「台湾籍民」をめぐる諸問題(<特集>「近代日本の南方関与」 II )

Abstract

The inhabitants of Formosa, which became a Japanese colony as a result of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), were allowed to become Japanese nationals on 8 May 1897. But, for some ten years the Government-General of Formosa was too occupied with pacification of this new territory to take an accurate census. This enabled non-Formosan Chinese in Fukien to obtain illegally Japanese nationality, which gave them exterritorial rights and a means to elude the likin. Around 1910, the majority of those registered as Formosan by the Japanese consulates at Amoy and Fuchou was actually non-Formosan Chinese. At the end of 1911 the consulates in Fukien, the Government-General, and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided that the consulates at Amoy, Fuchou, and Swatow should register those Formosans who wanted Japanese nationality and exclude the undesirable elements even if they had been registered in Formosa as Formosans of Japanese nationality. When the southern expansion policy of the Government-General was stimulated and activated by World War I, Formosan fortune seekers, criminals, and anti-Japanese rebels crossed over to Fukien without passports and entered the underworld there. Some of them even became leaders of the underworld and were called Formosan bandits. The Japanese consulates in Fukien could not control them and asked for aid from the Government-General. Police officers of the consulates in Amoy, Fuchou, Swatow, and Canton were increased at the expense of the Government-General. In 1916 conferences were held between the Government-General and the consulates at Amoy and Fuchou to discuss the problems of South China as well as the problems of the Formosans there. Through these conferences the Government-General revealed its southern expansion plan, including such programs as the education of the Formosans to convert them into loyal Japanese subjects and propaganda and intelligence activities through hospitals and the press. The 1916 conferences were significant in that they foreshadowed the next phase of the southern expansion program of the Government-General of Formosa.