Lai Ching-te’s Japan-era tribute clouds Trump-Xi summit

“I often think that the water from Wushantou Reservoir does not merely flow through farmland or agricultural land; it flows through our very hearts. Because those who have benefited remember the source of the water, and express sincere, heartfelt gratitude to engineer Yoichi Hatta — and to Japan.”

On 8 May, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te visited Wushantou Reservoir in Tainan to attend a memorial ceremony marking the 84th death anniversary of Japanese hydraulic engineer Yoichi Hatta, who is revered as the “father of the Chianan Irrigation Canal”. In his remarks, Lai made the above statement and also crouched down before Hatta’s bronze statue at the site. The visit came after his trip to diplomatic ally Eswatini and ahead of the Xi-Trump meeting in Beijing this week.

Lai’s posture has once again heightened sensitivities over cross-strait relations and questions of identity, sparking controversy within Taiwan and drawing criticism from mainland China, where military-affiliated media accused him of “once again setting a new low in shameless pro-Japanese behaviour”.

Hatta is a historically controversial figure in Taiwan’s political discourse. Born in 1886 in Ishikawa prefecture, Japan, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) in 1910 before being assigned to official duties in Taiwan. There, under Japanese colonial rule, he was responsible for irrigation and water conservancy projects in areas including Tainan, Chiayi, Kaohsiung and Taoyuan.

Under the supervision of Hatta, construction of the Chianan Canal — spanning Chiayi and Tainan — began in 1920, with the first stage focusing on the construction of Wushantou Reservoir. The project was completed a decade later, at which point the area of irrigated paddy fields served by the Chianan Canal had expanded 30 times.

After the end of Japanese colonial rule over Taiwan, the water conservancy works overseen by Hatta continued to benefit the island for decades, earning recognition from politicians across both the pan-Blue and pan-Green camps.

However, over the long term, critics in Taiwan have questioned this glorification, arguing that as an imperial civil servant, Hatta’s infrastructure projects were driven by Japan’s colonial objectives rather than a pure altruistic desire to benefit Taiwan.

According to publicly available historical records, although irrigation and water conservancy projects during Japan’s colonial rule led to a 208% surge in Taiwan’s rice output and an expansion of rice cultivation by nearly 80,000 hectares, per capita rice consumption among ordinary Taiwanese people instead fell by 23%, while sweet potato consumption rose by 38%.

The memorial for Hatta’s death anniversary is held every year at Wushantou Reservoir on 8 May. However, it was not until the Tsai Ing-wen administration came to power in 2016, promoting “transitional justice” and “de-sinicisation”, that this Japanese civil servant became the centre of public debate.

This stems from an incident on 16 April 2017, when the statue of Hatta near Wushantou Reservoir was found “beheaded” by a hacksaw. Lee Cheng-lung, a pro-reunification figure and former Taipei city councillor, admitted to the act and surrendered himself the following day. The case sparked a major controversy in which the Green camp was accused of being “pro-Japanese”.

As the incident occurred weeks before Hatta’s memorial ceremony, Lai, who was at the time Tainan mayor, expressed strong anger. He not only instructed the formation of a special task force to fully investigate and apprehend the culprits, but also ordered the statue to be repaired as soon as possible.

In contrast with earlier incidents — such as the toppling of a statue of Sun Yat-sen at Tainan’s Tang Te-chang Memorial Park by pro-independence activists in 2014, and the removal of a statue of Chiang Kai-shek at a roundabout near a bus station in Tainan’s Yujing district late at night in February 2017 — the Blue camp has accused Lai of being inconsistent as he had handled those cases with relative restraint. Some critics even derisively dubbed him “Ching-te Abe”.

Since taking office, Lai has not only pursued a pro-Japan, anti-China policy direction, but has also further challenged the historical standing of the Kuomintang (KMT). On 14 March, at a symposium marking the 30th anniversary of Taiwan’s direct presidential elections, he remarked that the KMT’s rule treated the Taiwanese people “worse than that of Japan during its colonial rule”, triggering considerable public outcry in parts of Taiwan.

Following the First Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 and came under 50 years of colonial rule. From the early period of Japanese rule up to 1915, armed resistance against Japanese control — primarily led by farmers — emerged repeatedly. In response, Japan deployed large numbers of military and police forces to suppress these uprisings, carrying out crackdowns, massacres and acts of arson that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Even Shih Cheng-feng, a pro-independence academic, said that he could not agree with Lai’s interpretation of history. Speaking on a political talk show, Shih described the modernisation of a colony as, in essence, “fattening you up before slaughtering you”. He also suggested that Lai read the novels of Taiwanese writers Wu Chuo-liu and Chung Li-ho in order to truly understand the profound anguish felt by Taiwanese people marginalised under Japanese rule.

Last Friday marked the 15th consecutive year that Lai attended the public memorial ceremony for Hatta at Wushantou Reservoir. Among those present were Akie Abe, widow of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe; descendants of Hatta; Shuzo Sumi, chair of the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association; and Takashi Murayama, mayor of Kanazawa, among other Japanese attendees.

