A Long-Awaited Return to Taiwan
- bigeva0
- Jan 3
- 9 min read
— Black Water and the History That Was Not Taught —
Preface
I recently returned to Taiwan after a long absence.
I am an American, born in Japan, to Taiwanese parents.
I was born in Kobe and attended a Chinese-language school until the third grade. Around that time, my grandfather heard that the textbooks were becoming increasingly pro-communist and advised my parents to transfer me to a Japanese school.
At home, I was never taught Taiwanese. My parents spoke it to each other, so I could understand fragments, but I cannot speak it myself. They spoke Taiwanese and Japanese, while I was educated in Mandarin. Why was Taiwanese never taught to me? Was it to help me assimilate into Japanese society? Or was it simply safer not to speak it at that time? Only now do I find myself asking these questions.
My first visit to Taiwan was when I was three years old. My mother returned home with three young sons, barely a year apart in age. I do not remember whether we traveled by propeller plane or by ship. Today, when I see a small child on a long flight, I imagine how difficult that journey must have been for her.
When I was six, I traveled to Taiwan again with my father. On the return trip, the refueling stop in Okinawa left a lasting image in my mind: a long row of U.S. military aircraft visible through the window.
After that, I did not return to Taiwan for more than forty years. In my mid-forties, I visited again for work. I was an Asia sales director for an American robotics company, and Taiwan became a frequent destination. Even after starting my own business, I continued to travel there regularly for market development across Japan and Asia.
Now retired, I returned to Taiwan for the first time in nearly a decade—this time with my daughter and her husband, and a Japanese friend. It was a journey to reconnect with relatives and to pass a sense of continuity to the next generation.
My daughter’s husband is Dutch. I wanted him to understand the multiple backgrounds my daughter carries: Japan, where both her parents were raised, and Taiwan, my ancestral homeland. My daughter herself inherits Taiwanese roots from me and Chinese cultural heritage—Shanghai and Hong Kong—from her late mother. That she has built her life with a Dutch partner, and that we traveled together to Taiwan—a place once colonized by the Dutch—felt like more than coincidence.
Scenes from Taipei, Taichung, and Tainan
Since beginning my work as an artist, I find myself paying closer attention to architecture, museums, trees, and landscapes. Walking through Taipei, Taichung, and Tainan, historical names appear everywhere: Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen, Koxinga.
In Taipei, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. In Taichung, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and the newly opened Taichung City Art Museum. In Tainan, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, Hayashi Department Store, Koxinga Shrine, and Anping Fort.
The banyan trees in Anping were overwhelming. Their branches descend and take root again, creating the illusion of a forest formed from a single tree. It reminded me of history itself—what seems singular is often the accumulation of countless layers over time.
Walking through these places, I felt that Taiwan’s history was not simply something recorded in textbooks or timelines. It is etched into the land itself. The National Museum of Taiwan Literature was particularly striking.
Taiwan has lived through overlapping eras of rule: from prehistoric societies to Dutch colonization, the Zheng regime, Qing rule, Japanese colonial rule, and the postwar period. The museum building itself was once the Tainan Prefectural Hall under Japanese rule. During World War II, U.S. air raids destroyed its central roof, which was replaced with a simple flat structure for nearly half a century.
A building once symbolizing colonial authority has become a place that collects Taiwan’s own language, memories, and stories. A place that was taken has become a place that speaks. It felt like a quiet but deeply significant transformation—one that reflects how many eras this island has been made to carry.
Encountering Black Water
After visiting the 14th Taipei Biennial, Whispers on the Horizon, at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum—an exhibition that addressed Taiwan’s layered histories and multiple regimes—I traveled the next day to Taichung. There, at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, I encountered an exhibition titled Black Water.
This exhibition approached Taiwan’s history through the metaphor of “black water,” addressing colonial rule, division, repression, and forgetting. It examined both “black” and “white” histories—not as opposites, but as a structure in which white narratives have repeatedly concealed black ones.
Taiwan’s history—shaped by European colonial powers, Japanese rule, and postwar Chinese governance—has often been described as waves of inflow and outflow, domination and resistance. Black Water presents these movements as murky, unsettled currents.
Only after later organizing this history into a timeline did I fully grasp the depth of that metaphor.
Here, “black” refers to the shadows of colonialism, imperial expansion, state violence, the White Terror, erased memories, and voices never recorded.
“White,” on the other hand, represents legitimacy, modernization, law and order, nation-building, and narratives of stability and progress. Yet the very term “White Terror” reveals how whiteness—while appearing neutral or righteous—has often functioned to suppress and obscure darker truths.
Beginning with the 1947 February 28 Incident, decades of political repression under the Kuomintang regime were carried out in the name of anti-communism, order, and national security. What remained was fear and silence. Citizens were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and executed—not because of what they had done, but because they were suspected. Students, teachers, doctors, intellectuals, and ordinary civilians were all targeted. It is estimated that approximately 28,000 lives were lost.
The choice of water as metaphor is unavoidable when speaking of Taiwan. As an island, every force—people, power, ideas—has arrived and departed by sea. Water has no fixed shape, blurs boundaries, and yet leaves undeniable traces. In that sense, it reflects how Taiwan’s historical subjectivity itself has long been made ambiguous.
I was born in Japan to Taiwanese parents, yet I do not remember being taught Taiwanese history or language at home. It was rarely spoken of at home. Why was it absent for so long? That question became the starting point for this essay.
What Decame Clear When History Came into Focus
Taiwan’s modern history cannot be understood through a single narrative.
