, by forced Chinese labor, of a commercial station that should unite in one chain their factories from Batavia to Nagasaki in Japan. Then for the first time in Chinese history the slow imperial government moved, and persuaded the Dutchmen to leave the Pescadores and go over on Formosa. There, at Taiwan, the Dutch built a great fort, reared a promising settlement, and established the first large Protestant foreign missionary station in modern times. Besides hundreds of Dutch families, there were, during the thirty-one years of Dutch occupation, no fewer than twenty-six ordained ministers of the gospel. Various forts and villages were in time established. To-day [sic] the great stronghold at Taiwan, with a lofty banyan-tree growing out of its ruins, is the landmark for ships making the port. Over the main entry or gateway leading into the recently repaired fort on its northern side one still reads, "Te Castel Zeland Gebowed Anno 1630." Of the story of the destruction of this object-lesson in Western civilization in 1651 [sic, 1662] by the ferocious pirate Coxinga, born of a Japanese mother and a Chinese father, and called in the Japanese romances and histories Koku-sen-ya, who has not read?

The year 1683, when Coxinga's grandson surrendered his own, begins the formal Chinese claim to Formosa. They had sent the Dutch away from the Pescadores into territory that was foreign to China. It was well into the eighteenth century when scattered Chinese colonies were formed in the island, but very little that could be called government until 1874. Most of that government was ultra-Chinese; that is, plethora of the mandarin's pocket [p. 424] and poverty to the tiller of the soil. One mandarin wrote, "Every three years an outbreak, every five years a rebellion." Yet even the few plains and valleys occupied by Chinese covered but a small area of a magnificent island over two hundred miles long and from seventy to eighty miles wide. In all the maps of China until 1874 the territory claimed by China was a comparatively narrow strip on the west coast and the northern tip of the island.

Looking at a map of the Japanese domain on a globe or Mercator's chart, we see the island Empire lying in the ocean shaped like a great silk-worm, its head being the island of Kishiu [sic], the southern tip of which resembles the mouth of the spinning worm. Spun out further southward, in a long chain reaching to within one degree of Formosa, is a long hank of islands, properly called, in Japanese popular and official language, Okinawa, or the Big Rope. From and below Formosa has come, in all probability, a constant drift of humanity, which has during the ages formed a large percentage of the population of southern Japan. As easily as beads slide on a rosary can these Japanese and Formosans reach each other. The savages of the great island are of the coppery tint recognizable in the Japanese, in features and figure also considerably resembling them, and wholly different in language and physique from the Chinese, whom they cordially detest, and upon whom they look exactly as the old Iroquois looked upon the Delawares. The shadows of history are seen in the Japanese Bible, called the Kojiki, for many of the myths and fairy tales of ancient Japan point toward Formosa and the islands of the Long Rope. The "Eternal Land" of sacred myth and poetry is more likely to be Formosa than Riukiu. As a matter of fact, in historic times, not only did Japanese fight, trade, and settle in Formosa, and even southward to the Philippines, but thousands of refugee Christians, during and after the persecutions, fled to Formosa and southward.

These matters are commonplace to Japanese scholars and to European students. In 1874, after a crew of fifty-four men from Miyako Island, the Japanese possession nearest Formosa, was wrecked, and the men barbarously murdered by Formosan savages, an expedition under General Saigo was despatched to punish these "Botans." This was after assurance had been given at Peking that the western and southern part of Formosa were not under Chinese jurisdiction. Into the details of that expedition, which have been graphically told by Mr. E.H. House in his invaluable monograph, we need not enter. He, with American military advisers, accompanied the expedition. Suffice it to say that the Chinese persuaded the Japanese to leave the island after the latter had chastised the savages. The Peking government paid a handsome indemnity, justified the Japanese in their course, and promised to police the island and sea-coast in the interests of civilization. How poorly that promise has been kept all the world knows.

There is no mystery in the American sympathy with Japan to-day, nor was there any in 1874. The Japanese were trying to do for the peace of the East and the security of commerce what Western governments, especially that of the United States, had shamefully neglected to do. It is not too late to recall here the fact of the shipwreck of the American bark Rover, which in 1867 was wrecked on the southeastern shore of the island. Captain Hunt, his wife, and every man of the crew with the single exception of a Chinese sailor who had hidden himself, were barbarously murdered by the savages. When our consul at Amoy demanded satisfaction from the Chinese mandarins on the western coast of Formosa, they promptly declared their inability to interfere with the savage people of the eastern side. Only when our minister in Peking pressed upon the Tsung-li Yamen the doctrine that as China professed to rule Formosa, she was responsible for the deeds of all the inhabitants thereof, did the Chinese authorities even express a disposition to punish the murderers and reputed cannibals.

