STUDENT VIEW

Japan-Taiwan Relations:
Recent Changes & Future
Development

Author Marshall Sherrell

By Marshall Sherrell
Introduction
Japan’s history with Taiwan is storied to say the least. After the Qing
Dynasty ceded control of Taiwan to the Empire of Japan in 1895, asudden and forceful influx of Japanese social exports forever altered
Taiwan’s identity. Taiwanese cuisine, culture, and education wererapidly changed in ways that can still be seen today. What’s more, thiswas not the only societal upheaval in modern history to challenge theisland nation.
While the Japanese occupation of Taiwan ended in 1945, only four
years later China experienced a massive civil war which left thedefeated Republic of China (ROC) with one final refuge after losing
control of the mainland to the Communist revolutionaries. Thisrevolution became the catalyst for an increasingly hostile (albeit
mutually profitable) relationship between mainland China and Taiwan,
while both nations, if we may use such terminology, would become
unrecognizable from the principles on which these new governments
were originally founded.
As mainland China tried and failed to implement the vision of Mao
Zedong, the country wavered and struggled economically for decades.
Meanwhile, the militaristic rule of the founding ROC in Taiwan meant
oppression and lack of opportunity for most. Both China and Taiwan
benefitted from a Westernization of sorts in the years following. Taiwan
adopted Democratic governmental reforms in the 1980s, while China
embraced the principles of capitalism, subsequently exploding onto
the world stage as an economic powerhouse that has proved too big
to ignore.
But one zeitgeist never faded in the minds of this emerging power,
and only grew stronger with time: there is only one China, and Taiwan
is part of it. As the power and influence of mainland China has grown,nearly every nation of the world has come to adopt the (in) famous
One-China policy to capitulate to the demands of the mainland. At
present, only 18 nations maintain official diplomatic relations with
Taiwan, while Taiwan’s key trade partners, paradoxically, recognize thesovereignty of mainland China.
It is impossible to delve into this topic without engaging with thebaffling contradictions which ensconce Taiwan’s international relations
in a safety net of ambiguity. While important trade partners like Japanand the United States officially recognize the One-China policy, the70 Japan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 2019

outworking of that pact has ever been a delicate matter, marked byambivalence on all sides. With faux embassies and unwritten
international contracts, Taiwan represents a tantalizing case study foranyone interested in the functions of modern diplomacy.
This topic merits its own study, if not its own library. Rather thanbreaching that difficult topic of US-Taiwan relations, I will take thediplomatic approach and instead talk about another country’s
transnational dilemmas with Taiwan. The purpose of this article is to
examine the future of international relations – official or otherwise –between Japan and Taiwan.
Geopolitics in East Asia has much more to do with de facto rules
than with “official” policies, which are often too grandiose to berealized, but also too precious to be discarded as overly idealistic.
Japan officially has no standing army, and no diplomatic relations with
Taiwan. In both cases, these are technicalities at best; open secrets ofmodern politics. Emblematic of the tenuous balance by which relative
peace has been achieved in East Asia today, the contradiction between
policy and practice has become a semi-comfortable status quo. Veiled
threats and equally ambiguous promises of reciprocation are
exchanged regularly among trade partners. Forgive the distinctly
millennial tone to this summation, but “frenemies” perhaps best
describes the pseudo-relations in which Japan and China will navigate
a treacherous course toward mutual advancement.

What’s at Stake
To be clear, Taiwan has the most skin in this game. Japan is notwithout security concerns of its own, but it is Taiwan which has
legitimate reasons to be alarmed at the future of its statehood and(unofficial?) sovereignty. While Taiwan’s economy exploded several
decades ago, it has also levelled off more recently as China’s has
swelled. As Beijing’s influence has grown, the pressure on Taiwan has
increased commensurately. The indisputably more powerful mainland
China has sniped off more and more of Taiwan’s former diplomaticallies, leaving Taiwan in a stranglehold diplomatically. What’s more, themanufacturing base of China offers impossible-to-ignore tradepotential to developed nations. China is not unaware of its superior
position on the world stage, through which Beijing has persuaded
nations and private organizations to capitulate to its demands in regard

https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

STUDENT VIEW
to the One-China policy.
No one is unclear about the eventual end toward which China islooking. China’s position remains openly hostile toward any move
indicative of Taiwanese independence, which most consider a de facto
reality already. That same spirit of colonialism which impels otherpowerful nations to extend their influence globally seems to also drive
China’s telling encroachment. What’s more, with an increasingly
centralized, autocratic, and restrictive rule of government coming toshape in the China which President Xi Jinping will preside over for the
rest of his life (after successfully changing the former laws on term
limits), the ambitions of the nation’s top brass are poised to be
unimpeded by internal dissent in the event of international conflict.

