title: History of Taiwan

text: The Mudan incident did not immediately cause any concern in Japan. A few officials knew of it by mid-1872 but it was not until April 1874 that it became an international concern. The repatriation procedure in 1872 was by the books and had been a regular affair for several centuries. From the 17th to 19th centuries, the Qing had settled 401 Ryukyuan shipwreck incidents both on the coast of mainland China and Taiwan. The Ryukyu Kingdom did not ask Japanese officials for help regarding the shipwreck. Instead its king, Shō Tai, sent a reward to Chinese officials in Fuzhou for the return of the 12 survivors.


title: History of Taiwan

text: On 30 August 1872, Sukenori Kabayama, a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, urged the Japanese government to invade Taiwan's tribal areas. In September, Japan dethroned the king of Ryukyu. On 9 October, Kabayama was ordered to conduct a survey in Taiwan. In 1873, Tanemomi Soejima was sent to communicate to the Qing court that if it did not extend its rule to the entirety of Taiwan, punish murderers, pay victims' families' compensation, and refused to talk about the matter, Japan would take care of the matter. The Foreign Minister Sakimitsu Yanagihara believed that the perpetrators of the Mudan incident were "all Taiwan savages beyond Chinese education and law." Japan justified sending an expedition to Taiwan through linguistic interpretation of "化外之民" to mean not part of China. Chinese diplomat Li Hongzhang rejected the claim that the murder of Ryukyuans had anything to do with Japan once he learned of Japan's aspirations. However, after communications between the Qing and Yanagihara, the Japanese took their explanation to mean that the Qing government had not opposed Japan's claims to sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands, disclaimed any jurisdiction over Aboriginal Taiwanese, and had indeed consented to Japan's expedition to Taiwan. In the eyes of Japan and the foreign advisor Le Gendre, the aborigines were "savages" who had no sovereign or international status, and therefore their territory was "terra nullius", free to be seized for Japan. The Qing argued that like in many other countries, the administration of the government did not stretch to every part of a country, similar to the Indian territories in the United States or aboriginal territories in Australia and New Zealand, a view Le Gendre also took before his employment by the Japanese.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Japan had already sent a student, Kurooka Yunojo, to conduct surveys in Taiwan in April 1873. Kabayama reached Tamsui on 23 August disguised as a merchant and surveyed eastern Taiwan. On 9 March 1874, the Taiwan Expedition prepared for its mission. The magistrate of the Taiwan Circuit learned of the impending Japanese invasion from a Hong Kong newspaper quoting a Japanese news item and reported it to Fujian authorities. Qing officials were taken by complete surprise due to the seemingly cordial relations with Japan at the time. On 17 May, Saigō Jūdō led the main force, 3,600 strong, aboard four warships in Nagasaki head to Tainan. On 6 June, the Japanese emperor issued a certificate condemning the Taiwan "savages" for killing our "nationals", the Ryukyuans killed in southeastern Taiwan.


title: History of Taiwan

text: On 3 May 1874, Kusei Fukushima delivered a note to Fujian-Zhejiang Governor Li Henian announcing that they were heading to savage territory to punish the culprits. On 7 May, a Chinese translator, Zhan Hansheng, was sent ashore to establish peaceful relations with tribes other than the Mudan and Kuskus. Afterwards American foreign officers and Fukushima landed at Checheng and Xinjie. They tried to use Baxian Bay at Qinggangpu as their barracks but heavy rain flooded the site a few days later so the Japanese moved to the southern end of Langqiao Bay on 11 May. They learned that Tanketok had died and invited the Shemali tribe for talks. Japanese scouts fanned out and were met by attacks by aborigines. On 21 May, a 12-member scout party was ambushed and two were wounded. The Japanese camp sent 250 reinforcements and searched the villages. The next day, Samata Sakuma encountered Mudan fighters, around 70 strong, occupying a commanding height. A twenty-men party climbed the cliffs and shot at the Mudan people, forcing them to flee. The Mudan lost 16 men including their tribal leader, Agulu. The Japanese lost seven with 30 injured.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The Japanese army split into three forces and headed in different directions, the south, north, and central routes. The south route army was ambushed by the Kuskus tribe and lost three soldiers. A counterattack defeated the Kuskus fighter and the Japanese burnt their villages. The central route was attacked by Mudan and two or three soldiers were wounded. The Japanese burnt their villages. The north route attacked the Nünai village. On 3 June, they burnt all the villages that had been occupied. On 1 July, the new leader of the Mudan tribe and the chief of Kuskus admitted defeat and promised not to harm shipwrecked castaways. Surrendered aborigines were given Japanese flags to fly over their villages. They were viewed as a symbol of peace with Japan and protection from rival tribes by the aborigines. To the Japanese, it was a symbol of jurisdiction over the aborigines. Chinese forces arrived on 17 June and a report by Fujian Administration Commissioner reported that all 56 representatives of the tribes except for Mudan, Zhongshe and Linai, who were not present due to fleeing from the Japanese, complained about Japanese bullying.


title: History of Taiwan

text: A Chinese representative, Pan Wei, met with Saigō four times between 22 and 26 June but nothing came of it. The Japanese settled in and established large camps with no intention of withdrawing, but in August and September 600 soldiers fell ill. They started dying 15 a day. The death toll rose to 561. Toshimichi Okubo arrived in Beijing on 10 September and seven negotiating sessions occurred over a month long period. The Western Powers pressured China not to cause bloodshed with Japan as it would negatively impact the coastal trade. The resulting Peking Agreement was signed on 30 October. Japan gained the recognition of Ryukyu as its vassal and an indemnity payment of 500,000 taels. Japanese troops withdrew from Taiwan on 3 December.


title: History of Taiwan

text: During the Sino-French War, the French invaded Taiwan during the Keelung Campaign in 1884. The Chinese had already been aware of French plans to attack Taiwan and sent Liu Mingchuan, the governor of Fujian, to strengthen Taiwan's defenses on 16 July. On 5 August 1884, Sébastien Lespès bombarded Keelung's harbor and destroyed the gun placements. The next day, the French attempted to take Keelung but failed to defeat the larger Chinese force led by Liu Mingchuan and were forced to withdraw to their ships. On 1 October, Amédée Courbet landed with 2,250 French forces and defeated a smaller Chinese force, though equipped with Krupp guns, capturing Keelung. French efforts to capture Tamsui failed. The port of Tamsui had been filled with debris by the Chinese and the French were unable to sustain a landing. The French shelled Tamsui, destroying not only the forts but also foreign buildings. Some 800 French troops landed on Shalin beach near Tamsui but they were repelled by Chinese forces.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The French imposed a blockade Taiwan from 23 October 1884 until April 1885 but the execution was not completely effective. Foreign vessels were barred from docking in blockaded harbors. Some believed that the blockade was almost directed at the British. The French did not have enough ships to impose a complete blockade on Taiwan and only concentrated on the major ports, leaving smaller Chinese vessels to enter lesser ports with troops and supplies. The first Chinese relief effort, a fleet of five ships, was repelled by the French with two ships sunk. On 21 December 1884, five battalions in southern China were ordered to reinforce Taiwan. French ships around mainland China's coast attacked any junk they could find and captured its occupants to be shipped to Keelung for constructing defensive works. However the blockade failed to stop Chinese junks from reaching Taiwan. For every junk the French captured, another five junks arrived with supplies at Takau and Anping. The immediate effect of the blockade was a sharp in decline of legal trade and income.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In late January 1885, Chinese forces suffered a serious defeat around Keelung. Although the French captured Keelung they were unable to move beyond its perimeters. In March the French tried to take Tamsui again and failed. At sea, the French bombarded Penghu on 28 March. Penghu surrendered on 31 March but many of the French soon grew ill and 1,100 soldiers and later 600 more were debilitated. The French commander died from illness in Penghu.


title: History of Taiwan

text: An agreement was reached on 15 April 1885 and an end to hostilities was announced. The French evacuation from Keelung was completed on 21 June 1885 and Penghu remained under Chinese control.


title: History of Taiwan

text: On the eve of the First Sino-Japanese War, about 45 percent of the island was administered under direct Qing administration while the remaining was lightly populated by Aborigines. In a population of around 2.5 million, about 2.3 million were Han Chinese and the remaining two hundred thousand were classified as members of various indigenous tribes.


title: History of Taiwan

text: As part of the settlement for losing the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing empire ceded the islands of Taiwan and Penghu to Japan on April 17, 1895, according to the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The loss of Taiwan would become a rallying point for the Chinese nationalist movement in the years that followed.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The acquisition of Taiwan by Japan was the result of Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi's "southern strategy" adopted during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95 and the following diplomacy in the spring of 1895. Itō and Mutsu Munemitsu, the minister of foreign affairs, stipulated that Penghu and Taiwan must be ceded by Qing China to Japan. These conditions and other Japanese demands were met during the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki on 17 April 1895. Taiwan and Penghu were formally transferred to Japan on 2 June. Kabayama Sukenori was appointed governor-general of Taiwan.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The period of Japanese rule in Taiwan has been divided into three periods under which different policies were prevalent: military suppression (1895–1915), : assimilation (1915–37), and : Japanization (1937–45). A separate policy for aborigines was implemented.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The matter of assimilation, , was a primary issue in Taiwan under Japanese rule. Assimilation was tied to the admonition "impartiality and equal favor" ("isshi dōjin") for all imperial subjects under the Japanese Emperor. Conceptually this colonial ideal conveyed the idea that metropolitan Japanese ("naichijin") would impart their superior culture to the subordinate islanders ("hontōjin"), who would share the common benefits of "civilization and enlightenment". Assimilation seemed plausible to educated elites in Japan because it was common belief that Han Taiwanese shared cultural and racial similarities with the Japanese.


