Japan by the Japanese/Chapter 30.2

Formosa (Tai-wan) may be taken to include Hokoto—that is, the Pescadores—and the adjacent islands, numbering in all about seventy-six. The total area of this group is 15,535 square miles, and the total population in 1899 was 2,758,161, including 33,120 Japanese. Twelve months previously the total stood at 2,665,511, including 25,585 Japanese, and this indicates the colony’s rapid growth.

The Home Government had to provide for these islands a stable form of government, to enforce approved sanitary regulations, to introduce an equitable system of land taxation, to provide for the education of the natives, and to undertake ​beneficial public works. Lines of railway had to be constructed, suitable buildings erected for the housing of officials and the transaction of public business, harbours had to be dredged and improved in the interests of the foreign and domestic trade, and a cadastre for the entire group of islands became absolutely necessary as a basis for the nationalization of the land and the assessment of the most important tax. Banking and monetary systems had likewise to be provided for the new colony. That such an extensive programme could be carried out in its entirety within a decade or two is not, of course, to be expected; but much has already been done, and provision has been made for the execution of such items as remain unfulfilled.

The Formosan Government, in fact, has laid out, since the islands came under the sovereignty of Japan, no less a sum than £3,072,000 on railways, telegraphs, harbour improvements, and other undertakings of a character directly beneficial to the public. Leaving out the calculation of the military outlay, which has now been curtailed to very modest dimensions, thanks to the pacific condition of the islands, which may be accepted as the direct outcome of a salutary civil administration, we have a total expenditure upon Formosa by the Imperial Government of £9,786,000.

The revenues of the islands, on the other hand, have in the same period of time amounted to £5,930,000. This sum, plus a subsidy aggregating £2,500,000 sterling, and a loan of £1,300,000, sufficed to balance accounts.

It should be noted, however, that both the subsidy and the loan were almost exclusively applied to the prosecution of public works, as hereafter specified, and the money, instead of being regarded as expenditure incurred without prospect of adequate return, ought properly to be considered as capital well and profitably invested for the benefit of the inhabitants.

Baron Kodama, the Governor-General of Formosa, introduced in the Diet at Tokyo in 1898 a programme for the execution of public undertakings to extend over a period of twenty years, together with a project for establishing Government monopolies in the three principal industries of Formosa.

After considerable discussion, the proposals passed into law, and embodied the provision of a trunk line of railway extending from the north to the south of Formosa, the cadastration of the lands, the construction of harbours, particularly at Kelung, and the building of suitable Government offices and official residences.

To meet the cost of these undertakings, the Diet authorized the Colonial Government of Formosa to raise loans to the amount of £3,500,000 sterling, the principal and interest to be ​paid out of the revenues of the islands. The estimated expenditures were:

According to the original programme of 1898, the railways were to be completed within ten years, but the work of construction is not likely to consume much more than half that period. Part of the system is already open for traffic, and is affording complete satisfaction, and the revenue accruing therefrom is larger than was even anticipated. The latest returns show that the sections actually in operation measure 158 miles—viz.:

The line is in course of construction between Bioritsu and Kagi, viâ Taichu, 82 miles, work being carried on from both ends simultaneously, and when this section is ready for traffic there will be no break in the railway communication from Kelung in the North to Takow in the South, and ultimately it will extend the entire length of the island, as the line will be carried 66 miles further to Garambi, at the apex of the promontory in the extreme South.

It is likewise proposed to build an East Coast railway from Pinan, in Lat. 22° 46′ N., to Karenko, in Lat. 24° N.—roughly, about 85 miles—and to connect this by a cross-country line over the main mountain chain with some point on the western side of the island. Another cross-country connection 47 miles long is to be formed between Taihoku and So-o (Suao), situated on the East Coast near Dome Point, by the way of Giran (Gilan). Thus there are in Formosa 158 miles of railway in full operation, 82 miles in the course of construction, and 132 miles arranged for, to be built in the near future. Needless to say, the railway is proving itself to be a potent stimulant to industries of all kinds, and is becoming the prime factor in the general development of Tai-wan under Japanese rule.

