Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

The Taiwan of to-day is a military and commercial outpost of the Japanese Empire. The visitor who erroneously mistakes it for anything else exposes himself to surprise if not to disappointment. The Japanese rule Formosa for the benefit of the Formosans exactly so far, and not a hair's-breadth farther, as it is to the advantage of Japan and the Japanese to do so. Though it may appear otherwise on paper, the supremacy of the civilian authority is quite nominal, and one constantly feels the influence of the real military rulers underneath. Let a dispute on policy arise between these two factors and there is never the iota of a doubt as to which one will impress its will over the other. Economically the island is as strictly under Japanese exploitation for the Japanese as it is politically under the rule of Japanese militarists.

What are erroneously called Formosans make up the great bulk of the population of the island. When the Japanese came thirty years ago this Chinese element, whose connection with the island for the most part dates back only a few generations, was reckoned at three million; to-day the "Formosans of Chinese race holding Japanese registration" number about half a million more than that. The most casual observer cannot but quickly note that these so-called Formosans are really exiled Celestials. Their temples, their graves, their superstitions, their costumes, almost their every point of view toward life or death are those of China, of the adjoining Fukien coast in particular, modified only in minor degrees by their longer or shorter sojourn in this semi-tropical isle. I found no one ready to testify that there are still in Formosa Chinese or Hakkas of cannibalistic tastes; but few on the other hand were ready absolutely to deny it. Such things still exist here and there in China, at least in times of famine. As in China, too, and by no means confined to the lowest classes, in fact probably less prevalent, per capita, among them, is the equally unpraiseworthy practice of living on a wife's immorality. The Chinese are always picturesque in their phrasing, and the house in which such things occur is known among the neighbors as the "half-closed gate," while the man who hires out his women is gently referred to as a "guest husband. " Those Formosan Chinese who can afford the expense involved, or who cannot otherwise acquire the male heir necessary to carry on their precious family and the worship of its ancestral tablets, take concubines. Class distinctions are also much the same as across the channel; actors, barbers, butchers, chiropodists, funeral musicians and servants are regarded with contempt, as outcasts whom no respectable woman will marry. Among countless other details going to show that the Formosans are merely transplanted Chinese is the fact that they will tell missionaries who come to work among them what extraordinarily distinct Chinese they speak, what wonderful linguists they must be to have learned the miserable language of the speakers so perfectly-and then turn around to ask the missionary's teacher what on earth these western barbarians are trying to say.