Influences of Japanese Rice-Cropping Culture on the Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan

Abstract

In the Japanese colonial era, the indigenous peoples of Taiwan (IPT) mainly lived in mountainous areas. The colonial polity ruled these areas as “special administrative districts,” where the colonial laws were not applied. At the same time, the colonial polity tried to convert the IPT's tribal villages into “normal” administrative villages by various means. One of these was compulsory collective migration to the flatlands. Another was agricultural reformation from shifting agriculture to sedentary agriculture based on rice-cropping. Traditionally, the predominant farming system of the IPT was shifting agriculture. For example, the Paiwan people produced their main foods (taro and millet) by shifting cultivation. Millet was their sacred food, which was used with special meaning in rituals. Thus, because the IPT did not have the tradition of growing rice (especially not wet rice), the influence of economic incorporation was less apparent than it was in the flatlands. However, the imposition of Japanese rice-cropping culture incorporated IPT society culturally into the empire.