Over 200 miles of narrow gauge tramway lines have also been laid in the island by the Government, partly for the ​transport of military supplies, partly for the conveyance of goods and passengers. The main section of the tramway now serves to connect Bioritsu and Kagi, those points between which the railway is still in course of construction, a distance of 82 miles; but it was originally laid between Tainan and Shinchiku, a distance of 140 miles, and had several branches, so that there was improved communication between the chief towns even before the railway reached them. Tramway stations exist at all important points on the route, and are only a few miles apart. Transport charges on a fixed scale average no higher than a penny per mile. The miniature passenger-cars have seats for four persons, with an awning, and are propelled by coolies. The speed obtained, considering that the service is maintained entirely by human labour, is very satisfactory.

The dredging only of Kelung Harbour has been taken into account in the item of £200,000 included in the proposed expenditure under the loan sanctioned in 1898, but it is intended later on to complete the works by constructing a breakwater, piers, embankment, docks, and warehouses, and generally to improve the town of Kelung, the projected outlay upon which will form the subject of another application to the Diet. When the dredging works now in progress are completed, the port of Kelung will have 36 feet of water in the inner and outer steamship harbours, and not less than 9 feet in the junk harbour (inner lagoon). The inner steamship harbour will have a landing-pier 1,000 feet long, accommodating several coastwise or foreign-going vessels at a time. The outer steamship harbour will have a quay with two piers, the total water-line being 3,000 feet, able to berth seven or eight ocean-going steamers at once, the depth being ample for the largest craft afloat. Ships at anchor in the outer harbour will have the protection, moreover, of a breakwater over 4,000 feet long, which is to cost 8,000,000 yen, and will occupy six or seven years in construction. Large workshops have been built, a spacious goods station is under construction, with roofed cargo sheds, and rails will traverse piers and quay, so that merchandise may be handled direct from railway-car to ship by the hydraulic and steam cranes. The entire work as planned will be completed by 1904, but the piers and quay may be extended later on if trade demands it.

On the west side of the harbour extensive docks, slips, and piers are being provided for the use of the army and navy. The Government has to reclaim 250 acres of land in order to carry out its programme, but when finished Kelung will possess a perfectly safe and commodious harbour; and as Kelung is designed to be the chief port of Formosa, its harbour ​accommodation will have to be adequate to the requirements of a rapidly-growing industry and extending commerce.

Tamsui Harbour is likewise being improved. It is the natural port of shipment for the produce of North Formosa; but the river has a troublesome bar at its mouth, over which ships drawing more than 13 feet cannot pass, so the engineering works to be undertaken by the Government include jetties projecting seaward from each bank to lead the river out into deep water, followed by the removal of the bar, and systematic dredging to deepen the anchorage, and binding along the river banks and quays. When finished, Tamsui will make a port fitted to receive steamers of 2,000 to 3,000 tons.

Takow, or Taku, has for harbour a sheltered bay or lagoon, several miles in length, separated from the sea by a sandbank, the entrance where the sandbank dips below the sea level being narrow. But there is less than 15 feet of water-depth in the lagoon and on the bar, and in order to improve the port and render it accessible to large vessels, the Government will dredge enough of the lagoon to form shelter for four or five ocean-going craft, and will proportionately widen the gap at the entrance. Ultimately, Takow is also to have a breakwater.

The Government has always paid the utmost attention to the lighting of the coasts, and much has been done in this respect in Formosa and the Pescadores group since they became parts of the Japanese Empire.

At present the lighthouses established are:

Over 2,000 miles of telegraph and 600 miles of telephone line have been erected in connection with the postal service, which maintains post-offices in all the principal towns and villages, numbering in all 109.

The foreign mails are shipped from Kelung direct to Japan by the steamers of the Osaka Shosen Kaisha. From Tamsui and Anping the mails for Chinese ports go by steamers of the Douglas Lapraik Company or the Osaka Shosen Kaisha.

Submarine cables have been laid to telegraphically connect Formosa with the mother country and with the Pescadores. ​These works were executed by the Government’s own cable-laying vessel, the Okinawa Maru.

