It is from 1900 onward that modern cane sugar manufacturing companies were founded in Japan, when Taiwan Sugar Manufacturing Corporation was established in Taiwan, then a Japanese colony. As early as 1865, the Satsuma clan introduced modern cane sugar manufacturing technology from Britain and Holland. Since the Meiji Restoration, though the Meiji government also transferred various kinds of modern sugar technologies from the West, and to some extent acquired mechanical engineering technology for beet sugar at Monbetsu Seitosho (beet sugar manufacturing company) in Hokkaido, cane sugar technology transfer was unsuccessful because sugar-cane cultivation was not very suitable for the Japanese climate. As a consequence of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, however, China was forced to cede Taiwan to Japan. Taiwan's climate was very suitable for sugar-cane cultivation.
Since around 1899, the Government General of Taiwan and Mitsui Bussan formed a project to establish a modern cane sugar manufacturing company. They spent a mere two or three years to accomplish this project. This paper investigates the reasons for such a short time span between the project's inception and its accomplishment.
