Taiwan
At the end of the war, Qing China ceded Formosa and the Pescadores (see modern-day Taiwan) to Japan via the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Kodama became the Governor-General of Taiwan, and Gotō was asked to become the head of civilian affairs in his government.[3]
Gotō ordered a land survey and recruited Scottish engineer William Kinninmond Burton to develop an infrastructure for drinking water and sewage disposal. Gotō replaced the military police by a civilian police force, forbade government officials and teachers from wearing uniforms and swords, and revived traditional forms of social control by enlisting village elders and headmen into the administration. Gotō also built a public hospital and medical college in Taipei, and clinics to treat tropical diseases around the island. Opium addiction was an endemic problem in China at the time, and Taiwan was no exception. Gotō recommended a policy of the gradual prohibition of opium. Under this scheme, opium could only be purchased from licensed retailers. As a result of the strict enforcement, the number of addicts dropped from 165,000 in 1900 to fewer than 8,000 by 1941, none of whom was younger than 30. In addition, as government revenues from opium sales was lucrative and Gotō used opium sales licenses to reward Taiwanese elite loyal to the Japanese Empire and those who assisted in the suppression of the Taiwan Yiminjun (台灣義民軍), an armed group that resisted Japanese rule. The plan achieved both its purposes: opium addiction dropped gradually and the activities of the Yiminjun were undermined.
As a doctor by training, Gotō believed that Taiwan must be ruled by "biological principles" (生物学の原則), i.e. that he must first understand the habits of the Taiwanese population, as well as the reasons for their existence, before creating corresponding policies. For this purpose, he created and headed the Provisional Council for the Investigation of Old Habits of Taiwan.
Gotō also established the economic framework for the colony by government monopolization of sugar, salt, tobacco and camphor and also for the development of ports and railways. He recruited Nitobe Inazō to develop long-range plans for forestry and sub-tropical agriculture. By the time Gotō left office, he had tripled the road system, established a post office network, telephone and telegraph services, a hydroelectric power plant, newspapers, and the Bank of Taiwan. The colony was economically self-supporting and by 1905 no longer required the support of the home government despite the numerous large-scale infrastructure projects being undertaken.
In the early days of Japanese colonial rule police were deployed to the cities to maintain order, often through brutal means, while the military was deployed to the countryside as a counterinsurgency and policing force. The brutality of early Japanese policing backfired and often inspired rebellion and insurrection instead of quashing it. This system was reformed by Goto Shinpei who sought to co-opt existing traditions to expand Japanese power. Out of the Qing baojia system he crafted the Hoko system of community control. The Hoko system eventually became the primary method by which the Japanese authorities went about all sorts of tasks from tax collecting, to opium smoking abatement, to keeping tabs on the population. Under the Hoko system every community was broken down into Ko, groups of ten neighboring households. When a person was convicted of a serious crime, the person's entire Ko would be fined. The system only became more effective as it was integrated with the local police.[4]
Under Gotō police stations were established in every part of the island. Rural police stations took on extra duties with those in the aboriginal regions operating schools known as “savage children’s educational institutes” to assimilate aboriginal children into Japanese culture. The local police station also controlled the rifles which aboriginal men relied upon for hunting as well as operated small barter stations which created small captive economies.[4]