The old and ill-regulated edifices left by the Chinese were thoroughly unfit for the accommodation of officials under the new régime, more especially as they were deficient in all sanitary arrangements. Hence it became a matter of necessity to erect suitable offices and residences as soon as possible. First, however, in Taipeh, the capital, an entirely new system of drainage had to be introduced and good drinking-water secured; then all the newly-built residences for the Japanese officials were constructed, with special care for sanitation. Many of the new buildings have been completed and are now occupied, the Government Houses at Taipeh, for the use of the Governor-General and the Civil Governor of Formosa respectively, both being handsome and successful structures. The improved health of the staff is indicative of the thorough success obtained in this direction. The mortality among them fell from 4.73 per cent. in 1896 to 1.1 per cent. in 1900. The average mortality for the entire population, excluding the savage tribes, is now 0.76 per cent. per annum.

Prisons also had to be provided in various places, upon the model of the ones used in the advanced penal system that now obtains in Japan proper.

There have been eleven hospitals already provided, of which the Taipeh is the largest. A regular service of graduates of the Imperial University in Medical Science or of specialists who have studied in Europe have been secured for it. Besides the hospital physicians, there are no fewer than seventy-two qualified physicians, appointed and paid by the Government to render medical aid to the people, distributed about the island. At Taipeh, moreover, they have a school for training native physicians, the number of scholars, who are all supported by the Government, exceeding 100. The result of the training they receive is said to be in the main satisfactory.

The education question was a serious one. It is necessary to make the use of the Japanese language prevalent throughout the island, but in the meantime there is a pressing need of Japanese officials conversant with the native tongue. To meet these necessities, therefore, a Central Language School was established in Taipeh in the year following the cession of the island to Japan, for the double purpose of teaching the Japanese language to the natives and the native language to the Japanese.

The Central Language School is divided into the Normal School Department and the Language School Department.

In the Normal School Department Japanese students are trained to serve as teachers in primary schools for native ​children, local language, naval, and primary schools for Japanese children. The number of children is at present forty-five.

The Language School Department is again divided into two sections, one for the study of the Japanese language by native students and the other for the study of the native language by Japanese students. The students in both sections are trained with the object of public service or private occupations in Formosa. Some native students in upper classes of Japanese Language section have been given an elementary technical education, with special reference to the railway and telegraph service, and the experiment has proved successful. There are at present 91 students in the Japanese Language section, 16 students in the Railway and Telegraph section, and 25 students in the Native Language section.

There are also three auxiliary schools appended to the Central Language School. The first auxiliary school, with 251 scholars, is for the benefit of native young people, and is designed at the same time to show a model of elementary education in Formosa and to furnish the students of the Normal School Department with an opportunity to practise the art of teaching.

The second auxiliary school is for the benefit of Japanese children, and consists of a primary course of six years, a supplementary course of two years, and a middle school course of five years. The number of scholars at present is 339 in the primary course, 27 in the supplementary course, and 177 in the middle school course.

The third auxiliary school gives to native girls an elementary education and a training in handicraft. There are 131 scholars in it at present.

Besides the Central Education Institution described above, a series of local educational institutions has been established in the important places on the island. Thus there is an ordinary normal school in each of the three cities, Taipeh, Taichu, and Tainan. The students in these normal schools are all natives who are to become assistant teachers in primary schools for native children, while the students in the Normal School Department of the Central Language School are to become principals and other important teachers in primary schools. The number of students in the ordinary normal school at present is 298, there being 94 in Taipeh, 124 in Taichu, and 80 in Tainan.

The primary schools for Japanese children are established in the more important places where there is a Japanese population. There are 11 of them, with a total of 1,342 scholars.

Primary schools for native children are distributed all over the island, there being 121 at present, with 16,034 scholars.

​There are also 2 language schools with 11 branches for teaching the Japanese language to the natives and helping them to improve their daily life. They have a staff of 20 teachers and 355 scholars.

The monopolies created by the Government are in opium, salt, and camphor. It goes without saying that the habit of smoking opium is pernicious, but when the Japanese took possession of Formosa they found there a population more or less addicted to the use of the drug. It was decided to abolish the practice by degrees. Only those who were already addicted to the use of the drug to the extent that it occasioned intense pain to deprive them of the pipe are now permitted by a special warrant, which they are obliged to procure, to continue its use. To commence opium-smoking is strictly forbidden, or even to continue its use, unless it can be shown that abstention is impossible. The Government monopoly of the article was expressly established to facilitate the final extinction of the opium habit. The revenue thus derived amounts at present to about £4,000,000 a year.