today. None of this has served to inhibit trade, business, and cultural
exchanges between the nations in question.
This is not to say that Japan’s relationship with Taiwan is or was
without difficulty. While Japan, China, and Taiwan continue to disputeownership of the Senkaku Islands, for example, Japan maintains
amicable relations with Taiwan which are likely to continue well into
the future. Because these issues have a potential to culminate inconflict, maintaining the current state of affairs has been dubbed apriority; so Japan and Taiwan have taken measures to solve suchdisputes through diplomatic means.

Taiwan’s Nuanced Relationships

The implementation of the One-China policy has ever been a delicate
undertaking, but that fact has also resulted in certain advantages for
Taiwan’s unofficial partners. Through non-embassies staffed by nondiplomats, Japan has largely circumnavigated the former difficulties inestablishing and protecting foreign investment, trade, and otherinterests in Taiwan. With the precedent of unofficial business andpolitical relations in Taiwan having been set decades prior, the wordingof the policies which brought about these conditions is largely
meaningless. Terms such as “strategic ambiguity” have been used todescribe the Taiwan-related treaties the US adopted after learning fromJapan; and the beauty of ambiguity is flexibility.
Because the question of what does and does not constituteadherence to the One-China policy has largely become a matter ofsubjective interpretation, dealings with Taiwan have evolved into a
diplomatic gesture on some level. President-elect Donald Trump brokeprecedent by having a phone conversation with President Tsai Ing-wen
of Taiwan in late 2016, who congratulated him on winning thepresidency of the US. This seemingly innocuous gesture was taken as
something far greater by politicians and analysts on all sides; the ire
the act incurred might well be evidence of the efficacy of “strategic
ambiguity”.
Other controversial gestures include the 2017 visit to Taiwan by
Japanese Senior Vice Minister of Internal Affairs and Communication
Jiro Akama, which had been shortly preceded by the January 2017
renaming of Japan’s de facto embassy in Taiwan, now redubbed theJapan-Taiwan Exchange Association. While Akama’s trip was about
promoting Japanese food exports, and the renaming of the former
Interchange Association was a gesture of goodwill, none of this hasgone unnoticed by Beijing. This has long been the case in international
dealings with Taiwan, which is why President Trump can also beaccused of “playing the Taiwan card” in associating with Taiwanese
authorities – but that motivation can just as easily be denied, and witha plausible deniability of its own thanks to the ambiguity surrounding
the One-China policy.
In this discussion, I’ve jumped between US-Taiwan affairs andJapan-Taiwan affairs rather freely as I feel that Japan-Taiwan relations
cannot be properly understood without consideration of America’s
influence in East Asia and especially Japan. Japan has come to mirror
Westernized philosophies in politics and society in ways which
differentiate it from the rest of East Asia. While Western modernity has

Taiwan’s protection against invasion has been a matter of subtlety
for generations. America’s Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 states that“the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense
articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary
to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
Without promising aid in the event of conflict, this treaty rather notesthat it may be provided. This same agreement contains provisions
about the uses of the American Institute of Taiwan, outlining the sameessential functions of an embassy without the namesake. But the idea
came from Japan.
In 1972, Japan instituted the Interchange Association, from theoffices of the former Japanese Embassy in Taiwan prior to Japan’s
adoption of the One-China policy. This organization was staffed byformer Japanese diplomats who were lent to the Interchange
Organization, temporarily relinquishing their official status as
diplomats until the end of their terms working at the Interchange
Association. The government of Japan avoided “recognizing” Taiwan intravel arrangements as well; Taiwanese travelers to Japan would be
issued a separate travel document to be processed at Japaneseimmigration offices, leaving the passport untouched. This approach
toward the continuation of unofficial relations with Taiwan was dubbed
the “Japanese formula”, which blueprint the US mirrored in many
ways in establishing the unofficial relations its shares with Taiwan
Photo: MiNe (CC BY 2.0)

Sign stone of Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association, Taipei Office