title: History of Taiwan

text: While the government deliberated on assimilation policies in Tokyo, the colonial authorities encountered violent opposition in much of Taiwan. Five months of sustained warfare occurred after the invasion of Taiwan in 1895 and partisan attacks continued until 1902. For the first two years the colonial authority relied mainly on military force and local pacification efforts. Disorder and panic were prevalent in Taiwan after Penghu was seized by Japan in March 1895. On 20 May, Qing officials were ordered to leave their posts. General mayhem and destruction ensued in the following months.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Japanese forces landed on the coast of Keelung on 29 May and Tamsui's harbor was bombarded. Remnant Qing units and Guangdong irregulars briefly fought against Japanese forces in the north. After the fall of Taipei on 7 June, local militia and partisan bands continued the resistance. In the south, a small Black Flag force led by Liu Yongfu delayed Japanese landings. Governor Tang Jingsong attempted to carry out anti-Japanese resistance efforts as the Republic of Formosa, however he still professed to be a Qing loyalist. The declaration of a republic was, according to Tang, to delay the Japanese so that Western powers might be compelled to defend Taiwan. The plan quickly turned to chaos as the Green Standard Army and Yue soldiers from Guangxi took to looting and pillaging Taiwan. Given the choice between chaos at the hands of bandits or submission to the Japanese, Taipei's gentry elite sent Koo Hsien-jung to Keelung to invite the advancing Japanese forces to proceed to Taipei and restore order. The Republic, established on 25 May, disappeared 12 days later when its leaders left for the mainland. Liu Yongfu formed a temporary government in Tainan but escaped to the mainland as well as Japanese forces closed in. Between 200,000 and 300,000 people fled Taiwan in 1895. Chinese residents in Taiwan were given the option of selling their property and leaving by May 1897, or become Japanese citizens. From 1895 to 1897, an estimated 6,400 people, mostly gentry elites, sold their property and left Taiwan. The vast majority did not have the means or will to leave.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Upon Tainan's surrender, Kabayama declared Taiwan pacified, however his proclamation was premature. Armed resistance by Hakka villagers broke out in the south. A series of prolonged partisan attacks, led by "local bandits" or "rebels", lasted throughout the next seven years. After 1897, uprisings by Chinese nationalists were commonplace. , a member of the Tongmenghui organization preceding the Kuomintang, was arrested and executed along with two hundred of his comrades in 1913. Japanese reprisals were often more brutal than the guerilla attacks staged by the rebels. In June 1896, 6,000 Taiwanese were slaughtered in the Yunlin Massacre. From 1898 to 1902, some 12,000 "bandit-rebels" were killed in addition to the 6,000-14,000 killed in the initial resistance war of 1895. During the conflict, 5,300 Japanese were killed or wounded, and 27,000 were hospitalized.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Rebellions were often caused by a combination of unequal colonial policies on local elites and extant millenarian beliefs of the local Taiwanese and plains Aborigines. Ideologies of resistance drew on different ideals such as Taishō democracy, Chinese nationalism, and nascent Taiwanese self-determination. Support for resistance was partly class-based and many of the wealthy Han people in Taiwan preferred the order of colonial rule to the lawlessness of insurrection.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Major armed resistance was largely crushed by 1902 but minor rebellions started occurring again in 1907, such as the Beipu uprising by Hakka and Saisiyat people in 1907, Luo Fuxing in 1913 and the Tapani Incident of 1915. The Beipu uprising occurred on 14 November 1907 when a group of Hakka insurgents killed 57 Japanese officers and members of their family. In the following reprisal, 100 Hakka men and boys were killed in the village of Neidaping. Luo Fuxing was an overseas Taiwanese Hakka involved with the Tongmenghui. He planned to organize a rebellion against the Japanese with 500 fighters, resulting in the execution of more than 1,000 Taiwanese by Japanese police. Luo was killed on 3 March 1914. In 1915, Yu Qingfang organized a religious group that openly challenged Japanese authority. In what is known as the Tapani incident, 1,413 members of Yu's religious group were captured. Yu and 200 of his followers were executed. After the Tapani rebels were defeated, Andō Teibi ordered Tainan's Second Garrison to retaliate through massacre. Military police in Tapani and Jiasian announced that they would pardon any anti-Japanese militants and that those who had fled into the mountains should return to their village. Once they returned, the villagers were told to line up in a field, dig holes, and were then executed by firearm. According to oral tradition, at least 5,000-6,000 people died in this incident.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Nonviolent means of resistance such as the Taiwanese Cultural Association (TCA), founded by Chiang Wei-shui in 1921, continued to exist after most violent means were exhausted. Chiang was born in Yilan in 1891 and was raised on a Confucian education paid by a father who identified as a Han Chinese. In 1905, Chiang started attending Japanese elementary school. At the age of 20, he was admitted to Taiwan Sotokufu Medical School and in his first year of college, Chiang joined the Taiwan Branch of the "Chinese United Alliance" founded by Sun Yat-sen. The TCA's anthem, composed by Chiang, promoted friendship between China and Japan, Han and Japanese, and peace between Asians and white people. He saw Taiwanese people as Japanese nationals of Han Chinese ethnicity and wished to position the TCA as an intermediary between China and Japan. The TCA also aimed to "adopt a stance of national self-determination, enacting the enlightenment of the Islanders, and seeking legal extension of civil rights." He told the Japanese authorities that the TCA was not a political movement and would not engage in politics.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Statements aspiring to self determination and Taiwan belonging to the Taiwanese were possible at the time due to the relatively progressive era of Taishō Democracy. At the time most Taiwanese intellectuals did not wish for Taiwan to be an extension of Japan. "Taiwan is Taiwan people's Taiwan" became a common position for all anti-Japanese groups for the next decade. In December 1920, Lin Hsien-tang and 178 Taiwanese residents filed a petition to Tokyo seeking self-determination. It was rejected.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The TCA had over 1,000 members composed of intellectuals, landlords, public school graduates, medical practitioners, and the gentry class. TCA branches were established across Taiwan except in indigenous areas. They gave cultural lecture tours and taught Classical Chinese as well as other more modern subjects. The TCA sought to promote vernacular Chinese language. Cultural Lecture Tours were treated as a festivity, using firecrackers traditionally used to ward off evil as a challenge against Japanese authority. If any criticism of Japan was heard, the police immediately ordered the speaker to step down. In 1923 the TCA co-founded "Taiwan People's News" which was published in Tokyo and then shipped to Taiwan. It was subjected to severe censorship by Japanese authorities. As many as seven or eight issues were banned. Chiang and others applied to set up an "Alliance to Urge for a Taiwan Parliament." It was deemed legal in Tokyo but illegal in Taiwan. In 1923, 99 Alliance members were arrested and 18 were tried in court. Chiang was forced to defend against the charge of "asserting 'Taiwan has 3.6 million "Zhonghua Minzu/Han" People' in petition leaflets." Thirteen were convicted: 6 fined, 7 imprisoned (including Chiang). Chiang was imprisoned more than ten times.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The TCA split in 1927 to form the New TCA and the Taiwanese People's Party. The TCA had been influenced by communist ideals resulting in Chiang and Lin's departure to form the Taiwan People's Party (TPP). The New TCA later became a subsidiary of the Taiwanese Communist Party, founded in Shanghai in 1928, and the only organization advocating for Taiwan's independence. The TPP's flag was designed by Chiang and drew on the Republic of China's flag for inspiration. The TPP brought forth issues in Taiwan such as Japanese opium trafficking, the inhumane treatment of the Seediq people, and revealed the colonial authority's use of poisonous gas. In February 1931, the TPP was terminated. Chiang died from typhoid on 23 August.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In 1914, Itagaki Taisuke briefly led a Taiwan assimilation movement as a response to appeals from influential Taiwanese spokesmen such as the Wufeng Lin family and Lin Hsien-t'ang and his cousin. Wealthy Taiwanese made donations to the movement. In December 1914, Itagaki formally inaugurated the Taiwan Dōkakai, an assimilation society. Within a week, over 3,000 Taiwanese and 45 Japanese residents joined the society. After Itagaki left later that month, leaders of the society were arrested and its Taiwanese members detained or harassed. In January 1915, the Taiwan Dōkakai was disbanded.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Japanese colonial policy sought to strictly segregate the Japanese and Taiwanese population until 1922. Taiwanese students who moved to Japan for their studies were able to associate more freely with Japanese and took to Japanese ways more readily than their island counterparts. However full assimilation was rare. Even acculturated Taiwanese seem to have become more aware of their distinctiveness and island background while living in Japan.


title: History of Taiwan

text: An attempt to fully Japanize the Taiwanese people was made during the "kōminka" period (1937–45). The reasoning was that only as fully assimilated subjects could Taiwan's inhabitants fully commit to Japan's war and national aspirations. The "kōminka" movement was generally unsuccessful and few Taiwanese became "true Japanese" due to the short time period and large population. In terms of acculturation under controlled circumstances, it can be considered relatively effective.


