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An Elderly Taiwanese Woman Who Loves Japan

August 22nd, 2007 by James

This clip from a Japanese TV show educates viewers on why Taiwanese people seem to love Japan so much:

A group of Japanese traveling in Taiwan meet an elderly woman who speaks fantastic Japanese and declares her love for Japan. We are then told some of the following reasons why Taiwanese like Japan:

-Taiwan was a Japanese territory since the end of the 19th century.
-Taiwanese were educated in Japanese schools and read the kanji of their names in the Japanese style.
-Japan modernized Taiwan by building roads, hospitals, cities, railways, etc.
-Taiwanese viewed themselves as Japanese, and Japan turned Taiwan into a rich island.

The clip closes with the elderly woman declaring that she believes the Taiwanese have similar hearts to the Japanese. After she says that Taiwanese are possibly living by and protecting the “Japanese spirit” more than today’s Japanese are, the narrator comments on the unfortunate fact that Japan does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.



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5 Comments »

Comment by TofuUnion
2007-08-22 10:16:19

Although Taiwan was Japan’s colony for 50 years, Taiwanese are friendly to Japanese, probably because they’ve been having conflict with mainland China.

Even in Taiwan, the evaluation about contribution of modernization / industrialization by Japan in the colonial era, is a controversial political issue.(There were certain exploitations and discriminations by Japanese.)

Korean was Japan’s colony for 35 years. They would never admit positive side of colonial era. Unfortunately South Koreans feel more sympathy for North Korea than Japan.

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Comment by John
2007-08-22 10:50:36

Older Taiwanese are more friendly because except the aboriginals, whose culture and a good deal of the people were wiped out, they simply weren’t on the receiving end of the katana.

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Comment by 羽之助
2007-08-22 12:27:19

Taiwanese people like Japan because when the Kuomintang survivors fled the mainland and set up shop in Taiwan, they let the infrastructure go to hell and treated the inhabitants a lot worse than they had been treated under Japanese rule. So a lot of older Taiwanese remember Japanese rule of the island as “that time when the roads didn’t have massive holes in them and the schools were good.”

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Comment by Claytonian
2007-08-22 13:25:02

The awkward response of the boys suggests a little bit of “oh yeah, we did conquer you and all. ha. ha. crazy huh?” feelings.

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Comment by Alec
2007-08-22 13:35:11

Hmm, very interesting video. I liked the cute bit showing the war in China. “Vs”!

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