On the walls of the Annapolis Naval Academy is set a marble tablet commemorating the death of Lieutenant-Commander Alexander Slidell MacKenzie−almost the only thing, except some long-since-buried papers in the State and Navy departments, which tells of the defeat of our gallant sailors at the hands of Formosan savages, and the utter neglect of our government to do anything further. It was a dark day in our records when, on June 19, 1867, Admiral Charles H. Bell landed from the Hartford and Wyoming a little band of 181 officers, sailors, and marines to chastise the men who had murdered the American Captain Hunt and his crew. The battle, in clearing and jungle, was short, sharp, decisive. The Americans were driven off with the loss of a noble officer, and nothing further was done. Almost as a matter of course the Chinese government went to sleep, and the savages indulged still further from time to time their natural propensities. Knowing that no satisfaction could be got from Peking, the Japanese dared to move in the interests of civilization, and intelligent Americans who did not take their cue from the Anglo-Japan papers sympathized with them.

As a matter of fact, even to-day, Formosa, in the two parts, western and eastern, is as different as candy and quicksilver. Over one-half the island independent aboriginal tribes follow their own sweet will, despising the Chinese with a contempt that never loses an opportunity of expression. One of the richest islands in the world menaces commerce along all its western side. Nominally in possession since the seventeenth century, the Chinese have been able to establish rule only along the western coast. The natives look upon the Chinese as their game; they are head-hunters, like the Dyaks of Borneo, and the statistics show that about a thousand heads are still annually removed and carried away from Chinese bodies by these playful savages. Yet, despite all this, the fertile soil attracts numerous Chinese emigrants, and our American minister Denby reported that Liu Ming-chuan, who so ably defended the island against the French in 1884-5, was doing much in the way of establishing order and developing resources. In one year four hundred villages, with 70,000 people, embraced Chinese civilization, and 20,000 acres of land, once abandoned on account of savage marauders, have been reclaimed.

Coal and camphor are the most valuable products, and vast forests of camphor-trees exist as yet untouched by the axe. The great coal-mines of Tamsui and Kee-lung, though having an output of over 100,00 tons annually, are hardly profitable under Chinese methods. Petroleum oil has also been found, but foreign methods are not yet adopted. Sulphur is abundant. The soil is exactly suited to the production of tea, and many thousand acres are now green with the bushes which produce the so-called Oolong. The sugar-cane flourishes luxuriously. When we think of the spices and various mineral and vegetable products, there seems little doubt that Formosa, under scientific agriculture, with proper roads, police, and the appliances of civilization, might be made one of the most productive islands of the globe. This was the belief not only of our consul-general Le Gendre, who in 1867 went among the Botan savages and studied the whole problem, but also of the gentleman who became our first United States minister to Japan. Mr. Townsend Harris as early as 1854 gave the results of his studies in a memorial to the State Department.

Formosa, on its savage or eastern side, walled seaward as it is with an abrupt mountain slope, has scarcely a harbor worth speaking of, but on the western or gently sloping side of this prolonged island mountain there are good roadsteads which may be dignified by the name of harbors. Takow, Taiwanfoo, Tamsui, and Kee-lung have been for some years open to foreign trade. Most of the tea, sugar, and coal exported are consumed by Japan, Australia, and the United States. The camphor goes mostly to Europe.

Within the past ten years the defences of Formosa have attracted the attention of the Chinese military authorities, and we all know that the French in 1884-5 did not find it as easy to enter Kee-lung as they had expected. All four of the treaty ports in Formosa, and especially the Pescadores islands, have been fortified on the general principle of the defences of Port Arthur and Wei-hai-wei; that is to say, under German engineers. The armament consists largely of Armstrong guns in the older forts, though some of the heaviest Krupp cannon of the most approved type are well mounted on the later works. These have been greatly strengthened, provisioned, and garrisoned within the past year. The telegraph connects the main island and the Pescadores by cables, which are respectively twenty and thirty nautical miles long, with Amoy on the continent.

