Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan’s Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945 by Seiji Shirane (review)

Reviewed by: Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945 by Seiji Shirane Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang Seiji Shirane. Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. 266 pp. Hardcover (125. 00), softcover (24. 95), or e-book (open access). What role did Taiwan play in Japan's imperialist expansion? How did the governmentality of Japan's overseas empire develop in a mutually constitutive process that involved both the metropole and the colonies, as well as the colonizers and the colonized? Providing answers to these important questions, Seiji Shirane's Imperial Gateway is a welcome addition to a growing number of works that examine Japan's rule of Taiwan (1895–1945) and the broader "transnational" history of Japanese colonialism. The book underscores three main themes. The first is the intraimperial rivalries among Japanese state institutions: the colonial administration in Taiwan, the army, the navy, the Foreign Ministry, and the Colonial Ministry in Tokyo. The second theme is the agency of both Japanese colonial officials and the colonized Taiwanese. The Japanese tried to utilize Taiwanese as proxies for expansion into South China and Southeast Asia, a decision attributable to Japanese perceptions of Taiwanese linguistic skills and cultural affinities to the ethnic Chinese and indigenous populations residing in these regions. The third theme is the dynamic interactions between the colonizers and the colonized that shaped the regional networks of governance, trade, and flows of people in Japan's vast southern imperial realm. Based on multilingual archival work in Taiwan, Japan, China, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Imperial Gateway is meticulously researched and judiciously argued. Examples drawn from elsewhere in the Japanese empire (Korea, Manchuria, and occupied China) alongside contemporaneous examples from British, French, Dutch, and American imperialism in China, Asia, and other parts of the world offer comparative angles that add to the analytical depth and the persuasiveness of the book's central thesis. Central to Shirane's argument are two related concepts: first, Taiwan serving as a pivotal "imperial gateway" for Japan's southern expansion and, second, the colonized Taiwanese (Hoklo and Hakka Chinese and the indigenous peoples) assuming the role as End Page E-7 "gateway actors" (11). Shirane states, "The conventional focus on bilateral ties between the metropole and its colonies simply cannot account for Japanese rule in Taiwan, which was shaped as much by developments in neighboring South China and Southeast Asia as by the will of leaders in Tokyo. In turn, Taiwan served as a conduit for Sino-Japanese relations and Japanese engagement with Southeast Asia" (8). Japanese officials in Taiwan did not just carry out orders from Tokyo. They pursued their own expansionist agendas that were sometimes not in line with those of the home government and the military. The Taiwanese were subjected to colonial suppression and exploitation. However, they were also dynamic agents of self-interest who took advantage of the status and privileges of being "Japanese subjects" to engage in a wide range of activities overseas, activities that both advanced and impeded the goals of Japanese imperialism. The book contains six main chapters organized chronologically into two parts. Part 1 (chapters 1–3) examines developments before full-scale Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Part 2 (chapters 4–6) looks at wartime arrangements and transformations until the defeat of Japan in 1945. Chapter 1 and chapter 2 focus on the important role played by the Taiwanese in Japan's cross-strait expansion into coastal Fujian, especially in the treaty port of Xiamen. The colonial authorities in Taiwan not only capitalized on existing commercial networks and family ties between Fujian and Taiwan, they also selectively "naturalized" Fujian entrepreneurs as "Taiwanese subjects" to expand Japanese influence. Many Chinese elites in Fujian chose to "become Taiwanese. " The status provided them with tax exemptions and legal protections extended by the Japanese consulates in China (26). The Taiwanese in China were not just pawns of Japan. They engaged in gambling, prostitution, opium smuggling, and other illicit activities that damaged Japan's interests and reputation. Worse still, many overseas Taiwanese intellectuals engaged in. . .