In the Southern portions of the island of Formosa salt is obtained in considerable quantities by solar evaporation of sea-water. The Chinese, when they owned the colony, always favoured an official monopoly of its production; but Count Kabayama, the first Japanese Governor-General, thought by the abolition of the monopoly to give rise to a beneficial development of the industry under private enterprise. Many of the salt-fields were purposely destroyed, and a sort of corner was created, with an alarming rise in the market price. Baron Kodama re-established the monopoly, but on an improved basis; and production having been encouraged, Formosa now actually exports salt to the mother country. The revenue is from £30,000 to £80,000 per annum, and it will probably increase.

Formosa supplies almost the whole world with camphor, but when Japan took the island the industry was in a precarious state. Camphor-trees were cut down with an utter disregard of the consequences, and the most crude processes were employed in the manufacture. A Government monopoly was established, with the triple object of protecting the trees, improving the method of production, and placing the industry on a secure footing. The world’s consumption of camphor is computed to be about 8,000,000 pounds weight per annum, and the production in Formosa is regulated accordingly. The yearly yield to the revenue is about £875,000 a year.

Besides these Government monopolies, the future of Formosa is eminently hopeful, for it is based upon rich agricultural and mineral resources. Tea, rice, sugar, hemp and ​flax, indigo, paper, silk, cattle, marine products, coal, sulphur, and petroleum, are all features of the Formosa trade. The steps taken by the Government to encourage the industries which depend upon these products cannot fail to be beneficial, and the State revenues are being increased by the progress made. Sugar affords a case in point, for sugar is Formosa’s chief agricultural product, both in respect of the area devoted to its cultivation and the numbers of those engaged in the industry. Near Kagi the fields are continuous for a space of twenty-five miles from the coast to the foot of the hills, and both white and brown sugar are produced in the South, though only brown sugar is made in the North. Altogether, 41,000 acres are devoted to sugar cultivation in the island, and the industry is of great age, dating apparently from the fifteenth century. In 1870 the export was suddenly doubled, and during the ensuing decade it rose from 37,000,000 pounds to 141,500,000 pounds, the largest output hitherto recorded. At the present time the average yield is about 93,000,000 pounds, and the output is from 20,000 to 42,000 pounds per acre. Seven American cane-crushing mills have been imported by the Government, for the encouragement of the planters, and there has been formed lately a Formosa Sugar Manufacturing Company, which seems to have a prosperous future before it. Its factory is at Kioshito, ten miles north of Takow, with machinery of modern type imported direct from England. If Formosa’s sugar industry should maintain for the next few years its present rapidity of development, the import of this article from foreign countries into the Japanese Empire will unquestionably be checked in a very appreciable degree.

Formosa’s tea product may be improved in quality by better cultivation and preparation, and then will perhaps recover in America the high character it once bore there, for Oolong is a tea that is peculiar to the island.

Two crops of rice are annually obtainable in most parts of Formosa, and there is room for improvement in quality as well as in quantity produced. The Japanese Government is therefore well advised in directing special attention to the industrial and agricultural progress of the colony.

The annual output of gold is now only about £100,000, but it may be augmented, and coal, petroleum and sulphur deposits are all to be found and profitably worked in the island.

The banking affairs and the monetary system have been taken in hand. The Bank of Formosa was established, the main objects it was designed to serve being, firstly, to act as the central organ of the monetary circulation in Formosa; secondly, to promote the economic progress of the island, by supplying money for commerce, industries, and public ​enterprises, and in developing its natural resources; and, thirdly, to remedy the then unsystematic state of the money market there.

It is contemplated, however, to extend its operations to South China and to the islands of the Southern Pacific, and to make of it a truly useful commercial institution of those regions.

When the actual organization of the Bank was undertaken, it was deemed necessary to amend the law under which the Bank received its charter, so far as to authorize the issue by it of notes convertible in silver, against a reserve of silver bullion and of first-class securities, to the limit of £500,000 sterling.