For Formosa, Chinese sentiment, such as it is, can be very slight indeed, since no real historical, dynastic, or ancestral ties link Formosa to the empire. But politically the desire to keep an island that is within sight of their own mainland is naturally great, when its possible riches are contemplated, when its strategic condition is considered "a portal to the southern China Sea and a bulwark for seven provinces," and when, especially, possession by the Japanese would mean constant menace and humiliation.

On the Japanese side, apart from the eager zeal of a propagandist of Asia of Western civilization, apart from a desire to police a robber's stronghold and transform it into a light-house for the world's commerce, apart from the coveted possession of a certainly rich and fertile soil, apart from a large territory that would give logical completion and geographical perfection to her Island Empire, the Japanese have an intense sentimental desire for Formosa, like that of the Russians for Constantinople. He who tries to understand the Japanese without appraising their deep and tenacious sentiment born of legend, story, poetry, and fairy-lore is sure to mistake them. The Japanese want Formosa, apart from all other considerations, because it is a large part of their sentimental creed to believe that it ought to be theirs. While the war is on, they will leave no stone unturned or shot unfired to gain it.

[P. 1223] The victors and veterans from Port Arthur and Wei-hai-wei have been spending the summer in Formosa. They exchanged the ice and snow of Manchooria [sic] for the tropic heats [sic] of Formosa. From standing in snow while fighting they have had to hew their way through bamboo jungles. Steadily skirmishing and fighting from June 1st to October 15th, their hardships were even greater in many cases than when fighting the northern Chinese. At least 50,000 Japanese soldiers have been sent to the island. The famous Black Flags, who had humiliated the French in Tong-king, were expected to make a stand against the Mikado's soldiers, but after bushwhacking they failed to make a final rally. They have unconditionally surrendered. Formosa has now no organized enemies opposed to the sun-banner, and again "the empire is grateful for universal peace." So long as the Black Flags could fight with all geographical and climatic advantages against unprepared and unacclimated groups of French soldiers, they could fill the newspapers with their fame. Against the solid discipline and thorough preparation of the best army in Asia they wilted. The first work of the Japanese in Formosa was one of extraordinary difficulty; the last was "as easy as splitting a bamboo."

The treaty of Shimonoséki stipulated that at the end of two months the Chinese government should transfer Formosa to the flag and crown of Japan. Probably the Peking government acted in all good faith, but thousands of the Chinese property-holders, military, naval, and civil officials, and, above all, the great horde of Hakka tramps, did not relish giving up their business, posts, revenues, or plunder. Many of them were, moreover, filled with hatred, and resolved to give the conquerors all the trouble possible. The leader of the mischief-makers was Liu [sic, Lin], the Formosa millionaire, who owned so much land and property, and controlled largely the sugar industry. Liu is a descendant of the chief lieutenant of the celebrated Chinese pirate Koxinga, who drove the Dutch out of Formosa at the end of the Ming Dynasty. The ancestor of Liu divided up the most fertile part of the island, the principal share naturally falling into the hands of the family which exists at the present day. Liu was a very high-class mandarin, was the chief personage in Formosa, and is said to have furnished nearly $8,000,000 to the Peking government during the last fifteen years. Rumor has it that he offered $5,000,000 to the Japanese to be allowed to retain his immense estates in the island and to become a Japanese citizen. In point of fact, he was the chief agitator in getting up the so-called and the very short-lived "Republic," and in importing, arming and paying the Black Flags. In his correspondence with Admiral Kabayama, just previous to his surrender and flight to China last month, he claims to have received no orders from the Chinese emperor, and professed ignorance of the transfer of ownership, withal [sic] twitting the Japanese military on their inability to enter the heart of China.

Undoubtedly the Japanese expected at first an easy occupation of the island. They formed a Board of Administration on a purely civil basis, expecting to use soldiery only as police, and to overcome the savage aborigines. On May 24th, a fleet of fourteen transports carried the Imperial Guards form Port Arthur, landing them at Ke-lung May 30th. Almost immediately they found that the country was infested with the infamous and murderous tramps called the Hakka, that the Black Flags were numerous, that the semi-savage natives and many Chinese were in arms against them. The villages were everywhere placarded with incendiary statements that Russia's aid was assured, and that the Japanese would be unable to conquer Formosa; moreover, that they were barbarously cruel, and should be resisted to the last.

