美國為何支持「日屬美占」？The following is my take on Dr. Roger Lin’s positions and engages only myself. I added a few comments on what I think is the prevailing opinion in Japan.
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Dr. Roger Lin starts with Taiwan, a limbo cession of SFPT, notices that as of April first 1945, Japan had finalized integration of Taiwan under the Meiji Constitution and contends that even though the present “made in occupied Japan” constitution erased Taiwan from the map of Japan, Taiwan remains a possession of the Japanese crown since Shimonoseki 1895.
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Dr. Roger Lin starts with Taiwan, a limbo cession of SFPT, notices that as of April first 1945, Japan had finalized integration of Taiwan under the Meiji Constitution and contends that even though the present “made in occupied Japan” constitution erased Taiwan from the map of Japan, Taiwan remains a possession of the Japanese crown since Shimonoseki 1895.
And the US executive’s gift of a set of photographs, one of which depicts the Imperial Palace, on the occasion of last year’s grand opening of the TCG Washington office at the Four Seasons Hotel, hints at how deeply aware the US executive branch remains of the Formosan Japanese connection with (or latent, residual allegiance to) Japan.
The Japanese crown delegated administration of Taiwan to the government. A debate took place over whether Taiwan should be governed as a colony or as another area of Japan proper. A colonial agency under the Prime Minister, the Governor General Office, was set up for the purpose of developing Taiwan. Granted full fledged incorporation on April 1, 1945, Taiwan became a territory subject to the same administrative guidelines as Japan proper.
As such, Taiwan must be regarded as a “sacred, inalienable” territory of Japan. An alien power in position to dictate its conditions does not wield over the “sacred, inalienable” territory of a nation the sway it would over a colonial possession of said nation.
Under the principle of territorial integrity, Japan remains duty bound to protect and secure her territory. Japan is also compelled to protect her nationals and maintain their nationality even to the extent that they are residing on a territory that slipped out of her government’s control because of occupation.
If one observes that not the Emperor, but only the government to which the Emperor had delegated the administration of Taiwan attended at San Francisco, one could infer that in the SFPT, the government of Japan signed off to USMG its control duties in regard of Japanese Taiwan, leaving sovereignty (ownership) potentially intact. Taiwan remains to this day an asset of the imperial estate.
Short of that internationally legitimate Imperial Rescript, Taiwan would have remained a colony of Japan and could have been dealt with after the pattern adopted with the German colonial empire after WWI.
Whether Dulles acknowledged or not the obstacle the Imperial Rescript represented in dealing with the cession of Taiwan is opened to discussion since there is scant trace of acknowledgement on record
Nevertheless, that Imperial Rescript validates fifty years of Japanese development and integration efforts on Taiwan. From Shimonoseki onward there is a steady evolution of Japanese Taiwan that puts it on the path to incorporation.
If Taiwan is the limbo cession over which ultimate status the victor of Japan holds sway, what forbids the current master of the destiny of Japanese Taiwan to return Taiwan under some form of Japanese control, if it deems it in its best national interest?
What would prevent the main signatory and depository of SFPT to return the sovereignty of a cumbersome Taiwan to Japan if it deems it advantageous to its interests? There are precedents like the return of Paoli’s Kingdom of Corsica by the British to revolutionary France, among others.
Meanwhile, although Japan is compelled to remain mum and passive under SFPT conditions, it should revisit the question of its duty towards its forgotten wards. Were the Japanese courts correct in attaching cancellation of nationality to cession of territory under foreign occupation? Roger Lin is planning his case on the matter before a Japanese court.
Roger Lin takes strength from the “limbo cession” fact and sees in it a “back door” that Dulles would have left opened for a (temporary?) return of Taiwan under the Japanese flag, at the US executive’s pleasure.
Then, Taiwan could opt for an association with Japan, as a Japanese Crown Dependency like the Anglo Norman islands of Jersey and Guernsey under the British Crown off French coasts, for example.
If there are any “latent” Japanese ambitions over Taiwan, Japan has enough on her plate managing her China relations where the Taiwan issue remains the main irritant, thanks to Chinese ambitions in that regard. Regrettably, not much should be expected from a neutered Japan on that front, unless actively prodded by the US mentor, that is.
In summer of 1952, at a Lower House session dealing with the Treaty of Taipei, a representative declared, “Taiwanese are no more Chinese than they are Japanese. Taiwanese are Taiwanese.” And Japan sticks to that gun.
The current “made in occupied Japan” constitution is time and again the object of scorn among the conservatives now in opposition. But no one ever alluded to a resumption of control over the territories that constitution covered.
The most improbable US-facilitated temporary return of Taiwan under the Japanese flag that Roger Lin calls for would only be divine retribution to the goons the US foisted on Japanese Formosa after using them in an expensive and bloody push to ‘open doors” in colonial era Asia.
President Obama’s good-hearted bow to the Emperor of Japan was construed by TCG sympathizers as the tell-tale sign that Roger Lin’s Japanese option is now of the possible, the US-Japan alliance willing.
TCG is correct in emphasizing to its Formosan Japanese audience their Japanese allegiance. They are the legal Taiwan the US conqueror brushed in a desultory manner under a Chinese carpet.
Jerome Besson
