This study intends to clarify the development of the Taiwanese electric power industry by analyzing the Jitsugetsutan Project during the interwar period. Taiwan was then under Japanese colonial rule. The project has therefore been traditionally referred to in the literature as an example of a special enterprise established and owned by the Japanese government in order to strengthen its military sector under its “southern advance” policy.
In this study, the author attempts to re-examine such traditional views on the role of the project by tracing the project from its planning stage to completion. The analysis sheds new light on the relationship between the Taiwanese colonial government and the trends of related markets, especially the financial market in Japan and the state of demand for electric power that the enterprise was expected to supply.
Our analysis reveals that the project, which was initiated in 1919, had to be cancelled once in 1926 because of the banking crisis and the lack of demand in the first half of the 1920s. When the project was resumed in 1928, it was the chemical fertilizer industry that turned out to be a potential and major consumer of its electric power. However, the final plans changed again. The aluminum industry was to become the major consumer of its electric power in 1932.
This re-examination leads to the conclusion that the project was not based on the military goals of the Japanese government but on the industrial policy of the Taiwanese colonial government and the economic motivation of the Japanese industry. Although it is undeniable that the completion of the project brought a rapid growth of the aluminum industry and it consequently strengthened military power a great deal, this should be interpreted as the effect of the project, not as its cause.