Opaque Policies as Political Barometers

Japan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 2019

71

STUDENT VIEW
Photo: Presidential Office of Taiwan (CC BY 2.0)

Photo: From Japanese book Kinsei Meishi Shashin Vol. 2 (19341935)

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen meets with US Senator Marco Rubio in
Miami, Florida, in June 2016.

affected most of the world to greater and lesser degrees, Japan was
literally given its Constitution by an American military general. The US
still has vast military resources allocated to Japan, and the relationshipis growing stronger. As such, US interests in East Asia will often
overlap with Japanese interests, including many shared friends andenemies. However, there is a particular historical place Japan occupies
which necessitates greater unction in promoting peaceful, fruitfulrelations in East Asia.

National Images Old & New
I will not belabor here the innumerable sources of animosity toward
Japan among other East Asian countries. It is a historical memory
longer than my American psyche can fathom to delve back into theannals of ages past and attempt to grasp the impacts of the many
invasions of the Korean Peninsula at the hands of ambitious Japanesewarlords, or Japan’s history with China, or the atrocities of Nanjing in
1937. Suffice it to say that imperialist Japan had earned the ill-will of
its enemies. And, as anyone familiar with the geopolitical landscape in
East Asia knows, many of those events in ages past cannot be
forgotten today. The issue of the “comfort women” enslaved by theJapanese military in Korea is another blight on Japanese history which
has left deep wounds that may not be healed for ages to come; monies
and apologies have been issued and memorial statues erected, while
Japan would simply like to forget.
Taiwan is no stranger to Japanese imperialism, of course. After
Japan took control of the island in 1895, the ensuing gentrification
process saw Taiwanese children speaking Japanese in school, while
the populace at large was encouraged to live, speak, and believe theJapanese way. Unlike many of the more slipshod expansionist
movements, Japan’s first colony was meant to serve as an example ofJapan’s positive influence; Japan invested in improving and developing
the infrastructures of Taiwan during their occupancy. This ended in1945 when Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces, and surrendered
control of Taiwan.

72 Japan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 2019

Portrait of Kabayama Sukenori, inaugurated as the firstJapanese governor-general of Taiwan, on May 10, 1895

Reactive & Adaptable – How Taiwan Is Built
for Survival
Colonialism may never leave the best of cultural memories, but
Japan’s occupation of Taiwan had an entirely different flavor than did
its military conquests in Korea and some parts of China. In many
ways, Japan contributed to Taiwan’s development, albeit a mandated
development from invaders. This is one reason that while Taiwan
might represent the sorest of sore spots for China’s foreign relations, it
can still enjoy a happy (unofficial) relationship with Japan.
Another boon for Taiwan is the adaptability it has cultivated. Old
cultures tend to change slowly, as Japan is often cited to do. New
cultures can build and innovate without much concern for precedentand tradition when there is little of it to hinder progress. Taiwan has
become a master of adaptation in this way. After Japan surrendered
control of Taiwan to China, the Chinese Civil War soon brought aboutanother societal shift in Taiwan, where the ousted Chinese government
leaders dug in and attempted to create a separate China to oppose theCommunist China which had seized power. Although modern Taiwan
was conceived and ruled autocratically by its founder, a series of
democratic reforms in the 1980s set the ball in motion for Taiwan to
become the more democratic nation it is today.
A highly adaptable and resilient Taiwan is eager to make connections
internationally, while Japan must find inroads toward a moreestablished and less tenuous peace with neighboring countries. As adeveloped nation, Japan is also eager to trade and promote commerce,
and Taiwan’s close proximity and hospitable political relations withJapan make it the ideal (unofficial) partner with which to do business.
With a shrinking domestic workforce, Japan will undoubtedly look to
Taiwan among other nations to help pick up the slack as it scrambles
to find replacements for the older generation of employees acrossevery industry.
Japan has an image to attend to as a pacifist nation, while internal
struggles like population decline are leaving change-resistant Japan

