In 1895, Japan used force to force the Qing government to sign the unequal Treaty of Shimonoseki, forcing the Qing Dynasty to cede Taiwan Island and its affiliated islands to Japan. From this, Japan began its 50-year colonial rule over Taiwan. It was not until Taiwan was liberated in 1945 that the island returned to the embrace of the motherland.
During the colonial period, Japan's authoritarian rule and excessive taxation put Taiwan compatriots into an abyss of pain and inspired the Taiwanese people to continue to resist. Among them, the anti-riot movement that had the greatest impact on Japan and suffered the most tragic sacrifices was undoubtedly the "Wushe Incident": more than 300 warriors in the uprising all died on the battlefield, more than 200 female family members collectively hanged themselves to death, and the six tribes that participated in the uprising were almost exterminated.
The shouts and killings of the war ninety years ago have now been lost in the smoke and grass of history. This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Wushe Incident, and the heroic deeds should not be forgotten.
Just as Marx said in "The Coup of the Eighteenth Day of Louis Bonapart Brumaire ": "They cannot express themselves, they must be expressed."
In human society, for weak and small nations or peoples without literacy, , the memory of those who have witnessed history is of immeasurable value. The restoration of historical truth should not be limited to the event itself. It seems more valuable to analyze the cause of the event and the inevitable result. In the "Wushe Incident", under the temptation of Japan and the bounty, there was a heartbreaking case of fratricide among the aborigines. This accelerated the fall of the uprising and is worth thinking about and being vigilant about.
01. The war was brutal, and the six communities involved were almost wiped out.
Wushe is located in Renai Township, Nantou County, Taiwan today. It belongs to the Central Mountains. The territory has high mountains and dense forests, and the terrain is dangerous. Historically, the aboriginal Seediq people relied on hunting and Make a living through mountain agriculture.
The Wushe Incident refers to the uprising of six communities in the Wushe area against Japanese colonial rule in the 1930s. There were 11 societies in Wushe Group at that time, with a total population of about 2,200 people. Six of them, with about 1,200 people, participated in the incident. About 300 warriors actually participated in the battle.
On October 27, 1930, more than 300 Seediq men, led by Mona Rudo, the leader of Mahpo, took advantage of the opportunity of the joint sports meeting held in the Wushe area of Nengao County Hall to attack the police in the Wushe area. Garrison stations, police sub-offices, and Japanese agencies conducted raids, killing 134 Japanese and injuring 26 others. They burned down 13 police stations and seized 180 guns and 23,000 rounds of ammunition.
After the incident, Japan urgently mobilized thousands of regular troops and police. Under the cover of aircraft and artillery, they launched frantic retaliation against the insurrectionists, even disregarding international conventions and using poisonous gas to aid the fight.
At the height of the war, in order to save food, the Seediq women who accompanied the soldiers into the mountains hanged themselves collectively. Hundreds of corpses were hung in the cold and damp forest. The scene was extremely miserable and made people cry. By mid-December, the vigorous uprising was finally brutally strangled, and more than 300 soldiers were killed.
According to statistics, a total of 644 people died in battle, died of illness, or committed suicide in the six communities of the uprising. Among them, 332 are male and 312 are female. After the war, there were only 298 people left in the six Seediq tribes, and they were almost wiped out.
Sediq women
The Wushe Incident had just been suppressed. The Japanese government immediately moved the survivors from their ancestral homeland at an altitude of 1,200 meters to the confluence of Beigang Creek and Meiyuan Creek at an altitude of 420 meters, and renamed the place For "Kawazhong Island", the survivors were subject to militarized management and imperial brainwashing, and their thoughts and behaviors were strictly controlled.
Japanese Crusade Team
02. From the perspective of cultural conflict, the Wushe uprising is inevitable
Japan entered Taiwan as a conqueror for colonial rule. After the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese Empire implemented a Western governance model and introduced this model to Taiwan. . It implements "guidance doctrine" towards Taiwan, which means a mountainous policy of "combination of suppression and appeasement with kindness and coercion" in an attempt to culturally and religiously convert the Tibetan people.
The Japanese government stubbornly believes that it represents advanced civilization and that the aborigines living in Taiwan are "savage" people and need to be civilized with Japanese civilization.As a result, police stations, post offices, schools, and shrines were set up all over Taiwan, and they used their authority to plunder the forests and mineral resources of the indigenous people, and forced the indigenous people to accept Japanese enslavement education. These actions cut deep wounds in the hearts of the indigenous people.