title: History of Taiwan

text: A system of elementary common schools ("kōgakkō") was introduced. These elementary schools taught Japanese language and culture, Classical Chinese, Confucian ethnics, and practical subjects like science. Classical Chinese was included as part of the effort to win over Taiwanese upper-class parents, but the emphasis was on Japanese language and ethics. These government schools served a small percentage of the Taiwanese school-age population while Japanese children attended their own separate primary schools ("shōgakkō"). Few Taiwanese attended secondary school or were able to enter medical college. Due to limited access to government educational institutions, a segment of the population continued to enroll in private schools similar to the Qing era. Most boys attended Chinese schools ("shobo") while a smaller portion of males and females received training at religious schools (Dominican and Presbyterian). Universal education was deemed undesirable during the early years since the assimilation of Han Taiwanese seemed unlikely. Elementary education offered both moral and scientific education to those Taiwanese who could afford it. The hope was that through selective education of the brightest Taiwanese, a new generation of Taiwanese leaders responsive to reform and modernization would emerge.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Many of the gentry class had mixed feelings about modernization and cultural change, especially the kind advanced by government education. The gentry was urged to promote the "new learning", a fusion of Neo-Confucianism and Meiji-style education, however those invested in the Chinese education style seemed resentful of the proposed merging. A younger generation of Taiwanese more susceptible to modernization and change started participating in community affairs in the 1910s. Many were concerned about obtaining modern educational facilities and the discrimination they faced in obtaining spots at the few government schools. Local leaders in Taichung began campaigning for the inauguration of the Taichū Middle School but faced opposition from Japanese officials reluctant to authorize a middle school for Taiwanese males.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In 1922, an integrated school system was introduced in which common and primary schools were opened to both Taiwanese and Japanese based on their background in spoken Japanese. Elementary education was divided between primary schools for Japanese speakers and public schools for Taiwanese speakers. Since few Taiwanese children could speak fluent Japanese, in practice only the children of very wealthy Taiwanese families with close ties to Japanese settlers were allowed study alongside Japanese children. The number of Taiwanese at formerly Japanese-only elementary schools was limited to 10 percent. Japanese children also attended kindergarten, during which they were segregated from Taiwanese children. In one instance a Japanese-speaking child was put in the Taiwanese group with the expectation that they would learn Japanese from her, but the experiment failed and the Japanese-speaking child learned Taiwanese instead. The competitive situation in Taiwan made some Taiwanese seek secondary education and opportunities in Japan and Manchukuo rather than Taiwan. In 1943, primary education became compulsory, and by the next year nearly three out of four children were enrolled in primary school. Taiwanese also studied in Japan. By 1922 at least 2,000 Taiwanese were enrolled in educational institutions in metropolitan Japan. The number increased to 7,000 by 1942.


title: History of Taiwan

text: As Japan embarked on full-scale war with China in 1937, it implemented the ""kōminka"" imperial Japanization project to instill the "Japanese Spirit" in Taiwanese residents, and ensure the Taiwanese would remain imperial subjects subjects ("kōmin") of the Japanese Emperor rather than support a Chinese victory. The goal was to make sure the Taiwanese people did not develop a sense of "their national identity, pride, culture, language, religion, and customs". Although the stated goal was to assimilate the Taiwanese, in practice the "Kōminka hōkōkai" organization that formed segregated the Japanese into their own separate block units, despite co-opting Taiwanese leaders. The organization was responsible for increasing war propaganda, donation drives, and regimenting Taiwanese life during the war.


title: History of Taiwan

text: As part of the "kōminka" policies, Chinese language sections in newspapers and Classical Chinese in the school curriculum were removed in April 1937. China and Taiwan's history were also erased from the educational curriculum. Chinese language use was discouraged, which reportedly increased the percentage of Japanese speakers among the Taiwanese, but the effectiveness of this policy is uncertain. Even some members of model "national language" families from well-educated Taiwanese households failed to learn Japanese to a conversational level. A name-changing campaign was launched in 1940 to replace Chinese names with Japanese ones. Seven percent of the Taiwanese had done so by the end of the war. Characteristics of Taiwanese culture considered "un-Japanese" or undesirable were to be replaced with Japanese ones. Taiwanese opera, puppet plays, fireworks, and burning gold and silver paper foil at temples were banned. Chinese clothing, betel-nut chewing, and noisiness were discouraged in public. The Taiwanese were encouraged to pray at Shinto shrines and expected to have domestic altars to worship paper amulets sent from Japan. Some officials were ordered to remove religious idols and artifacts from native places of worship.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The Japanese administration followed the Qing classification of aborigines into acculturated, ("shufan"), semi-acculturated ("huafan"), and non-acculturated aborigines ("shengfan"). Acculturated aborigines were treated the same as Chinese people and lost their aboriginal status. Han Chinese and "shufan" were both treated as natives of Taiwan by the Japanese. Below them were the semi-acculturated and non-acculturated "barbarians" who lived outside normal administrative units and upon whom government laws did not apply. According to the "Sōtokufu" (Office of the Governor-General), although the mountain aborigines were technically humans in biological and social terms, they were animals under international law.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The Musha Incident of 1930 which resulted in the death of 900 aborigines caused the government to take a more conciliatory stance towards the aborigines, and during World War 2, the government tried to assimilate them as loyal subjects.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The "Sōtokufu" claimed all unreclaimed and forest land in Taiwan as government property. New use of forest land was forbidden. In October 1895, the government declared that these areas belonged to the government unless claimants could provide hard documentation or evidence of ownership. No investigation into the validity of titles or survey of land were conducted until 1911. The Japanese authority denied the rights of aborigines to their property, land, and anything on the land. Although the Japanese government did not control aboriginal land directly prior to military occupation, the Han and acculturated aborigines were forbidden from any contractual relationships with aborigines. The aborigines were living on government land but did not submit to government authority, and as they did not have political organization, they could not enjoy property ownership. The acculturated aborigines also lost their rent holder rights under the new property laws although they were able to sell them. Some reportedly welcomed the sale of rent rights because they had difficulty collecting rent.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In practice, the early years of Japanese rule were spent fighting mostly Chinese insurgents and the government took on a more conciliatory approach to the aborigines. Starting in 1903, the government implemented stricter and more coercive policies. It expanded the guard lines, previously the settler-aboriginal boundary, to restrict the aborigines' living space. By 1904 the guard lines had increased by 80 km from the end of Qing rule. Sakuma Samata launched a five-year plan for aboriginal management, which saw attacks against the aborigines and landmines and electrified fences used to force them into submission. Electrified fences were no longer necessary by 1924 due to the overwhelming government advantage.


title: History of Taiwan

text: After subjugating the mountain aborigines, a small portion of land was set aside for aboriginal use. From 1919 to 1934, aborigines were relocated to areas that would not impede forest development. At first they were given a small compensation for land use but this was discontinued later on and the aborigines were forced to relinquish all claims to their land. In 1928, it was decided that each aborigine would be allotted three hectares of reserve land. Some of the allotted land was taken for forest enterprises while it was discovered that the aboriginal population was bigger than the estimated 80,000. The size of the allotted land was reduced but they were not adhered to anyways. In 1930, the government relocated aborigines to the foothills and invested in agricultural infrastructure to turn them into subsistence farmers. They were given less than half the originally promised land, amounting to one-eighth of their ancestral lands.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Aboriginal resistance to the heavy-handed Japanese policies of acculturation and pacification lasted up until the early 1930s. By 1903, indigenous rebellions had resulted in the deaths of 1,900 Japanese in 1,132 incidents. In 1911 a large military force invaded Taiwan's mountainous areas to gain access to timber resources. By 1915, many aboriginal villages had been destroyed. The Atayal and Bunun resisted the hardest against colonization. The last major aboriginal rebellion, the Musha (Wushe) Uprising occurred on 27 October 1930 when the Seediq people, angry over their treatment while laboring in camphor extraction, launched the last headhunting party. Groups of Seediq warriors led by Mona Rudao attacked policed stations and the Musha Public School. Approximately 350 students, 134 Japanese, and 2 Han Chinese dressed in Japanese garbs were killed in the attack. The uprising was crushed by 2,000–3,000 Japanese troops and aboriginal auxiliaries with the help of poison gas. The armed conflict ended in December when the Seediq leaders committed suicide. According to Japanese colonial records, 564 Seediq warriors surrendered and 644 were killed or committed suicide. According to a 1933-year book, wounded people in the war against the aboriginals numbered around 4,160, with 4,422 civilians dead and 2,660 military personnel killed.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Japanese commoners started arriving in Taiwan in April 1896. Japanese migrants were encouraged to move to Taiwan because it was considered the most effective way of integrating Taiwan into the Japanese Empire. Few Japanese moved to Taiwan during the colony's early years due to poor infrastructure, instability, and fear of disease. Later on as more Japanese settled in Taiwan, some settlers came to view the island as their homeland rather than Japan. There was concern that Japanese children born in Taiwan, under its tropical climate, would not be able to understand Japan. In the 1910s, primary schools conducted trips to Japan to nurture their Japanese identity and to prevent Taiwanization. Out of necessity, Japanese police officers were encouraged to learn the local variants of Minnan and the Guangdong dialect of Hakka. There were language examinations for police officers to receive allowances and promotions. By the late 1930s, Japanese people made up about 5.4 percent of Taiwan's total population but owned 20-25 percent of the cultivated land which was also of higher quality. They also owned the majority of large land holdings. The Japanese government assisted them in acquiring land and coerced Chinese land owners to sell to Japanese enterprises. Japanese sugar companies owned 8.2 percent of the arable land.


