page_title: History of Taiwan
section_title: Japanese rule
hierarchical_section_title: History of Taiwan / Japanese rule
context_page_description: The history of the island of Taiwan dates back tens of thousands of years to the earliest known evidence of human habitation. The sudden appearance of a culture based on agriculture around 3000 BC is believed to reflect the arrival of the ancestors of today's Taiwanese indigenous peoples. The island was colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century, followed by an influx of Hoklo people including Hakka immigrants from the Fujian and Guangdong areas of mainland China, across the Taiwan Strait. The Spanish built a settlement in the north for a brief period but were driven out by the Dutch in 1642.
  In 1662, Koxinga, a loyalist of the Ming dynasty who had lost control of mainland China in 1644, defeated the Dutch and established a base of operations on the island. His forces were defeated by the Qing dynasty in 1683, and parts of Taiwan became increasingly integrated into the Qing empire. Following the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Qing ceded the island, along with Penghu, to the Empire of Japan. Taiwan produced rice and sugar to be exported to the Empire of Japan, and also served as a base for the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia and the Pacific during World War II.
context_section_description: Japan had sought to claim sovereignty over Taiwan (known to them as Takasago Koku (高砂國)) since 1592, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi undertook a policy of overseas expansion and extending Japanese influence southward and westward. To the west, Japan invaded Korea in that time period, with the eventual conquest of China contemplated. To the south an initial attempt to invade Taiwan and subsequent sporadic invasion attempts spanning three centuries were unsuccessful due mainly to disease and attacks by aborigines on the island.
  In 1609, the Tokugawa shogunate sent Harunobu Arima on an exploratory mission of the island. An attempted invasion in 1616, led by Murayama Tōan, failed when the fleet was dispersed by a typhoon and the only ship to reach the island was repelled.
  In the Mudan Incident of 1871, an Okinawan ship was wrecked on the southern tip of Taiwan and 54 crewmen were beheaded by Paiwan aborigines. After the Qing government refused to make compensation, stating that the aboriginals were not under its control, Japan launched a punitive expedition to the area in 1874, withdrawing after the Qing promised to pay an indemnity.
caption: A 1912 map of Japan with Taiwan, which was ruled by the Empire of Japan from 1895 to 1945.
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