The Sediq people believe in "ethnic culture". They have lived on this land for generations and make a living by hunting and farming. The fate of tribal members is interdependent and they have strong cohesion. They lack awareness of land ownership and pay more attention to land use rights. The Japanese government believes that land is not the private property of any individual. It is a public resource for the country's colonial rule, and Japan has the right to use forest resources. The actions of the Japanese greatly squeezed the living space of the Seediq people.
As a result, the collision of "civilizations" that each insists on is inevitable. is just like the roar of the Seediqs when they resisted: "If civilization requires us to grovel, then I will show you the pride of barbarism!"
Mona Rudo (middle)
Secondly, the Seediqs and Japan Sharp conflicts between customs, habits and religious beliefs have become another catalyst for the occurrence of riots.
In order to better implement its rule, the Japanese government adopted the "Libo Policy" and encouraged intermarriage between Japanese and the daughters of Seediq leaders in an attempt to speed up the assimilation process. However, according to historical records, most Japanese who marry aboriginals will end up abandoning them, because they regard the aborigines as "inferior people" from the bottom of their hearts. This touches the taboo of the Seediq people who regard family as life. What the Seediq people gain from intermarriage with the Japanese is not happiness, but humiliation and humiliation. The seeds of hatred gradually sprouted.
The Seediq people believe in the ancestral spirit religion. They believe that after death, the soul will pass through the Rainbow Bridge and happily reunite with the ancestors waiting on the other side of the bridge. The soul will then enter a "hunting ground" where there is no suffering, no killing, only joy. The Seediq people transformed the other side of death into a fertile hunting ground, which proved from another aspect that the indigenous people are full of yearning and expectation for a better life.
The illusion of death and strong tribal consciousness have prompted the Seediq people to develop a brave and sturdy national character. Once invaded by the outside world, they are fearless and resistance becomes their innate instinct.
The Seediq people have firm beliefs. In order to defend the collective consciousness, they can lose their bodies, but they must win their souls.
From the women hanging themselves collectively in the rainforest to save food for the men fighting, to the men knowing clearly that the resistance to violence is a tragic war to the death, but still going forward indomitably, the national character is fully demonstrated.
Wrapped in the big background, the individual joys and sorrows of those little people are particularly sad.
When the Seediq people rose up in rebellion, Japan had occupied Taiwan for 35 years. During this period, some Seediq people received higher education in schools set up by the Japanese and gained a certain recognition of Japanese culture.
"The Wushe Incident" (1998) and "The Scarlet Sakura in the Wind - The Truth about the Wushe Incident and the Story of Hanaoka Hatsuko" (2000) both conducted in-depth discussions on the uprising.
Seediq youth Ichiro Hanaoka is one of those who received higher education in Japan. After graduation, Hanaoka worked at the Japanese police station in the Wushe area. He and his wife lived a stable and hopeful life. However, disaster struck from the sky, and a sudden uprising completely destroyed the happy family.
A very important link in whether the Seediq uprising went smoothly was Hanaoka Ichiro's cooperation - taking advantage of Hanaoka's time on duty at the police residence to open the weapons warehouse.
At that time, Hanaoka faced an extremely painful choice: on the one hand, he gave birth to his own ethnic blood relatives; on the other hand, he cultivated his own Japanese culture. He didn't know which side to take, and choosing one would mean betrayal of the other. In the end, Hanaoka Ichiro handed over the key to the tribesmen to open the weapons arsenal, and the rebel fighters shot the Japanese indiscriminately.
He and his wife were coerced by the uprising crowd and retreated into the mountains. Under the double squeeze of Japanese culture and Seediq ethnic culture, Hanaoka Ichiro felt very painful in his heart, and he could not find a gap for release.Finally, in the cold and gloomy rainforest, the heartbroken Hanaoka Ichiro and his wife embraced each other in kimonos and cried. After the husband and wife bowed to each other, Hanaoka killed his wife with his own hands, and then stabbed her with a machete symbolizing the spirit of Seediq. Go into your own heart and find your identity and soul belonging in the tragedy. He escaped individual suffering, but deepened the collective pain.