title: History of Taiwan

text: At the end of the Second World War, there were almost 350,000 Japanese civilians living in Taiwan. They were designated as Overseas Japanese ("Nikkyō") or as Overseas Ryukyuans ("Ryūkyō"). Offspring of intermarriage were considered Japanese if their Taiwanese mother chose Japanese citizenship or if their Taiwanese father did not apply for ROC citizenship. As many as half the Japanese who left Taiwan after 1945 were born in Taiwan. The Taiwanese did not engage in widespread acts of revenge or push for their immediate removal, although they quickly seized or attempted to occupy property they believed were unfairly obtained in previous decades. Japanese assets were collected and the Nationalist government retained most of the properties for government use, to the consternation of the Taiwanese. Theft and acts of violence did occur, however this has been attributed to the pressure of wartime policies. Chen Yi, who was in charge of Taiwan, removed Japanese bureaucrats and police officers from their posts, resulting in unaccustomed economic hardship for Japanese citizens. Their hardship in Taiwan was also met by news of hardship in Japan. A survey found that 180,000 Japanese civilians wished to leave for Japan while 140,000 wished to stay. An order for the deportation of Japanese civilians was issued in January 1946. From February to May, the vast majority of Japanese left Taiwan and arrived in Japan without much trouble. Overseas Ryukyuans were ordered to assist the deportation process by building camps and work as porters for the Overseas Japanese. Each person was allowed to leave with two pieces of luggage and 1,000 yen. The Japanese and Ryukyuans remaining in Taiwan by the end of April did so at the behest of the government. Their children attended Japanese schools to prepare for life in Japan.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Under the Japanese colonial government, Taiwan was introduced to a unified system of weights and measures, a centralized bank, education facilities to increase skilled labor, farmers' associations, and other institutions. An island wide system of transportation and communications as well as facilities for travel between Japan and Taiwan were developed. Construction of large scale irrigation facilities and power plants followed. Agricultural development was the primary emphasis of Japanese colonization in Taiwan. The objective was for Taiwan to provide Japan with food and raw materials. Fertilizer and production facilities were imported from Japan. Industrial farming, electric power, chemical industries, aluminum, steel, machinery, and shipbuilding facilities were set up. Textile and paper industries were developed near the end of Japanese rule for self-sufficiency. All modern and large enterprises were owned by the Japanese.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The Bank of Taiwan was established in 1899 to encourage Japanese private sectors, including Mitsubishi and the Mitsui Group, to invest in Taiwan. In 1900, the third Governor-General of Taiwan passed a budget which initiated the building of Taiwan's railroad system from Kīrun (Keelung) to Takao (Kaohsiung). By 1905 the island had electric power supplied by water power in Nichigetsu Lake (Sun Moon Lake), and in subsequent years Taiwan was considered the second-most developed region of East Asia (after Japan). By 1905, Taiwan was financially self-sufficient and had been weaned off of subsidies from Japan's central government.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Under the governor Shimpei Goto's rule, many major public works projects were completed. The Taiwan rail system connecting the south and the north and the modernizations of Kīrun and Takao ports were completed to facilitate transport and shipping of raw material and agricultural products. Exports increased by fourfold. Fifty-five percent of agricultural land was covered by dam-supported irrigation systems. Food production had increased fourfold and sugar cane production had increased 15-fold between 1895 and 1925 and Taiwan became a major foodbasket serving Japan's industrial economy. A health care system was widely established and infectious diseases were almost completely eradicated. The average lifespan for a Taiwanese resident would become 60 years by 1945.


title: History of Taiwan

text: After 1939, the war in China and eventually other places started having a deleterious effect on Taiwan's agricultural output as military conflict took up all of Japan's resources. Taiwanese real GDP per capita peaked in 1942 at $1,522 and declined to $693 by 1944. War-time bombing of Taiwan caused significant damage to many cities and harbors in Taiwan. The railways, plants, and other production facilities were either badly damaged or destroyed. Only 40 percent of the railroads were usable and over 200 factories were bombed, most of them housing Taiwan's vital industries. Of Taiwan's four electrical power plants, three were destroyed. Loss of major industrial facilities is estimated at $506 million, or 42 percent of fixed manufacturing assets. Damage to agriculture was relatively contained in comparison but most developments came to a halt and irrigation facilities were abandoned. Since all key positions were held by Japanese, their departure resulted in the loss of 20,000 technicians and 10,000 professional workers, leaving Taiwan with a severe lack of trained personnel. Inflation was rampant as a result of the war and worsened later due to economic integration with China because China was also experiencing high inflation. Taiwanese industrial output recovered to 38 percent of its 1937 level by 1947 and recovery to pre-war standards of living did not occur until the 1960s.


title: History of Taiwan

text: As Japan embarked on full-scale war with China in 1937, it expanded Taiwan's industrial capacity to manufacture war material. By 1939, industrial production had exceeded agricultural production in Taiwan. The Imperial Japanese Navy operated heavily out of Taiwan. The "South Strike Group" was based out of the Taihoku Imperial University (now National Taiwan University) in Taiwan. Taiwan was used as a launchpad for the invasion of Guangdong in late 1938 and for the occupation of Hainan in February 1939. A joint planning and logistical center was established in Taiwan to assist Japan's southward advance after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Taiwan served as a base for Japanese naval and air attacks on the island Luzon until the surrender of the Philippines in May 1942. It also served as a rear staging ground for further attacks on Myanmar. As the war turned against Japan in 1943, Taiwan suffered due to Allied submarine attacks on Japanese shipping, and the Japanese administration prepared to be cut off from Japan. In the latter part of 1944, Taiwan's industries, ports, and military facilities were bombed in U.S. air raids. An estimated 16,000-30,000 civilians died from the bombing. By 1945, Taiwan was isolated from Japan and its government prepared to defend against an expected invasion.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Starting in July 1937, Taiwanese began to play a role on the battlefield, initially as civilian interpreters, transporters, laborers, and other noncombatant positions. Taiwanese people were not recruited for combat until late in the war due to Japanese suspicions of Taiwanese loyalty. In 1942, the Special Volunteer System was implemented, allowing even aborigines to be recruited as part of the Takasago Volunteer Army. The Imperial Navy Special Volunteer System was implemented in July 1943 and military conscription in 1945. From 1937 to 1945, over 207,000 Taiwanese were employed by the Japanese military: 126,000 civilian employees and 80,000 servicemen. Among them, 33,000 were sent to mainland China and 61,000 to the Philippines. Roughly 50,000 went missing in action or died as war casualties, another 2,000 were disabled, 21 were executed for war crimes, and 147 were sentenced to imprisonment for two or three years. Survivors faced difficulties in both mainland China and Taiwan after the war.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Some Taiwanese ex-Japanese soldiers claim they were coerced and did not choose to join the army. Wang Qinghuai was a farmer at the time of the war and said there was no way to refuse recruitment. Others, such as Xie Yong, were in vocational school at the time and their Japanese military instructor told them that the "nation and emperor needed us." They went through a short period of training and became military aviation machinists. Lin Xinglin was recruited into the army while living in Japan but was given a civilian position later once they found out he was not Japanese. Some were incentivized by the attractive salary, which was double what they could earn in Taiwan. Some joined out of patriotism to Japan and felt that working in the military was an honor. One Liu Chengqing who enrolled in 1944 as a civilian employee said in an August 1995 interview that he felt empowered by the "Yamato Spirit."


title: History of Taiwan

text: Most Taiwanese experienced a short service period due to their late recruitment in the war. Many were assigned to civilian positions rather than combat positions. Racial discrimination from Japanese soldiers towards the Taiwanese was commonplace but there were also rare occasions of camaraderie. Lu Qinglin joined the Japanese Navy in May 1945 but was demoted to a civilian employee once they found out he was Taiwanese. He then became a clerk because Taiwanese could not work in a lab. However Lu befriended a Major Suzuki who treated him like a foster son. Some faced moments of greater equality during their time in the military. Chen Chunqing stated that "Facing the bullets of the enemy, you and the Japanese are equal." He was motivated by his desire to fight the British and Americans but was sent to China after a month of training. There he became disillusioned and tried to leave to join other Taiwanese who had defected to the Chinese side, although his effort was fruitless. Chen Genfa was called "chankoro" (Qing slave) by a Japanese soldier, who was then beat up by Japanese MPs once Chen said he was ready to die for the nation and emperor. Some of the Taiwanese ex-Japanese soldiers had ambivalent feelings upon Japan's defeat and could not imagine what liberation from Japan and what Taiwan's return to China would look like. One Zhou Yichun recalled surrender leaflets dropped by U.S. planes stating that Taiwan would return to China and Korea was going to be independent. He said, "I had striven hard to be a loyal subject of the emperor, and today I discovered something that I remembered my grandfather telling me—that I was a Chinese."


title: History of Taiwan

text: After Japan's surrender, the Taiwanese ex-Japanese soldiers were abandoned by Japan and left to their own devices. No transportation back to Taiwan or Japan was provided. Many of them met with difficulties in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan. In mainland China they faced anti-rightist campaigns which accused them of being part of the colonial forces. In Taiwan they experienced similar circumstances as well as accusations of taking part in the February 28 incident. In Japan they were faced with ambivalence. An organization of Taiwanese ex-Japanese soldiers tried to get the Japanese government to pay their unpaid wages several decades later. They failed.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Between 1,000 and 2,000 Taiwanese women were part of the comfort women system. Aboriginal women served Japanese military personnel in the mountainous region of Taiwan. They were first recruited as housecleaning and laundry workers for soldiers, then they were coerced into providing sex. They were gang-raped and served as comfort women in the evening hours. Han Taiwanese women from low income families were also part of the comfort women system. Some were pressured into it by financial reasons while others were sold by their families. However some women from well to do families also ended up as comfort women. More than half of the young women were minors with some as young as 14. Very few women who were sent overseas understood what the true purpose of their journey was. Some of the women believed they would be serving as nurses in the Japanese military prior to becoming comfort women. Taiwanese women were told to provide sexual services to the Japanese military "in the name of patriotism to the country." By 1940, brothels were set up in Taiwan to service Japanese males.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In 1942, after the United States entered the war against Japan and on the side of China, the Chinese government under the KMT renounced all treaties signed with Japan before that date and made Taiwan's return to China (as with Manchuria, ruled as the Japanese wartime puppet state of "Manchukuo") one of the wartime objectives. In the Cairo Declaration of 1943, the Allied Powers declared the return of Taiwan (including the Pescadores) to the Republic of China as one of several Allied demands. The Cairo Declaration was never signed or ratified and is not legally binding. In 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered with the signing of the instrument of surrender and ended its rule in Taiwan as the territory was put under the administrative control of the Republic of China government in 1945 by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The Office of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers ordered Japanese forces in China and Taiwan to surrender to Chiang Kai-shek. On 25 October 1945, Governor-General Rikichi Andō handed over the administration of Taiwan and the Penghu islands to the head of the Taiwan Investigation Commission, Chen Yi. On 26 October, the government of the Republic of China declared that Taiwan had become a province of China. The Allied Powers, on the other hand, did not recognize the unilateral declaration of annexation of Taiwan made by the government of the Republic of China.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In accordance with the provisions of Article 2 of San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Japanese formally renounced the territorial sovereignty of Taiwan and Penghu islands, and the treaty was signed in 1951 and came into force in 1952. At the date when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into force, the political status of Taiwan and Penghu Islands was still uncertain. The Republic of China and Japan signed the Treaty of Taipei on April 28, 1952, and the treaty came into force on August 5, which is considered by some as giving a legal support to the Republic of China's claim to Taiwan as "de jure" territory. The treaty stipulates that all treaties, conventions, and agreements between China and Japan prior to 9 December 1941 were null and void, which according to Hungdah Chiu, abolishes the Treaty of Shimonoseki ceding Taiwan to Japan. The interpretation of Taiwan becoming the Republic of China's '"de jure" territory is supported by several Japanese court decisions such as the 1956 "Japan v. Lai Chin Jung" case, which stated that Taiwan and the Penghu islands came to belong to the ROC on the date the Treaty of Taipei came into force. Nevertheless, the official position of the Government of Japan is that Japan did not in the Treaty of Taipei express that Taiwan and Penghu belong to the Republic of China, that the Treaty of Taipei could not make any disposition which is in violation of Japan's renouncing Taiwan and Penghu in San Francisco Peace Treaty, and that the status of Taiwan and Penghu remain to be determined by the Allied Powers in the future.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Writing in the "American Journal of International Law", professors Jonathan I. Charney and J. R. V. Prescott argued that "none of the post–World War II peace treaties explicitly ceded sovereignty over the covered territories to any specific state or government." The Cairo Conference from November 22–26, 1943 in Cairo, Egypt was held to address the Allied position against Japan during World War II, and to make decisions about postwar Asia. One of the three main clauses of the Cairo Declaration was that "all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China". According to Taiwan Civil Society quoting the Taiwan Documents Project, the document was merely a statement of intent or non-binding declaration, for possible reference used for those who would draft the post-war peace treaty and that as a press release it was without force of law to transfer sovereignty from Taiwan to the Republic of China. Additional rationale to support this claim is that the Act of Surrender, and SCAP General Order no. 1, authorized the surrender of Japanese forces, not Japanese territories.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In 1952, Winston Churchill said that Taiwan was not under Chinese sovereignty and the Chinese Nationalists did not represent the Chinese state, but that Taiwan was entrusted to the Chinese Nationalists as a military occupation. Churchill called the Cairo Declaration outdated in 1955. The legality of the Cairo Declaration was not recognized by the deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, Anthony Eden, in 1955, who said there was a difference of opinion on which Chinese authority to hand it over to. In 1954, the United States denied that the sovereignty of Taiwan and the Penghu islands had been settled by any treaties, although it acknowledged that the Republic of China effectively controlled Taiwan and Penghu. In the 1960 "Sheng v. Rogers" case, it was stated that, in the view of the U.S. State Department, no agreement has purported to transfer the sovereignty of Taiwan to the ROC, though it accepted the exercise of Chinese authority over Taiwan and recognized the Government of the Republic of China as the legal government of China at the time.