Then began four months of pretty steady fighting, under the direction of General Oshima. Some of the battles engaged as many as eight or ten thousand men in all. Nearly all the topographical advantages were with the Chinese, who seized the heights and fought on all the hills which covered the valleys and defiles, so that amid the intense heat the Japanese had to fight and climb. The bamboo thickets of Formosa resemble in some respects the jungles of India, and much of the fighting was like that of our Western settlers against invisible foes in the old days before the forests were cut down. Besides the native home-made weapons, these men of the thicket were often armed with Martini, Mauser, and Remington rifles. In many cases they possessed artillery, and used their mountain guns with effect. Most of the young men specially enlisted for the "Republic," so-called, had on their breasts, in large ideographs, "Volunteer." In moving through the country the Japanese found the inhabitants for the most part very peaceably disposed, so long as the soldiers were in force, but the moment they moved on and away, the ammunition and provision trains were almost invariably attacked. Detached parties after water, forage men and convoys, were sure to be picked off or assassinated. Even the women showed a ferocity that was astounding. In certain cases large portions of the northern part of the island were pacified by the Japanese, but as soon as the soldiery retired the enemy came down from the hills to plunder and murder as before. Besides the hill and thicket fights, a considerable number of walled towns and three or four larger cities had to be occupied, often after severe bombardment of the gates and street fighting. The forts at the seaports were taken by co-operation of fleet and army, the captured Chinese battle-ship assisting. The record of Japanese valor was as uniform as in the northern campaign. The veterans, in their light clothing, with their smokeless powder, their splendid discipline, and unquailing bravery won their way steadily, though not without losses, which, it is not absurd to suppose, may be really as great as in the northern war. Yet whenever the cheer "Banzai" was raised, success was sure to follow. The line of conquest was from the north to the south. Ke-lung (which is only the Chinese sound of the name of a Japanese hero in the early days of Japanese occupation centuries ago) and Tamsui were first occupied. Then the country between the northern sea-coast and the hill ranges was brought into order. Thence to the southwest the army moved along the railroad (which the Chinese tore up from between Shanghai and Woo-sung a few years ago and laid down in Formosa) to Tek-cham. From this point the movement towards the Black Flags, who were collecting and fortifying themselves in the south, was still overland, despite the intense heat and heavy rain; for until well into September the monsoon blowing up the Formosa channel made marine operations exceedingly difficult. Steadily southward the army moved, capturing and occupying the various towns, especially the large and solid city of Chang Hua. Toward the end of September the fleets were able to land re-enforcements in the south at Pang Liau, and all preparations were made for a grand battle which should annihilate the Black Flags and end all organized opposition. The Japanese demand was unconditional surrender, and this after some negotiations was accorded to.

Japanese ships, both under said and steam, have been for months, and are now even more so, busy in the transporting soldiers, civilians, and emigrants of all sorts to China. It was with unconcealed satisfaction that the Japanese at home hear of this, for they see openings for abundant immigration [p. 1224] from the home land, besides tempting opportunities for new industries and the development of Formosa's magnificent resources. There will of course be difficulties with the savage aborigines who live in the almost unknown and unexplored eastern half of the island. To the long list of those already disabled or slain by such generals as Heat, Fever, Malaria, and Various Diseases there will be added many more victims, but all signs point to rapid submission of the aborigines to the Japanese. These have already demonstrated in 1874 and in centuries gone by their abilities to get along well with these people, who in so many points resemble their own ancestors.

Formosa's camphor forests, so rich in material for celluloid, smokeless powder, in the arts and for medicines; her mountain slopes, with their amazing variety of timber, and productive of almost every kind of drugs and spices; her vast tea-gardens, her sugar plantations, her rivers running sands of gold, her rice-fields−lie ready for fresh development. There are four ports open to commerce, Ke-lung, Tamsui, Tai-wan, and Takow. The total foreign trade last year (1894) amounted to $12,895,779. The single railroad in the north, now but a few leagues long, will before many years, be extended the length of the island. Japanese genius, enterprise, and industry at this high-water mark of their energy will doubtless transform the island, and make this Land of the Morning-Glory also the tea and sugar garden of the Pacific.