The Japanese army showed off their military exploits
03. Judging from the limitations of the goals of the uprising, the failure of the Wushe incident was an inevitable result
In the early days of the uprising, the Seediqs killed more than a hundred Japanese in a surprise attack and organized troops in Japan. During the crusade, the terrain, topography and high mountains and dense forests were used to carry out a powerful attack on the Japanese army and achieve a staged victory.
However, the original desire of the Seediq uprising was to expel the Japanese who invaded the "land of the ancestors" from the territory. It did not put forward any goals and demands that were in line with the interests of the majority of indigenous peoples. Therefore, it was unable to mobilize more people to participate in the struggle. "The bloody The Seediq uprising was destined to be fought alone. As the Japanese army adjusted its strategy and launched a crazy counterattack using aircraft, artillery and even poison gas, the situation on the battlefield took a turn for the worse. The rebel army fell into a bitter fight until the entire army was destroyed.
The Wushe Incident was destined to end in tragedy for many reasons: First of all, what the Six Incidents were fighting against with limited strength was a powerful military empire. Japan had the support of modern military industry and a steady supply of troops and supplies.
Looking back at the Seediq Rebel Army, the disadvantages are very obvious: first, their weapons are backward. In addition to the guns and ammunition captured from the Japanese police station, which are quite lethal, Seediq's machete and shotgun for daily hunting were almost useless. Although two mountain cannons were captured during the uprising, they were abandoned because no one knew how to use them; secondly, , material replenishment is zero. So much so that women committed suicide to save food for the soldiers, which shows how scarce supplies are; thirdly, there is no depth to make a roundabout way. When the Japanese army launched a crusade, the warriors had no way to retreat and were forced up the cliff. They were bombarded by Japanese artillery fire, aircraft bombs and poison gas. The soldiers suffered heavy casualties and eventually ran out of ammunition and food, falling into a desperate situation.
Secondly, the Japanese adopted the strategy of "using Tibet to control Tibet", taking advantage of the hatred between tribes and offering bounties to kill "Chucao" warriors. In fact, they were ruthlessly killing people with borrowed knives.
Driven by the Japanese's bounty and "skillful use", the Duda and Degulu people in the Wushe area acted as the vanguard in suppressing the Sixth Seediq Society. If the Seediq fighters had advantages in location, people and people in the previous battle with the Japanese army, then after these two tribes joined the suppression team, the advantages of the Seediq fighters disappeared in an instant.
There is no doubt that under the joint stranglehold of the Japanese army and local enemies, all the anti-riot fighters were martyred, and the uprising was quickly suppressed. As a result, the two tribes Duda and Degulu were nicknamed "Weifangfan" (pro-Japanese Fan).
Conclusion:
After the Wushe Incident, although the motherland and the mainland shared the same hatred and the media supported the Taiwanese aboriginals' righteousness in resisting the brutal Japanese rule, it was ultimately beyond their reach. A few months later, on September 18, 1931, Japan brazenly launched the "September 18 Incident" that shocked the world and dragged the Chinese nation into the abyss of war.
Human beings are always moving forward by constantly summarizing lessons. The Wushe incident brought a profound question to scholars: whenever foreigners intervene in disputes between aboriginal people, the aboriginal people are always easily instigated and then do things that hurt their relatives and make their enemies happy. Why is this? ?
Respecting differences is an advanced concept and positive proposition for solving ethnic issues and inter-ethnic conflicts in the world. The so-called full respect for differences means respecting the languages, cultures, customs and religious beliefs of different ethnic groups, especially ethnic minorities, so as to achieve symbiosis and common prosperity of "harmony without difference".
Perhaps, only when the understanding of ethnic groups reaches a certain height, will the seeds of inter-ethnic hatred lose the soil to germinate, and human tragedies will not occur.
References:
① Fang Sumei: "Historical Memory of the Wushe Incident and the Remaining Survivors"
——Comments and Seeing the Truth: The Seediq Tribe and the Wushe Incident
② Yoshie Kira: "Research on the Wushe Incident in Modern Japanese History" Situation"
- Taking the opportunity of the publication of the information collection of Izawa Takio, the governor of Taiwan in the Yuan Dynasty
③ Lin Wende: "Research on the Ethnic Relations among the Three Seediq Groups Affected by the Wushe Incident"