title: History of Taiwan

text: According to Vincent Wei-Cheng Wang, a minority of scholars and politicians have argued that the international status of Taiwan is still undecided, and that this has been used as an argument against the People's Republic of China's claim over Taiwan. They point to President Truman's statement on the pending status of Taiwan in 1950, the lack of specificity on whom the title of Taiwan was transferred to in the 1951 San Francisco peace treaty, and the absence of explicit provisions on the return of Taiwan to China in the 1952 Treaty of Taipei. However Wang notes that this is a weak argument, citing 2 LASSA OPPENHEIMER, INTERNATIONAL LAW, under the principle of effective occupation and control, if nothing is stipulated on conquered territory in the peace treaty, the possessor may annex it. Still, the notion that a possessor may annex a conquered territory despite the peace treaty not stipulating so, was a means of territorial transfer recognized by classical international law, and its legality in recent years is either not recognized or disputed. According to Jian-De Shen, applying such a notion on the Republic of China's territorial claim for Taiwan is invalid because the conqueror of World War II is the whole body of the Allied Powers rather than the Republic of China alone. The Theory of the Undetermined Status of Taiwan is supported by some politicians and jurists to this day, such as the Government of the United States and the Japanese diplomatic circle.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The Republic of China established the Taiwan Provincial Government in September 1945 and proclaimed on October 25, 1945, as "Taiwan Retrocession Day." This is the day in which the Japanese troops surrendered. By 1938 about 309,000 Japanese lived in Taiwan. Between the Japanese surrender of Taiwan in 1945 and April 25, 1946, the Republic of China forces repatriated 90% of the Japanese living in Taiwan to Japan. During the immediate postwar period, the Kuomintang (KMT) administration on Taiwan was repressive and extremely corrupt compared with the previous Japanese rule, leading to local discontent. Anti-mainlander violence flared on 28 February 1947, prompted by an incident in which a cigarette seller was injured and a passerby was indiscriminately shot dead by Nationalist authorities. During the ensuing crackdown by the KMT administration in what became known as the February 28 Incident, tens of thousands of people were killed or arrested, and the incident became a taboo topic of discussion for the entire martial law era. The Memorial Foundation of 228 was established to provide compensation for the victims of the crackdown. From 1995 To 2006, the foundation approved compensation in 2,264 cases, including 680 cases wherein the victim died in the massacre, 179 case wherein the victim was unaccounted for, and 1,405 other cases (including victims who suffered from imprisonment, injuries or damage to reputation).


title: History of Taiwan

text: From the 1930s onward the Chinese Civil War was underway in mainland China between Chiang Kai-shek's ROC government and the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong. When the Communists gained complete control of Mainland China in 1949, two million refugees, predominantly from the Nationalist government, military, and business community, fled to Taiwan. On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) was founded in mainland China by the victorious communists; several months before, Chiang Kai-shek had established a provisional ROC capital in Taipei and moved his Nanjing-based government there after fleeing Chengdu. Under Nationalist rule, the mainlanders dominated the government and civil services.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Following their retreat to Taiwan the KMT viewed their retreat as a temporary one with Chiang Kai-shek saying "prepare for one year, counterattack in two years, sweep out the enemy in three years and succeed within five years." This led them to prioritize military armament and preparation over economic development.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In the immediate aftermath of World War II, post-war economic conditions compounded with the then-ongoing Chinese Civil War caused severe inflation across mainland China and in Taiwan, made worse by disastrous currency reforms and corruption. This gave way to the reconstruction process and new reforms.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The KMT took control of Taiwan's monopolies that had been owned by the Japanese prior to World War II. They nationalized approximately 17% of Taiwan's GNP and voided Japanese bond certificates held by Taiwanese investors. These real estate holdings as well as American aid such as the China Aid Act and the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction helped to ensure that Taiwan would recover quickly from war. The Kuomintang government also moved the entire gold reserve from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, and used this reserve to back the newly issued New Taiwan dollar to stabilize the new currency and put a stop to hyperinflation.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The KMT authorities implemented a far-reaching and highly successful land reform program on Taiwan during the 1950s. The 375 Rent Reduction Act alleviated tax burden on peasants and another act redistributed land among small farmers and compensated large landowners with commodities certificates and stock in state-owned industries. Although this left some large landowners impoverished, others turned their compensation into capital and started commercial and industrial enterprises. These entrepreneurs were to become Taiwan's first industrial capitalists. Together with businessmen who fled from mainland China, they once again revived Taiwan's prosperity previously ceased along with Japanese withdrawal and managed Taiwan's transition from an agricultural to a commercial, industrial economy.


title: History of Taiwan

text: From 1950 to 1965, Taiwan received a total of $1.5 billion in economic aid and $2.4 billion in military aid from the United States. In 1965 all American aid ceased when Taiwan had established a solid financial base. Having accomplished that, ROC president Chiang Ching-kuo (the son of Chiang Kai-shek) started state projects such as the Ten Major Construction Projects that provided the infrastructure for building a strong export-driven economy. Taiwan has developed steadily into a major international trading power with more than $218 billion in two-way trade and one of the highest foreign exchange reserves in the world. Tremendous prosperity on the island was accompanied by economic and social stability. Taiwan's phenomenal economic development earned it a spot as one of the Four Asian Tigers.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Chiang Kai-shek died in April 1975, and was succeeded to the presidency by Yen Chia-kan while his son Chiang Ching-kuo succeeded to the leadership of the Kuomintang (opting to take the title "Chairman" rather than the elder Chiang's title of "Director-General"). Formerly the head of the feared secret police, Chiang Ching-kuo recognized gaining foreign support to securing the ROC's future security required reform. His administration saw a gradual loosening of political controls, a transition towards democracy, and moves toward Taiwanization of the regime. Opponents of the Nationalists were no longer forbidden to hold meetings or publish papers. Though opposition political parties were still illegal, when the Democratic Progressive Party was established as the first opposition party in 1986, President Chiang decided against dissolving the group or persecuting its leaders. Its candidates officially ran in elections as independents in the Tangwai movement. In the following year, Chiang ended martial law and allowed family visits to mainland China. Chiang selected Lee Teng-hui, a Taiwan born technocrat to be his vice president; the first in the line of succession to the presidency. The move followed other reforms giving more power to native born citizens and calmed anti-KMT sentiments.


title: History of Taiwan

text: After Chiang Ching-kuo died in 1988, his successor, President Lee Teng-hui, continued to democratize the government. Lee transferred more government authority to Taiwanese born citizens, and Taiwan underwent a process of Taiwanization. In this localization process, local culture and history was promoted over a pan-China viewpoint. Lee's reforms included printing banknotes from the Central Bank instead of the usual Provincial Bank of Taiwan. He also largely suspended the operation of the Taiwan Provincial Government. In 1991 the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly elected in 1947 were forced to resign. These groups were originally created to represent mainland China constituencies. The restrictions on the use of Taiwanese languages in the broadcast media and in schools were also lifted.


