JAPAN'S ISLAND COLONY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18629, 9 February 1924, Page 4 (Supplement)

JAPAN'S ISLAND COLONY.

■•■■■:■■ r..r,.: ;- ♦> .V :,• I A LAND LITTLE KNOWN. ■ SUCCESS AND FAILURE. Two days' steam north-east of Hongkong, and three south-west of Japan's southern port, lies Formosa* Although thus in the direct route from our outpost in the China Sea to the country of its possessors, this island-colony of Japan is off the beaten track of / tourists. 'The offices of Thomas Cook can do nothing to give you entry. If you speak Japanese well, the risk of a visit may bo taken. Formosa is worth it; but to go under the auspices of the Japanese Government is tho only way promising welcome and facilities for sight seeing. This was the happy lot of Mr. Owen Rutter, of North Borneo, ; not long ago, bv official arrangement throngh a senior officer of the British North Borneo Civil Service. For several delightful days Mr. Rutter and his wife wore the guests of the Japanese Government in this littleknown island, traversing it under the care of a Japanese attache. A book not easily surpassed either for infojrmative value or piquancy of writing is one result of that visit; a result of which Mr. Rutter's English countrymen will be glad to avail themselves. In one respect only does the story fail. " Uha Formosa " was the name given to the island by Portuguese navigators, the first Europeans to explore the East, and the island has beauty remarkable enough to justify the descriptive title. But it is not an artist's eye through which you look as you go " Through Formosa," seeing it as Mr. Rutter saw it. There are broard impressions of its shores and mountains, its plantations on the west and its forest fastnesses toward the east, and hero and there, as from the British Consul's house at Tamsui. a peep of pleasant vistas. But Mr. Rutter is avowedly no sentimentalist, and even at the consul's house he enthuses more over the first grate-fire he has seen since leaving England than over the view across the Tamsui river. Yet Formosa is a paradise of gorgeous tropic growth. A vast profusion of orchids and azaleas and lilies, and a luxuriant wealth of palms, tree-ferns and forest trees, make it famous. Mr. Rutter's oversight has ready forgiveness, however, since so much else it seen with clearness and enthusiasm. An Elaborate Literary Hoax. " Through Formosa " is no mere travelogue. On the thread of Mr. Rutter's. brief experiences is hung gem after gem of history, ethnology, politics and economics, won from the mine that a bibliography of English publications— a hundred and twenty— at the end of the book, shows is more extensive than many folk would think. Some of these gems are skilfully wrought upon by Mr. Rutter's own thought. * Once it was easy to gull English people and others about Formosa, as a daring triclcster knew who published a ''Historical and l Geographical Description, of Formosa" in 1701. It was in Latin, but soon got vogue enough to be translated first into English and then into French and German. Formosa's model government, great towns and prosperous inhabitants were described. -language and religeon of the Formosans were given detailed account; indeed, Formosan translations of the Lord's Prayer, the Commandments and the Apostles' Creed were made by the enterprising author It was all fudge. Its author, who called himself George Psalmanasaar, admitted afterwards that it was entirely fictitious: but before he repented of the fraud he was lionised to the top of his bent. The Bishop of London shepherded him, the Royal Society applauded his lectures. Oxford took him to its heart. To Samuel Johnson he was (this was after his repentence) the man "sought after most," and " the best man he ever knew." " I should as soon think of contradicting a bishop." declared Johnson. Odd copies of this amazing fraud may still be seen. They would make strange reading alongside Mr. Rutter's book. In one particular Psalmanasaar lied only in anticipation, turning into alleged history what would have been entirely true prophecy— took Formosa from China and gave it to Japan. Unsubdued and Truculent. | Between China's early rule, if rule it can be called, and Japan's gaining of Formosa by treaty in 1895 a troublous time lay. Mr. Rutter's telling of the Dutch settlement and stubborn resistance to Koxinga, the pirate's son v/Ko cherished a vigorous loyalty to a fallen Chinese dynasty, places the most thrilling events of that period in a vivid light. .. Amid all his impressions are recollections of that past. But it is with the policy of Japan that he is mainly concerned ; and in this his intimate knowledge of the East serves him in good stead. . Praise is given for much that has been done to make the island yield a rich revenue and to open ur new ©venues of production. Yet he has cne reiterated complaint, the courteous utterance of which cannot blunt its deep-cutting criticism: the Japanese have failed miserably to deal with the problem of " savages" the wild inhabitants of tho mountainous region who have not foregone head hunting and keep the authorities anxiously defensive.

Barbel wire entanglements, with "blockhouses at intervals, evidence this failure. They are a show of force, a force periodicallv exercised in frantio dashes into the hill-country in reprisal for the wild men's ravages. But Mr. ' Ruber's emphatic opinion, with which it is impossible to disagree as he buttresses it with faH and argument, is that the way to success does not lie that way. The abandonment of this method, full of immediate danger and without any ultimate certainty of success, for one designed to reconcile the turbulent- tribes to Japanese rule, is urged in detail.

The chief reason of the failure, Mr. B'utter says, is " lack of sympathy." When the Japanese first came to Formosa they were quite inexperienced in . matters of colonial administration. They were confronted with problems they had never been called upon to solve before. Most of these they learned to solve, simply because they were not too proud to learn from others how to solve them . . .

But there was one thing they did not learn, and that was how to deal with primitive people, whom oppression had rendered intractable and truculent. . .They never looked upon them as anything but a nuisance." Mr. Butter's frequent interviews with Japanese officials confirmed the opinion that " they seemed to have no faculty for making friends with the native tribes; the thing never seemed to enter their heads."

" Through Formosa," in this thesis as elsewhere in its illuminating pages, castß valuble sidelights on Japanese national character .and purpose.