It has always been shaped by overlapping powers, shifting borders, and unresolved identities.
In 1971, when diplomatic recognition shifted during what later came to be called the Nixon Shock, this ambiguity suddenly became personal for me.
At the time, I held a Taiwanese passport. When I arrived in Japan, I was taken to a separate room at immigration. It was not that my country had disappeared overnight, but rather that it had become unclear how it should be treated. The authorities themselves did not know how to handle a passport that no longer fit neatly into existing categories.
That moment left a lasting impression.
It was not just a political issue between nations — it directly affected how individuals were seen, questioned, and classified.
As a result of this uncertainty, my parents grew increasingly anxious about Taiwan’s future. Eventually, my family chose to acquire Japanese citizenship. I was already living in the United States at the time, but this decision marked a turning point in how questions of nationality, belonging, and security entered our personal lives.
What made this experience even more complex was the broader international reality: the existence of two governments claiming continuity with “China,” and a global order that insisted on treating this as a single political question. Officially, there were not “two Chinas.” In practice, however, this unresolved tension shaped passports, borders, and lives.
What Was Never Taught: White and Black
Looking at the historical timeline today, I realize how layered and complex Taiwan’s past truly is—and how little of it was ever taught to us.
What was missing was not history itself, but the act of telling it.
For a long time, Taiwan’s history was taught as part of “Chinese history.” Taiwan was rarely presented as a subject in its own right. The “white” of the White Terror and the “black” of colonial rule were both left unexplained, unnamed, and largely invisible.
This was a time of strict control. There was no internet, limited access to information, and many histories were deliberately kept out of sight. Ironically, it is often scholars and students abroad—like my daughter’s generation—who are now uncovering and discussing these once-hidden narratives.
Koxinga is a revealing example. In Japan, he has long been known through literature and theater—most famously in The Battles of Coxinga—as a heroic figure seeking to restore the Ming dynasty. In these stories, Taiwan is not the center; it is merely a stage.
In Taiwan, however, Koxinga is remembered as the historical figure who ended Dutch rule and fundamentally changed the island’s course. The same person carries entirely different meanings, depending on whose story is being told.
What is rarely emphasized is that Koxinga’s mother was Japanese, born in Hirado.
This single fact quietly reveals something essential: Japan was not an external presence in Taiwan’s history, nor a participant that arrived later. From the very beginning, it was already part of the story.
Taiwan’s history has never belonged to a single culture or people. It has always existed between worlds—shaped by overlapping identities, migrations, and long silences.
Whether someone is remembered as a hero of literature or an actor of history depends entirely on who is doing the telling. The meaning of the same life can change completely. What was missing was not color — but the space between black and white.
That absence did not happen by chance. It was shaped, reinforced, and passed down through education.
Education and Generational Differences
In conversations with relatives and locals during this trip, I was struck by generational differences in historical awareness. Those who grew up under martial law learned not to speak openly about relations with China. Those educated after democratization identify clearly as Taiwanese.
This is not a conflict, but a difference shaped by education and lived experience.
Many relatives told me the same thing: as children, they were never taught Taiwan’s history. They learned Chinese history instead. That people born and raised on this island were not taught their own history was deeply unsettling.
Neither the “white” of the White Terror nor the “black” of colonial rule was systematically taught. What was missing was not history itself, but permission to speak it. Only in the past two decades has Taiwan’s history begun to be taught as Taiwan’s own.
A Small Discomfort with Language
I noticed Japanese language signs frequently in the streets, but rarely in museums or official spaces. It may be coincidence, but it felt as though language choice was carefully considered. Japan brought modernization, but it was also a colonial ruler. That ambivalence seems reflected even in linguistic decisions.
Taiwan Spoken From the Outside
In recent years, voices supporting Taiwan have become louder in Japan. Taiwan is often described as pro-Japanese, and stories are frequently told of how officials arriving from mainland China were surprised by Taiwan’s advanced infrastructure—water systems, electricity, railways—developed during Japanese rule.
At the same time, records show that the Kuomintang’s early rule involved severe repression and violence. It is not difficult to understand why historical memory might tilt toward Japan.
Still, much of the support voiced today seems driven less by Taiwan’s own will than by geopolitical positioning.
I do not wish to judge this as good or bad. But history shows that Taiwan has almost always been spoken for, rather than spoken with.
History, after all, is written by those who prevail. Each side has its own sense of justice, its own narrative. And when we look closely, some moments feel eerily familiar—as if history is repeating itself.
Conclusion
Taiwan’s history has often been a history of contestation. Not because Taiwan sought it, but because others viewed it that way. Yet it has also always been a place where cultures, languages, and peoples intersected.
Zheng Chenggong—born in Japan, with a Japanese mother, remembered as a Chinese hero—embodies the impossibility of telling Taiwan’s story through a single lens.
Walking this land with a family carrying Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, and Dutch backgrounds did not feel accidental. If Taiwan is to be spoken of in the future, I hope it will not be through the language of strategy or possession, but through the accumulated lives and memories that have shaped it.
Perhaps Taiwan’s future begins not by repainting its history, but by recognizing that its colors were always mixed.
For now, that is what I believe.
— Eimei
(A traveler with roots in Taiwan)
A brief historical timeline (for reference)
1624–1662 Dutch colonial presence in Taiwan
1662 Koxinga establishes a Han Chinese regime
1895–1945 Japanese rule
1949 The ROC government relocates to Taiwan