title: History of Taiwan

text: However, Lee failed to crack down on the massive corruption that pervaded the government and many KMT loyalists felt that Lee betrayed the ROC by taking reforms too far, while those in the opposition felt he did not take reforms far enough.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The 2000 presidential election marked the end of the Kuomintang (KMT) rule. DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won a three-way race that saw the Pan-Blue vote split by independent James Soong (formerly of the Kuomintang) and Kuomintang candidate Lien Chan. Chen garnered 39% of the vote.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In 2004, President Chen was re-elected to a second four-year term after an assassination attempt which occurred the day before the election. Two shots were fired, with one bullet grazing the President's belly after penetrating the windshield of a jeep and several layers of clothing and the other bullet penetrated the windshield and hitting the vice president's knee cast. (She was wearing a knee cast due to an earlier injury.) Police investigators have said that the most likely suspect is believed to have been Chen Yi-hsiung, who was later found dead.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The president faced similar accusations as his wife, but was protected from prosecution by presidential immunity. He had promised to resign if his wife was found guilty. However, after his wife fainted in the preparation hearing, she had sought and obtained absence of leave from the Court 16 times citing health concerns before President Chen Shui-bian's term was complete.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In 2007, President Chen proposed a policy of Four Wants and One Without, which in substance states that Taiwan wants independence; Taiwan wants the rectification of its name; Taiwan wants a new constitution; Taiwan wants development; and Taiwanese politics is without the question of left or right, but only the question of unification or independence. The reception of this proposed policy in Taiwanese general public was unclear. It, however, was met with a cold reception by both the PRC and the United States. The PRC Foreign Minister emphasised that the Anti-Secession Law was not a piece of unenforceable legislation, while the US Department of State spokesman Sean McCormack described Chen's policy as "unhelpful".


title: History of Taiwan

text: The KMT also retained control of the legislature in the Legislative Yuan elections in January 2008. In the presidential election in May 2008, KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou ran on a platform supporting friendlier relations with mainland China and economic reforms, and defeated DPP candidate Frank Hsieh with 58.48% of the vote.


title: History of Taiwan

text: On the same day President Chen left office, losing presidential immunity, the Supreme Prosecutor's Office announced that they were launching an inquiry into corruption charges regarding Chen. Later in 2008, members of his administration, including Chiou I-jen, a former National Security Council secretary-general, and Yeh Sheng-mao, former director-general of the Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau, were arrested on corruption charges. Chiou I-jen was found not guilty, while Yeh Sheng-mao was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.


title: History of Taiwan

text: Ma was re-elected, and the KMT retained its majority in the Legislative Yuan, in combined elections in January 2012.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In March and April 2014, students protesting against undemocratic methods used by the KMT occupied the parliament building. In the end, the government agreed to put on hold the ratification of an agreement with China which they had pushed through without proper debate. This event had far reaching consequences, and changed the mood of the electorate. In the combined elections in January 2016 the opposition candidate for president, Tsai Ing-wen, of the DPP won with 56% of the vote, and the opposition DPP was catapulted into an outright majority in the parliament. The election marked the first time a non-KMT party won a majority in the legislature.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The local elections held on November 24, 2018, resulted in a major setback for the DPP majority and led to President Tsai Ing-wen resignation as leader of the party. The DPP lost a total of nine legislative seats, giving the KMT control of the majority of the 22 seats. KMT mayoral candidates won in New Taipei City, Taichung and Kaohsiung, the latter of which has been a political stronghold for the DPP for 20 years.


title: History of Taiwan

text: In January, 2020, Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected in the presidential election. In the parliamentary election President Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won majority 61 out of 113 seats. The Kuomintang (KMT) won 38 seats.


title: History of Taiwan

text: The 2022 visit by Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan resulted in increased tensions between Taiwan and China while reinforcing US-Taiwan ties. In response to the trip the PLA conducted military exercises around Taiwan, included missile launches which overflew Taiwan.


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception ( ), also referred to as kinaesthesia (or kinesthesia), is the sense of self-movement, force, and body position. It is sometimes described as the "sixth sense".


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception is mediated by proprioceptors, mechanosensory neurons located within muscles, tendons, and joints. Most animals possess multiple subtypes of proprioceptors, which detect distinct kinematic parameters, such as joint position, movement, and load. Although all mobile animals possess proprioceptors, the structure of the sensory organs can vary across species.


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioceptive signals are transmitted to the central nervous system, where they are integrated with information from other sensory systems, such as the visual system and the vestibular system, to create an overall representation of body position, movement, and acceleration. In many animals, sensory feedback from proprioceptors is essential for stabilizing body posture and coordinating body movement.


title: Proprioception

text: In vertebrates, limb velocity and movement (muscle length and the rate of change) are encoded by one group of sensory neurons (Type Ia sensory fiber) and another type encode static muscle length (Group II neurons). These two types of sensory neurons compose muscle spindles. There is a similar division of encoding in invertebrates; different subgroups of neurons of the Chordotonal organ encode limb position and velocity.


title: Proprioception

text: To determine the load on a limb, vertebrates use sensory neurons in the Golgi tendon organs: type Ib afferents. These proprioceptors are activated at given muscle forces, which indicate the resistance that muscle is experiencing. Similarly, invertebrates have a mechanism to determine limb load: the Campaniform sensilla. These proprioceptors are active when a limb experiences resistance.


title: Proprioception

text: A third role for proprioceptors is to determine when a joint is at a specific position. In vertebrates, this is accomplished by Ruffini endings and Pacinian corpuscles. These proprioceptors are activated when the joint is at a threshold, usually at the extremes of joint position. Invertebrates use hair plates to accomplish this; a row of bristles located along joints detect when the limb moves.


title: Proprioception

text: The sense of proprioception is ubiquitous across mobile animals and is essential for the motor coordination of the body. Proprioceptors can form reflex circuits with motor neurons to provide rapid feedback about body and limb position. These mechanosensory circuits are important for flexibly maintaining posture and balance, especially during locomotion. For example, consider the stretch reflex, in which stretch across a muscle is detected by a sensory receptor (e.g., muscle spindle, chordotonal neurons), which activates a motor neuron to induce muscle contraction and oppose the stretch. During locomotion, sensory neurons can reverse their activity when stretched, to promote rather than oppose movement.


title: Proprioception

text: In humans, a distinction is made between "conscious" proprioception and "non-conscious" proprioception:


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception is mediated by mechanically sensitive proprioceptor neurons distributed throughout an animal's body. Most vertebrates possess three basic types of proprioceptors: muscle spindles, which are embedded in skeletal muscles, Golgi tendon organs, which lie at the interface of muscles and tendons, and joint receptors, which are low-threshold mechanoreceptors embedded in joint capsules. Many invertebrates, such as insects, also possess three basic proprioceptor types with analogous functional properties: chordotonal neurons, campaniform sensilla, and hair plates.


title: Proprioception

text: The initiation of proprioception is the activation of a proprioceptor in the periphery. The proprioceptive sense is believed to be composed of information from sensory neurons located in the inner ear (motion and orientation) and in the stretch receptors located in the muscles and the joint-supporting ligaments (stance). There are specific nerve receptors for this form of perception termed "proprioceptors", just as there are specific receptors for pressure, light, temperature, sound, and other sensory experiences. Proprioceptors are sometimes known as adequate stimuli receptors.


title: Proprioception

text: Members of the transient receptor potential family of ion channels have been found to be important for proprioception in fruit flies, nematode worms, African clawed frogs, and zebrafish. PIEZO2, a nonselective cation channel, has been shown to underlie the mechanosensitivity of proprioceptors in mice. Humans with loss-of-function mutations in the PIEZO2 gene exhibit specific deficits in joint proprioception, as well as vibration and touch discrimination, suggesting that the PIEZO2 channel is essential for mechanosensitivity in some proprioceptors and low-threshold mechanoreceptors.


title: Proprioception

text: Although it was known that finger kinesthesia relies on skin sensation, recent research has found that kinesthesia-based haptic perception relies strongly on the forces experienced during touch. This research allows the creation of "virtual", illusory haptic shapes with different perceived qualities.


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception of the head stems from the muscles innervated by the trigeminal nerve, where the GSA fibers pass without synapsing in the trigeminal ganglion (first-order sensory neuron), reaching the mesencephalic tract and the mesencephalic nucleus of trigeminal nerve. Proprioception of limbs often occurs due to receptors in connective tissue near joints.


title: Proprioception

text: An important role for proprioception is to allow an animal to stabilize itself against perturbations. For instance, for a person to walk or stand upright, they must continuously monitor their posture and adjust muscle activity as needed to provide balance. Similarly, when walking on unfamiliar terrain or even tripping, the person must adjust the output of their muscles quickly based on estimated limb position and velocity. Proprioceptor reflex circuits are thought to play an important role to allow fast and unconscious execution of these behaviors, To make control of these behaviors efficient, proprioceptors are also thought to regulate reciprocal inhibition in muscles, leading to agonist-antagonist muscle pairs.


title: Proprioception

text: When planning complex movements such as reaching or grooming, animals must consider the current position and velocity of their limb and use it to adjust dynamics to target a final position. If the animal's estimate of their limb's initial position is wrong, this can lead to a deficiency in the movement. Furthermore, proprioception is crucial in refining the movement if it deviates from the trajectory.


title: Proprioception

text: In adult fruit flies, each proprioceptor class arises from a specific cell lineage (i.e. each chordotonal neuron is from the chordotonal neuron lineage, although multiple lineages give rise to sensory bristles). After the last cell division, proprioceptors send out axons toward the central nervous system and are guided by hormonal gradients to reach stereotyped synapses.


title: Proprioception

text: In mammals with longer gestation periods, muscle spindles are fully formed at birth. Muscle spindles continue to grow throughout post-natal development as muscles grow.