In his speech, Lai Ching-te said that he attended the memorial event with a heart full of gratitude, sincerely thanking Hatta for constructing the Wushantou Reservoir and the Chianan Irrigation Canal, leaving behind a precious legacy for Taiwan. He said the Wushantou Reservoir serves an intangible function, forging an especially close emotional bond between Taiwan and Japan.

Lai said Hatta devoted his entire life to Taiwan, and “we all consider Hatta one of us… Hatta was Japanese, and also Taiwanese. He was family; we are all one family.”

In his remarks, Lai also specifically thanked Abe and incumbent Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, saying that when Taiwan faces various international threats, it can see that Abe and successive Japanese political leaders have continued to support Taiwan. He also noted that when Takaichi met US President Donald Trump, both sides once again reaffirmed and emphasised the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

Besides delivering his speech, Lai also crouched down before Hatta’s bronze statue and laid down flowers, drawing fierce criticism from figures from Taiwan’s non-Green camp.

On 9 May, Taiwan current affairs commentator Li Jian-nan said in an interview with the China News Service’s “Yan Xin Tai” (燕新台) studio that Lai kneeling before Hatta was an attempt to distort history, erase the blood and tears shed by Taiwan’s forebears in resisting Japan, and cover up the atrocities committed against them.

National Taiwan University (NTU) professor Yuann Jeu-jenq said that pro-Japanese elements in Taiwan already think of themselves as Japanese, otherwise they would not do something so excessive.

Taiwan internet personality “Gym Boss” (馆长) Holger Chen, who travelled to Xintian village in Pinghe county, Fujian, last November to visit the Lai clan ancestral hall in what he described as an effort to help Lai Ching-te trace his roots, criticised Lai for having Chinese blood running through his veins while “telling blatant lies” and insulting his own compatriots.

On 10 May, KMT councillor for Taoyuan city Chan Chiang-chun said on a political talk show on CTi News that according to his grandmother’s recollections, life was tough for Taiwanese people during Japanese rule: “People ate sweet potato shreds with porridge, while all the good rice was shipped back to Japan. If you offended the Japanese police, you would be seized and sent to Southeast Asia as a military labourer. If a woman offended the Japanese, she would be taken away to become a comfort woman… The Japanese exploited the Taiwanese people, so why thank them?”

Chan criticised Taiwan independence supporters as beneficiaries of Japanese colonial rule. He said that if Japan had not lost the war and had continued ruling Taiwan, only those serving the Japanese, studying at NTU, or working as doctors would have enjoyed good lives. He added, “Ordinary people do not want to be colonised, yet some still speak on behalf of the colonisers. What kind of logic is that?”

On the evening of 9 May, the “Jun Zhengping Studio” (钧正平工作室), a new media account under the Chinese mainland military newspaper PLA Daily, published an article criticising Lai for kneeling before Hatta’s bronze statue, saying that to “remember the source of the water” from Japanese colonial rule, is “once again setting a new low in shameless pro-Japanese behaviour”.

The article argued that Hatta was never any sort of “benefactor of Taiwan”, but merely a pawn in Japan’s strategy of “agricultural Taiwan, industrial Japan”. It said that the intention of his water conservancy projects at the time was to help the colonial authorities plunder grain more efficiently.

The article criticised Lai for packaging a colonial exploiter as a “benefactor of Taiwan”, saying that the real intention was to sever Taiwan’s historical and cultural ties with the mainland and find backing for his Taiwan independence agenda. It accused him of distorting the truth in pursuit of independence and described such behaviour as disgraceful. 

The article warned, “Traitors who acknowledge thieves as their fathers invariably end up nailed to history’s pillar of shame.”

The day after Lai appeared before Hatta’s statue, on 8 May China’s Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Senior Colonel Jiang Bin confirmed that a PLA main battle fleet had entered waters southwest of Penghu for activities at the end of last month. He warned that Taiwan independence secessionists were the chief culprit undermining peace in the Taiwan Strait, and that the mainland would “never tolerate or show any leniency toward it”.

Jiang said the PLA will continue to take concrete measures to resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to firmly safeguard peace and stability in the strait.

The Taiwan issue is expected to be included on the agenda of this week’s Xi-Trump summit. Although US policy towards Taiwan is expected to remain unchanged, and Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung also expressed confidence in Taiwan-US relations on 11 May, Lai’s overseas visit to Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in Africa, coupled with his efforts to strengthen Taiwan-Japan ties through his homage to Hatta, means that any easing of cross-strait tensions remains a distant prospect. Beijing may also step up efforts to secure a clearer anti-Taiwan-independence stance from the White House.

China’s foreign ministry also said on 11 May that it opposed Taiwan’s participation in next week’s World Health Assembly, continuing efforts to constrain Taiwan’s international space. While Hatta may help draw Taiwan and Japan closer together, it remains to be seen whether Tokyo will in future honour the claim that “a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency”, or even risk offending Beijing by openly supporting Taiwan — further worsening already strained China-Japan relations.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “赖清德“习特会”前跪拜八田与一”.

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