JAPAN AS A COLONISING POWER.
WUROPEAN knowledge of Formosa is not so slight _12.4 as when the celebrated Psalmanazar foisted his ingenious fictions on Englishmen, attributed to the Formosans a dialect of his own invention, and even impressed Dr. Johnson, who "would as soon have thought of contradicting him as a Bishop." But even now, though tourists may visit Taihoku and travel on the railway to Hozan, accurate information is still to seek. As the railway only touches the fringe of the country, so does the tourist only touch the fringe of the difficult problems in colonisation with which Japan is dealing. One could hardly think of a more interesting and important question than the ability of Japan, the new "world-Power," to colonise successfully ; because, for good or ill, colonisation is a policy upon which she has set her heart. Lately we have read descriptions of Japanese administration in Korea which were not to her credit. We are not inclined to accept those aspersions without reserve, partly because Japan has not yet had time to declare herself truly in her work, and partly because Korea is so near to Japan. It is easier in many ways to govern a distant colony. Distance removes it from the taint of undesirable and casual elements of population which drift to a place near at hand, but shrink from the more formidable resolution necessary for transferring their fortunes to another part of the world. Anxious as we are to know what faculty the Japanese have for making subject-peoples prosperous and contented, we are com- pelled for the present to rule out the cases of Korea and Manchuria. But there is Formosa. Twelve years ago, in April, 1895, Japan took over the island from the Chinese, and since then she has been feeling her way in one of the most difficult tasks of statecraft. What is the result? May not her achievements and failures in Formosa be taken as indications of what she will do elsewhere ? Almost certainly they may. I book written by Mr. Takekoshi, a Member of the Japanese Diet, which has been translated into English by Mr. George Braith- waite, and published by Messrs. Longmans and Co. (10s. 6d. net), supplies just the kind of information that is wanted. It has almost the value of a Blue-book.
If the whole art of colonisation could be summed up in one sentence, it would be in the saying we have so often used, that one must govern in the interests of the governed. Wherever colonisation has failed, it has failed because the colonies were governed partly or wholly in the interests of the governors. England lost her American colonies for that reason ; for the same reason Spain has gradually been shorn of all her mighty possessions. For want of the administrative gift, Poland, Sweden, and Turkey have lost what they won by the sword. It is a good omen that on the first page of his book Mr. Takekoshi recognises this fact. "It is obvious," he says, "that nations cannot maintain their existence by military power alone." He attributes the colonising gift in the highest degree to Great Britain, but says Britons "are hardly disposed to acknowledge that Japan has any colonising ability at all." This is taxing us with rather too much disdain. Our opinion is simply in suspense ; and for ourselves, we can say that it inclines to a favourable judgment after reading Mr. Takekoshi's book. In reviewing the colonial systems of the world Mr. Takekoshi does less than justice, to our thinking, to the French. But it appears that he wrote before the recent noticeable growth of prosperity in French Judo-China. As to the Germans, it is singular that we can make up our minds least readily in the case of this nation, which is credited with more colonial ambition than any other. All we can say with certainty is that Germans have a faculty for being absorbed in other nations when they emigrate. Mr. Takekoshi explains the bad reports which have been circulated about Formosa
by the assertion that commercial adventurers who wished to exploit the country for their own benefit desired to keep other people out. Real progress did not begin till Viscount ICodama became Governor-General. The railway is now safe, and Mr. Takekoshi mentions the case of a girl of seventeen who was not afraid to travel alone from one end to the other. This is the best illustration, perhaps, of the solution of the brigand problem. So long as the Chinese occupied Formosa, government, as to some extent in Morocco, was carried on only by permission of the brigands. The Japanese first tried to put down brigandage by force ; but they had to confess frankly that their regular soldiers were not a match for their opponents in bushcraft and mountaineering. Besides, innocent people were some- times punished, and outraged innocence actually added to the number of brigands. Then the authorities tried the smooth way. They offered to pardon all brigands who surrendered, and find work for them, or else grant them an annuity. The brigands, perhaps justly, feeling that the Governor-General was in earnest, and that sooner or later their occupation would be gone in any case, came in freely. There remained then only the intractable remnant to deal with, and by peculiar military exertions these bands were broken up or captured. Thus at last Formosa is rid of the curse of centuries.
But this does not touch the problem of the savages. The island is roughly bisected from north to south by a range of mountains, and the eastern half, rich in timber and reputed rich in minerals, is in possession of the savages. Hitherto the authorities have adopted a policy of restraint ; they have temporarily solved the difficulty by leaving the savages alone. These unconquered people, supposed by some, but probably without sufficient reason, to be untameable, are separated from the civilised part of the island by a frontier guarded by blockhouses. Any one who goes beyond this frontier takes his life in his hand, and some hundreds of people are killed by the savages every year. The savages are becoming better and better disposed to the Japanese, discovering, no doubt, that they mean to be just and tolerant. But even so the matter is not easily left to time. Formosa is a poor colony which needs to lay all its resources under contribu- tion; it is already enormously to its credit that it is paying its way, and has at least once refused a subsidy from the Home Government ; but ambitious colonists cannot be expected to rest content with a bare balance when pros- perity is in sight. But how can the savages be made to yield their territory to civilisation except by war ? And war in this case might mean something unpleasantly like extermination. We hope that whatever plan the authori- ties adopt, it will not be that proposed by Mr. Takekoshi. He suggests a chartered company. This may be admissible where it is only a question of commercial pioneering, but in a ease where the great difficulty is admittedly the resistance of the natives, a chartered company would simply be an instrument deprived of all the checks which are at present saving the Governor-General, to his credit, from inhumanity. Mr. Takekoshi makes his proposal in all good faith. It is not less the duty of those who have had first-hand experience of chartered companies to say that in these circumstances the transference of power from a highly responsible body to a much less responsible body would be a hideous mistake.
The boldest and wisest stroke of Viscount Rodama, who is himself a soldier, has been to turn military rule into a civil administration. He has modified, if not ended, the old friction between the military and civil castes. He has invented a uniform for civilian officials, who are saluted by military officers. In a single sentence, Formosa may be described as a Crown colony governed by police. After many systems were tried, the civilised part of the island has been divided into twenty chos, or administrative areas, controlled by police who are no longer directly responsible to the army, but only to the Governor-General. It is an island of policemen. Viscount Kodama has also cleverly transformed the curious old system of "Chinese Elders," by which, in a patriarchal and domestic way, the people are permeated by the influence of the Government. Such are the results of the Governor-General's drastic sweeping away of the inefficient officials who did little or nothing, and simply regarded a term in Formosa as a disagreeable means of attaining comfortable office in Japan. The opium trade has been made a Government monopoly, and Mr. Takekoshi recommends that the trade in several other things should be monopolised. To support his argument he cites municipal trading in England, rather inaptly in some cases, as it seems to us. The greatest need of the island is agricultural development, and this is checked partly by the savage problem, and partly by the retention of Japanese capital at home, where a high rate of interest can be readily gained. The natives are not dealt with under Japanese law, but according to the ancient customs of Formosa. Mr. Takekoshi hopes for the speedy end of this anomalous code. Ancient customs are justifiable only when they consult native susceptibilities, but a Japanese Judge must inevitably be an indifferent dispenser of ancient customs with which he himself has become recently acquainted. The fact that in spite of this the natives are coming to recognise the value and impartiality of the Courts is perhaps as good a proof as any of what we take to be the substantial success of Japanese rule in Formosa.
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