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioceptors transfer the mechanical state of the body into patterns of neural activity. This transfer can be modeled mathematically, for example to better understand the internal workings of a proprioceptor or to provide more realistic feedback in neuromechanical simulations.


title: Proprioception

text: Various proprioceptor models of complexity have been developed. They range from simple phenomenological models to complex structural models, in which the mathematical elements correspond to anatomical features of the proprioceptor. The focus has been on muscle spindles, but Golgi tendon organs and insects hair plates have been modeled too.


title: Proprioception

text: Poppelle and Bowman used linear system theory to model mammalian muscle spindles Ia and II afferents. They obtained a set of de-afferented muscle spindles, measured their response to a series of sinusoidal and step function stretches, and fit a transfer function to the spike rate. They found that the following Laplace transfer function describes the firing rate responses of the primary sensory fibers for a change in length:


title: Proprioception

text: More recently, Blum et al. showed that the muscle spindle firing rate is modeled better as tracking the force of the muscle, rather than the length. Furthermore, muscle spindle firing rates show history dependence which cannot be modeled by a linear time-invariant system model.


title: Proprioception

text: Houk and Simon provided one of the first mathematical models of a Golgi tendon organ receptor, modeling the firing rate of the receptor as a function of the muscle tension force. Just as for muscle spindles, they find that, as the receptors respond linearly to sine waves of different frequencies and has little variance in response over time to the same stimulus, Golgi tendon organ receptors may be modeled as linear time-invariant systems. Specifically, they find that the firing rate of a Golgi tendon organ receptor may be modeled as a sum of 3 decaying exponentials:


title: Proprioception

text: For a soleus receptor, Houk and Simon obtain average values of K=57 pulses/sec/kg, A=0.31, a=0.22 sec, B=0.4, b=2.17 sec, C=2.5, c=36 sec .


title: Proprioception

text: When modeling a stretch reflex, Lin and Crago improved upon this model by adding a logarithmic nonlinearity before the Houk and Simon model and a threshold nonlinearity after.


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception is permanently impaired in patients with joint hypermobility or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (a genetic condition that results in weak connective tissue throughout the body). It can also be permanently impaired from viral infections as reported by Sacks. The catastrophic effect of major proprioceptive loss is reviewed by Robles-De-La-Torre (2006).


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception is also permanently impaired in physiological aging (presbypropria) and autism spectrum disorder.


title: Proprioception

text: Parkinson's disease is characterized by a decline in motor function as a result of neurodegeneration. It is likely that some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease are in part related to disrupted proprioception. Whether this symptom is caused by degeneration of proprioceptors in the periphery or disrupted signaling in the brain or spinal cord is an open question.


title: Proprioception

text: People who have a limb amputated may still have a confused sense of that limb's existence on their body, known as phantom limb syndrome. Phantom sensations can occur as passive proprioceptive sensations of the limb's presence, or more active sensations such as perceived movement, pressure, pain, itching, or temperature. There are a variety of theories concerning the etiology of phantom limb sensations and experience. One is the concept of "proprioceptive memory", which argues that the brain retains a memory of specific limb positions and that after amputation there is a conflict between the visual system, which actually sees that the limb is missing, and the memory system which remembers the limb as a functioning part of the body. Phantom sensations and phantom pain may also occur after the removal of body parts other than the limbs, such as after amputation of the breast, extraction of a tooth (phantom tooth pain), or removal of an eye (phantom eye syndrome).


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception is occasionally impaired spontaneously, especially when one is tired. Similar effects can be felt during the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. One's body may feel too large or too small, or parts of the body may feel distorted in size. Similar effects can sometimes occur during epilepsy or migraine auras. These effects are presumed to arise from abnormal stimulation of the part of the parietal cortex of the brain involved with integrating information from different parts of the body. Proprioceptive illusions can also be induced, such as the Pinocchio illusion.


title: Proprioception

text: Temporary impairment of proprioception has also been known to occur from an overdose of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine and pyridoxamine). Most of the impaired function returns to normal shortly after the amount of the vitamin in the body returns to a level that is closer to that of the physiological norm. Impairment can also be caused by cytotoxic factors such as chemotherapy.


title: Proprioception

text: It has been proposed that even common tinnitus and the attendant hearing frequency-gaps masked by the perceived sounds may cause erroneous proprioceptive information to the balance and comprehension centers of the brain, precipitating mild confusion.


title: Proprioception

text: Temporary loss or impairment of proprioception may happen periodically during growth, mostly during adolescence. Growth that might also influence this would be large increases or drops in bodyweight/size due to fluctuations of fat (liposuction, rapid fat loss or gain) and/or muscle content (bodybuilding, anabolic steroids, catabolisis/starvation). It can also occur in those that gain new levels of flexibility, stretching, and contortion. A limb's being in a new range of motion never experienced (or at least, not for a long time since youth perhaps) can disrupt one's sense of location of that limb. Possible experiences include suddenly feeling that feet or legs are missing from one's mental self-image; needing to look down at one's limbs to be sure they are still there; and falling down while walking, especially when attention is focused upon something other than the act of walking.


title: Proprioception

text: Impaired proprioception may be diagnosed through a series of tests, each focusing on a different functional aspect of proprioception.


title: Proprioception

text: The Romberg's test is often used to assess balance. The subject must stand with feet together and eyes closed without support for 30 seconds. If the subject loses balance and falls, it is an indicator for impaired proprioception.


title: Proprioception

text: For evaluating proprioception's contribution to motor control, a common protocol is joint position matching. The patient is blindfolded while a joint is moved to a specific angle for a given period of time and then returned to neutral. The subject is then asked to move the joint back to the specified angle. Recent investigations have shown that hand dominance, participant age, active versus passive matching, and presentation time of the angle can all affect performance on joint position matching tasks.


title: Proprioception

text: For passive sensing of joint angles, recent studies have found that experiments to probe psychophysical thresholds produce more precise estimates of proprioceptive discrimination than the joint position matching task. In these experiments, the subject holds on to an object (such as an armrest) that moves and stops at different positions. The subject must discriminate whether one position is closer to the body than another. From the subject's choices, the tester may determine the subject's discrimination thresholds.


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception is tested by American police officers using the field sobriety testing to check for alcohol intoxication. The subject is required to touch his or her nose with eyes closed; people with normal proprioception may make an error of no more than , while people with impaired proprioception (a symptom of moderate to severe alcohol intoxication) fail this test due to difficulty locating their limbs in space relative to their noses.


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception is what allows someone to learn to walk in complete darkness without losing balance. During the learning of any new skill, sport, or art, it is usually necessary to become familiar with some proprioceptive tasks specific to that activity. Without the appropriate integration of proprioceptive input, an artist would not be able to brush paint onto a canvas without looking at the hand as it moved the brush over the canvas; it would be impossible to drive an automobile because a motorist would not be able to steer or use the pedals while looking at the road ahead; a person could not touch type or perform ballet; and people would not even be able to walk without watching where they put their feet.


title: Proprioception

text: Oliver Sacks reported the case of a young woman who lost her proprioception due to a viral infection of her spinal cord. At first she could not move properly at all or even control her tone of voice (as voice modulation is primarily proprioceptive). Later she relearned by using her sight (watching her feet) and inner ear only for movement while using hearing to judge voice modulation. She eventually acquired a stiff and slow movement and nearly normal speech, which is believed to be the best possible in the absence of this sense. She could not judge effort involved in picking up objects and would grip them painfully to be sure she did not drop them.


title: Proprioception

text: The proprioceptive sense can be sharpened through study of many disciplines. Juggling trains reaction time, spatial location, and efficient movement. Standing on a wobble board or balance board is often used to retrain or increase proprioceptive abilities, particularly as physical therapy for ankle or knee injuries. Slacklining is another method to increase proprioception.


title: Proprioception

text: Standing on one leg (stork standing) and various other body-position challenges are also used in such disciplines as yoga, Wing Chun and tai chi. The vestibular system of the inner ear, vision and proprioception are the main three requirements for balance. Moreover, there are specific devices designed for proprioception training, such as the exercise ball, which works on balancing the abdominal and back muscles.


title: Proprioception

text: In 1557, the position-movement sensation was described by Julius Caesar Scaliger as a "sense of locomotion".


title: Proprioception

text: In 1826, Charles Bell expounded the idea of a "muscle sense", which is credited as one of the first descriptions of physiologic feedback mechanisms. Bell's idea was that commands are carried from the brain to the muscles, and that reports on the muscle's condition would be sent in the reverse direction.


title: Proprioception

text: In 1847, the London neurologist Robert Todd highlighted important differences in the anterolateral and posterior columns of the spinal cord, and suggested that the latter were involved in the coordination of movement and balance.


title: Proprioception

text: At around the same time, Moritz Heinrich Romberg, a Berlin neurologist, was describing unsteadiness made worse by eye closure or darkness, now known as the eponymous Romberg's sign, once synonymous with tabes dorsalis, that became recognised as common to all proprioceptive disorders of the legs.


title: Proprioception

text: In 1880, Henry Charlton Bastian suggested "kinaesthesia" instead of "muscle sense" on the basis that some of the afferent information (back to the brain) comes from other structures, including tendons, joints, and skin.


title: Proprioception

text: In 1889, Alfred Goldscheider suggested a classification of kinaesthesia into three types: muscle, tendon, and articular sensitivity.


title: Proprioception

text: In 1906, the term "proprio-ception" (and also "intero-ception" and "extero-ception") is attested in a publication by Charles Scott Sherrington involving receptors. He explains the terminology as follows:


title: Proprioception

text: The main fields of distribution of the receptor organs fundamentally distinguishable seem, therefore, to be two, namely, a "surface" field constituted by the surface layer of the organism, and a "deep" field constituted by the tissues of the organism beneath the surface sheet.


title: Proprioception

text: "the stimulations occurring in [the] deep field is that the stimuli are traceable to actions of the organism itself", and are so in much greater measure than are the stimulations of the surface field of the organism. Since in the deep field the stimuli to the receptors are delivered by the organism "itself", the deep receptors may be termed "proprio-ceptors", and the deep field a field of proprio-ception.


title: Proprioception

text: Today, the "exteroceptors" are the organs that provide information originating outside the body, such as the eyes, ears, mouth, and skin. The interoceptors provide information about the internal organs, and the "proprioceptors" provide information about movement derived from muscular, tendon, and articular sources. Using Sherrington's system, physiologists and anatomists search for specialised nerve endings that transmit mechanical data on joint capsule, tendon and muscle tension (such as Golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles), which play a large role in proprioception.