STUDENT VIEW
backed up against a wall. Japan’s relationship with Taiwan is particularly
advantageous for both of these reasons. Although Japan ceased frompracticing colonialism many years ago, historical memory in East Asia
is long. To maintain both the practice and image of pacifism, Japan has
a need protect the reputation it has worked to cultivate – a task which is
not taken lightly if the remuneration paid to South Korea in recent times
is any indication. This is why Japan’s former “model colony” can still,
ironically, enhance Japan’s reputation today.
Japan’s well-known and much-feared population decline is beyond
any simply solution, but one immediate and unavoidable result must
be that Japan adapts its immigration practices to a new age in which
continued homogeneity will simply not be an option. To this end,
characteristically slow reforms have been taking place, including
incentivizing the immigration process for highly skilled workers, andpermitting greater numbers of low-skill workers to enter Japan toperform the jobs Japanese people tend to shun. One might correctly
think that China rather than Taiwan could better provide the necessary
manpower Japan requires, but where Japan has been slow to change,
China has not; with a busy economy and capitalist fervor on full power,
China is increasingly attracting foreign talent from abroad whileproviding greater incentives for local talent to stay local.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s best and brightest have been subject to a“brain drain” from China, where skilled tech workers, for example, canearn much higher salaries than are typically available in Taiwan.
Laborers from China will probably still be eager to seek working wages
in Japan, but this says nothing of the professional class. Since theskilled workers Japan needs are becoming less likely to leaveneighboring China, Taiwan will be indispensable for meeting thestaffing shortages Japan will face.

Why Taiwan?
In a globalized world, one might well ask why, in the face of
population decline, Japan would be restricted to neighboring Asian
countries in meeting personnel staffing needs. To put it simply,
neighbors from afar are less likely to adapt and assimilate to Japan’s
comparatively rigid culture. For starters, there are the linguistic
similarities between Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese which facilitate asort of built-in understanding among expatriates from these nations(Japan and China share the kanji system which baffles many
Westerners, while Korean grammar is nearly identical to Japanese). In
addition, East Asian expatriates in Japan can and do “pass” forJapanese, which provides manifold benefits in a culture which has
ever been wary of foreigners.
As I mentioned earlier, Taiwan, unlike China, is a democratic nation
which has embraced many liberal reforms. This has aligned Taiwan
with many American values, to which Japan has also been inextricably
tied. Japan is officially a protectorate of the US, while Taiwan enjoys
unofficial protection as the US and other interested nations seek tomaintain the status quo in Asia. The eventuality which must be
prepared for is the question of how long this status quo can be
maintained. In preparing for its own future, Japan must invest in
Taiwan.

Photo: Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen (USAF)

Chinese military honor guards march during a welcome ceremony for Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace at the Ministry of Defense on March 22, 2007, in
Beijing, China.

China – Too Big to Ignore
Having laid out some of the reasons why it would behoove Japan tocontinue and enrich its current relations with Taiwan, this says nothingof the obvious elephant-in-the-room: China’s constant disapproval of
the status quo and recent intensifying of its position that Taiwan is aterritory of mainland China, to come under its control sooner or later.
As almost all nations of the world have come to accept the One-China
principle in some manifestation, China’s influence in Taiwan’s affairs
and the affairs of its trading partners can be clearly seen.
Leaked People’s Liberation Army (PLA) training documents havehinted at scenarios in which China could invade Taiwan, and thestrategic gains to be made by doing so – including how Taiwan would
serve Chinese powers in the case of a conflict with Japan. In recent
times, rhetoric of a possible invasion has been ramped up amid
increased tension between the US and China, and concurrent andintentional reinvigorating of the unofficial US-Taiwan relationship. The
potential for open conflict should be treated with utmost gravity –something China has capitalized on in swaying the opinions of
Taiwan’s allies via threats and intimidation.
Economically and militarily, it is clear that China is too big to ignore.
As one of the few diplomatic partners of North Korea, China also
maintains the terrifying prospect of a nuclear-powered ally nation
which shares at least some of the grievances with Japan as China hasfor ages. As with all things North Korean, the future of that relationshipis also questionable, but provides another reason to think that thestatus quo in the Pacific is not sustainable.
In contrast to the doom-and-gloom picture you might beenvisioning by now, I do not mean to say that war in the traditional
sense is inevitable. “War” might be waged via public opinion, and therevolutions which I think must happen in the future can be peacefultransitions of power or power structures. As a diplomat-to-be, it is myutmost hope that when the scales tip, as they one day must, peace andprosperity in East Asia would be maintained regardless of whateverthat new “status quo” might look like.

Marshall Sherrell is a 2019 Pickering Fellow and an incoming graduate
student at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Global Policy Studies. In
addition to his work with JEF, his articles have been featured in Samurai
Meetups (samuraimeetups.or.jp).

Japan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 201973