Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

Not merely do the authorities of Formosa look upon all foreigners with suspicion, but the tendency to impress the island with the greatness of Japan has led to a marked decline in courtesy toward them. They habitually treat Caucasians at least as at best unwelcome interlopers. The racial clannishness of the Japanese stands out with double clarity in their southernmost island. Bare statistics speak volumes; of the nearly four million inhabitants credited to Formosa by the latest census a hundred and seventy-five thousand are Japanese, and only one hundred and fifty are foreigners-except some thirty thousand non-subject Chinese. The Japanese have never really allowed foreigners to acquire land in Formosa, any more than in Japan-queer noises those against the California land laws under the circumstances-and the naturalization at least of Westerners is rare and difficult. Politically the Japanese Empire is like Brahmanism and Judaism among religions-not open to other people; yet the little brown men complain bitterly if the rule is made to work both ways.

Not only are they scarce there, but in Formosa the precedence of Caucasians is exceedingly low. The three foreign consuls were the last persons presented to the prince regent at the time of his recent visit; they were the only foreigners invited to meet him, and they were got rid of before the speech of welcome by the governor-general. I had the amusing privilege of attending the public reception of a new governor-general, whom a war-ship had deposited on the island the day before I landed. Thanks to the fact that national mourning in our own land made available the formal dress which would otherwise have adorned our official representative in the island, I was able to run the gauntlet of Japanese official requirements. In the auditorium of the imposing foreign-style hotel of Taihoku not a foreigner had a seat, of which there were several hundred, during the feudal ceremony of welcome, and no attention whatever was paid to the invited foreign guests at the atrocious stand-up cold supper-at three yen a plate-which followed. I could not but note the contrast between this positively ill-bred treatment and the attentions showered upon foreigners by Chinese authorities, though the latter in many cases like us no better than do the Japanese.