title: Proprioception

text: Primary endings of muscle spindles "respond to the size of a muscle length change and its speed" and "contribute both to the sense of limb position and movement". Secondary endings of muscle spindles detect changes in muscle length, and thus supply information regarding only the sense of position. Essentially, muscle spindles are stretch receptors. It has been accepted that cutaneous receptors also contribute directly to proprioception by providing "accurate perceptual information about joint position and movement", and this knowledge is combined with information from the muscle spindles.


title: Proprioception

text: Proprioception is from Latin "proprius", meaning "one's own", "individual", and "capio", "capere", to take or grasp. Thus to grasp one's own position in space, including the position of the limbs in relation to each other and the body as a whole.


title: Proprioception

text: The word kinesthesia or kinæsthesia (kinesthetic sense) refers to movement sense, but has been used inconsistently to refer either to proprioception alone or to the brain's integration of proprioceptive and vestibular inputs. Kinesthesia is a modern medical term composed of elements from Greek; "kinein" "to set in motion; to move" (from PIE root *keie- "to set in motion") + "aisthesis" "perception, feeling" (from PIE root *au- "to perceive") + Greek abstract noun ending "-ia" (corresponds to English "-hood" e.g. motherhood).


title: Proprioception

text: Although they lack neurons, a form of proprioception has also been described in some plants (angiosperms). Terrestrial plants control the orientation of their primary growth through the sensing of several vectorial stimuli such as the light gradient or the gravitational acceleration. This control has been called tropism. A quantitative study of shoot gravitropism demonstrated that, when a plant is tilted, it cannot recover a steady erected posture under the sole driving of the sensing of its angular deflection versus gravity. An additional control through the continuous sensing of its curvature by the organ and the subsequent driving an active straightening process are required. Being a sensing by the plant of the relative configuration of its parts, it has been called proprioception. This dual sensing and control by gravisensing and proprioception has been formalized into a unifying mathematical model simulating the complete driving of the gravitropic movement. This model has been validated on 11 species sampling the phylogeny of land angiosperms, and on organs of very contrasted sizes, ranging from the small germination of wheat (coleoptile) to the trunk of poplar trees.


title: Proprioception

text: Further studies have shown that the cellular mechanism of proprioception in plants involves myosin and actin, and seems to occur in specialized cells. Proprioception was then found to be involved in other tropisms and to be central also to the control of nutation.


title: Proprioception

text: The discovery of proprioception in plants has generated an interest in the popular science and generalist media. This is because this discovery questions a long-lasting "a priori" that we have on plants. In some cases this has led to a shift between proprioception and self-awareness or self-consciousness. There is no scientific ground for such a semantic shift. Indeed, even in animals, proprioception can be unconscious; so it is thought to be in plants.


title: Tinashe

text: Tinashe Jorgensen Kachingwe ( ; born February 6, 1993), known mononymously as Tinashe, is an American singer, dancer, and actress. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Tinashe moved to Pasadena as a child to pursue a career in entertainment. Her notable roles included as a motion-capture model in the animated film "The Polar Express" (2004), Robin Wheeler in the Cartoon Network television series "Out of Jimmy's Head" (2007–2008), and a recurring role in the CBS series "Two and a Half Men" (2008–2009).


title: Tinashe

text: Between 2007 and 2011, Tinashe was a member of the girl group the Stunners. Following their disbandment, she released the positively-reviewed self-recorded mixtapes "In Case We Die" (2012) and "Reverie" (2012). Following their success, Tinashe signed with RCA Records and released her third mixtape, "Black Water" (2013). Her debut single, "2 On" (featuring Schoolboy Q; produced by Mustard), reached number one on the Rhythmic airplay chart, and peaked at number 24 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Her debut studio album, "Aquarius" (2014), was noted by music critics as one of the most “solid” debuts by a new female artist in years. The album garnered her nominations for Soul Train and BET Awards. Her collaboration with Snakehips and Chance the Rapper, "All My Friends", won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song in 2016. The same year, Tinashe appeared on Britney Spears' single "Slumber Party", which topped "Billboard"'s Dance Club Songs chart. Tinashe's second studio album, "Nightride" (2016), reached number eight on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart in the US. "Joyride" (2018), her third studio album, peaked at number 58 on the "Billboard" 200 chart and reached number six on the UK R&B Albums chart. After departing RCA, Tinashe independently released her fourth and fifth studio albums, "Songs for You" (2019) and "333" (2021), to critical acclaim.


title: Tinashe

text: Tinashe describes her music as "rhythmic pop" that explores the genres of alternative R&B, pop, and hip hop.


title: Tinashe

text: Tinashe Kachingwe was born on February 6, 1993, in Lexington, Kentucky, and is the eldest child of college professors Michael and Aimie Kachingwe. Her father is a professor who teaches acting at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and a first generation Zimbabwean immigrant of the Shona descent, while her mother, who is of Danish, Norwegian, and Irish descent, teaches physical therapy at California State University, Northridge. Her parents met each other on a blind date during their time as undergrads at the University of Iowa. Tinashe's name means "We have God (or God is with us)" in the Shona language. She has two younger brothers, Thulani and Kudzai. She and her family moved to Los Angeles, California when she was eight years old. She attended Crescenta Valley High School for a year before finishing early to pursue a career in music full-time. During high school she faced bullying from her peers. She began studying ballet, tap, and jazz dancing at the age of 4, and continued to compete in various styles as a part of a dance company until she was 18.


title: Tinashe

text: Tinashe scored roles in a number of TV shows, movies, and children's videos in the early 2000s, including the movies "Cora Unashamed" (2000), "Call Me Claus" (2001), "Masked and Anonymous" (2003), and two TV series: "Rocket Power" (2004) and "" (2007). These led to a regular role in the Cartoon Network TV series "Out of Jimmy's Head" in 2007–2008 and a recurring role on "Two and a Half Men" in 2008–2009. Although she was uncredited in the poorly received "Masked and Anonymous", Roger Ebert observed at the film's 2003 Sundance Film Festival premiere "the one performer in the movie whose performance actually was applauded; that was a young black girl named Tinashe Kachingwe, who sings 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' with such sweetness and conviction that she is like a master class." He concluded his review of the movie: "If I had been asked to serve as consultant on this picture, my advice would have amounted to three words: more Tinashe Kachingwe."


title: Tinashe

text: In 2007, Tinashe joined girl group the Stunners, founded by Vitamin C. Her bandmates were friends Marisol Esparza, Allie Gonino, Hayley Kiyoko, and Kelsey Sanders. Six months after their formation, the group signed with Columbia Records, and later signed a production deal with Lionsgate Entertainment for scripted television show for MTV. On March 18, 2009, they released a single and video, "Bubblegum." In October, the group released a five-song EP, influenced by artists such as Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and Rihanna. The music video for their promo single, "We Got It", was released on February 22, 2010, and they performed the song on "The Today Show" and "The Wendy Williams Show". After signing with Universal Republic Records in 2010 they released a single, "Dancin' Around the Truth." The music video premiered on June 2, 2010, just before the group was announced as an opening act on Justin Bieber's My World Tour.


title: Tinashe

text: After the Bieber tour the Stunners returned to the recording studio, but disbanded in 2011, and Tinashe began pursuing a solo career. After the Stunners disbanded, Tinashe "bought a bunch of equipment, a camera, and microphones", and began to teach herself how to record and mix music. She wrote and recorded songs in her room studio. She produced beats with Logic Pro, and also filmed and edited her own music videos with Pro Tools and Final Cut Pro. Tinashe cites YouTube as her "teacher".


title: Tinashe

text: On May 3, 2011, Tinashe gave her first televised solo performance during a Dodgers–Cubs game, singing "God Bless America". On June 24, 2011, Tinashe released her first solo music video, a cover of Lil Wayne's single "How to Love". The song was later released as a free digital download via Tinashe's official website. Following the video's release, Tinashe confirmed she had officially been released from her recording contract with Universal Republic. Tinashe was featured on the dance single "Artificial People" by OFM, released on September 12, 2011. On November 25, 2011 Tinashe released the music video for "Can't Say No", her first original solo song. The track samples Britney Spears's song "Blur" from her sixth studio album, "Circus". The song was released for download on November 28, 2011.


title: Tinashe

text: "In Case We Die", Tinashe's debut solo mixtape, was released in February 2012, recorded in her home studio. The mixtape spawned four singles, the first being promotional song, "Chainless", released to iTunes on December 19, 2011. "My High" was released for streaming on her official website. The music video for single "This Feeling" directed by Cole Walliser was released on May 1, 2012 to Global Grind. The mixtape's final single, "Boss", was released August 20, 2012, after the song was featured in an episode of the VH1 series "Single Ladies". The music video for the song was self-directed.


title: Tinashe

text: On July 13, 2012, Tinashe announced that she had signed with RCA Records. Following the signing, her second mixtape, "Reverie", was released on September 6, 2012 through her official website. The mixtape released three singles: the first "Stargazing", released on August 21, 2012; Denver Sean of LoveBScott.com noted "BMarz the Producer's flawless production" of the first single, saying ""Stargazing", takes a similar approach to, Noah “40″ Shebib's productions, but it's as if he strapped one to a rocket and shot it into the galaxy." the second, "Ecstasy", released on December 18, 2012; and the final, "Who Am I Working For?", released on March 12, 2013.


title: Tinashe

text: From August to November 2012, a series of remixes of songs from Tinashe's two mixtapes leaked online to critical acclaim. On November 26, 2013, Tinashe released her third mixtape, "Black Water". The mixtape was composed of thirteen tracks produced by Dev Hynes, Boi-1da, Ryan Hemsworth, and Tinashe herself. The single "Vulnerable", which features rapper Travis Scott, was declared a "Must-Hear Pop Song of the Week" by MTV's Buzzworthy on November 26, 2013.