In addition to conferring this privilege, it was provided that the Government should furnish £100,000 of the Bank’s capital, and that the dividends accruing on shares to this amount should, for the first five years of the Bank’s existence, be placed on the reserve account, in order thereby to add to the financial strength of the institution. Further, the Government lent to the Bank, free of interest, the sum of £200,000 in silver, to be used as a part of the reserve aforementioned, for the redemption of the notes which it was authorized to issue. The Bank was opened for business in September, 1899. Its branch and sub-branch offices now number eleven, and its business transactions become larger day by day.

It was no easy matter, at the outset in 1895, to determine what should be the standard of money and the system of currency for Formosa, for although it might have been said that a copper coinage was actually the standard there, it could not be claimed, according to the pronounced commercial usage, that copper in this sense had a legal existence. Mexican dollars, Spanish dollars, and the dollar coins of Hong Kong, were all in use as media of exchange, but only according to their relative value as silver bullion. Paper money was never used in the island.

Under the new Japanese administration the Colonial Government began to make its payments to the natives in Japanese silver coins (yens) and bank-notes, and thus the condition of the Formosan monetary system was suddenly disturbed by the influx of a new element. The natives were glad enough to receive the new silver pieces from Japan, and preferred them to all other coins then in circulation, but of the use of bank-notes the indigenous population possessed not the faintest idea. As a consequence, there soon came to be an appreciable difference in the relative price of silver to bank paper, by clever management on the part of the Bank of Japan; this tendency was overcome after a while, and the monetary situation in the island gradually came to be identical with that of the mother country, although at that period of the colony’s history no definite regulations regarding the currency had been laid down. ​In the course of time a coinage law and a subsidiary coinage law for the whole Empire were passed by the Diet, and, after receiving Imperial sanction, were promulgated on the 26th day of March, 1897. The reformation of the monetary condition in Formosa thus became imperative, and several meetings of the Special Committee appointed to consider the question were held. The Imperial Government wished to apply the gold standard to the colony’s affairs, as well as to those of the mother country, but the economic conditions prevailing in the island of Formosa precluded this, not only because the natives were unaccustomed to the use of gold coins, but also because trade relations with China and other silver countries, comprising nine-tenths of all the countries with which Japan has trade relations, and the payment of Chinese work-labourers, compelled the retention for the time being of a silver dollar currency. Stamped silver 1-yen coins were therefore brought into use as legal tender in Formosa, and enjoy unlimited circulation there, according to the market price that is officially determined and notified periodically by the Formosan Government.

The existing monetary situation in the colony may therefore be summed up thus:^[2]

1. That de facto the legal standard in Formosa is the stamped Japanese silver 1-yen piece.
2. The Bank of Formosa has power to issue notes against a reserve of silver and first-class securities to a limit of £500,000 sterling, £200,000 of that reserve being supplied by the Government.
3. That all foreign coins as aforesaid are used merely as bullion.

In the execution of its varied measures of reform, the Japanese Government has expended in all upon Formosa since the transfer in 1895 the sum of £18,112,000. These figures include, however, £8,326,000 for military expenses, so that the general expenditure has amounted to, as already shown, £9,786,000. The heavy charges for military operations having ceased, for the last fiscal year this item figured in the accounts at no more than £782,000 for the twelve months, and it is likely to be still further reduced in subsequent Budgets.

Deducting from £9,786,000 the expenditure upon public works, viz., £3,072,000, and the sum total of the revenue, £5,930,000, we find that the net cost to the mother country for civil administration has been £784,000, or £122,000 per ​annum. Taking into account the area of the colony, over 15,000 square miles, the average expenditure was a trifle over £7 yearly per square mile, a remarkably low rate when all the drawbacks incidental to the economical government of a new colony are fairly considered.

The subsidy already alluded to is being diminished year by year, as the colony gains strength, and from £694,000 in 1896 the total fell in 1901 to £238,000. Conversely, the Formosan revenue grew from £271,000 in 1896 to six times this amount—viz., £1,637,000—in 1901, and it is computed that by 1910, if not earlier, the colony will be entirely self-supporting. The new land survey has already added £100,000 to the annual revenue, though as yet but partially carried out, and after 1905, when the new regulations will have full effect, the addition to the colony’s income from this source will be at least £200,000 per annum more.

Mention of an annual subsidy seems at first sight to annul the proposition that Formosa already yields a profit to the Home Government. Yet the fact can be established without difficulty. Substantial benefits are being derived from the interstate commerce between the colony and the mother country in a trade that in the aggregate already amounts to close upon £2,000,000 per annum.

The profits enjoyed therefrom by Japan proper being quite 15 per cent., or £300,000 in the twelve months, they constitute something more than a mere set-off to the grant in aid, which last year was reduced to £238,000, and which will before the year 1910 be entirely extinguished. The profits on the interstate trade, on the other hand, are bound to grow. Moreover, if we go back a little way, we shall find that the commerce of Japan with Formosa has from the beginning amounted to not less than £7,000,000 sterling, and if upon this gross value we take 15 per cent. as the share of clear profit that Japan proper has obtained from the trade, we have over £1,000,000 sterling as the result, a sum that represents a fair return for the investment of £12,182,000 capital, for that is the precise sum that Japan has spent upon Formosa since it was acquired from China.

It will perhaps be admitted that when a colony can be shown to have been of profit to the mother country in even the first seven years of its existence, proof has been given of a vitality and of capabilities in general that are undoubtedly above the average.

Formosa in Japanese hands has achieved this distinction. The facts can be set forth in another way, and possibly with greater force still. As previously shown, after subtracting the revenue of £5,930,000 collected in Formosa during seven years ​from the gross expenditure in the same period of £18,112,000, we have an actual outlay in all by the mother country upon the colony of £12,182,000. But last year’s revenue, independent of the subsidy, rose to £1,637,000. The yield upon outlay was thus nearly 13½ per cent. If it be argued that it is unsafe to take the gross revenue of the colony in this way as a basis of comparison against the total capital sunk, as it were, in the islands, we may turn once more to the item of subsidy, and trace the profits year by year on the interstate trade which have accrued to the mother country upon that basis of calculation alone.

In 1896 the grant was £556,000, against which the interstate profits to Japan proper were £105,000; in other words, a ratio of profit to subsidy of 17.66 per cent.

In 1897 the ratio was 38.49 per cent.

In 1898 it was 72.66 per cent.

In 1899 it reached 84.18 per cent.

In 1900, as stated elsewhere, the ratio was entirely changed, and the gains far exceeded the subsidy, the total profits being £378,000 against a subsidy of £238,000.

Whichever way one may look at it, Formosa can no longer be regarded as a burden upon the Japanese Imperial Exchequer. It is in respect to its financial condition practically independent.

The following table is a brief summary of the financial situation:

Of this sum no less than £3,072,000 were expended upon public works, such as railways, telegraphs, harbour improvements, and certain industries fostered by the State, the net cost of the administration therefore having amounted in seven years to £784,000.

The rate per annum was thus £112,000, and as the area is 15,535 square miles, the average cost of administration for the colony was £7 4s. 1d. per square mile per annum.

Taking a résumé of the Colonial Government’s reforms, they will be found to be:

​1. The administrative system, for which General Kodama is at present responsible, has since 1898 answered all requirements, and has given satisfaction to a population which is composed of many elements inclined by nature to be more or less antagonistic to one another.

2. The sanitation question. Since the Chinese had paid no attention whatever to such matters, the death-rate was very high at the time when the island became Japanese property. Steps were at once taken to remedy the defective drainage of he towns, to supply pure drinking-water by boring artesian wells and establishing waterworks, and to reduce the number of mosquitoes and other noxious insects, which previously were serious plagues. Hospitals were indispensable to the fulfilment of this scheme, and no fewer than eleven of these institutions were established.

3. The cadastre, upon which the land-tax is collected, was established, and is being pushed forward, and its effects, as exhibited by a largely enhanced revenue from this source, are already plainly visible, though the work is necessarily one which demands time for its complete accomplishment.

4. The educational measures adopted are far-reaching, and are certain to be effective.

5. The public works, comprising telegraphs, lighthouses, railways, and the improvement of the accommodation for shipping at various ports, are all receiving their due share of consideration.

6. The banking affairs and monetary system of the colony have been placed upon a satisfactory footing.