Elements of Japanese rural policy—modernization campaigns, farmers’ organizations, and land reform—can also be found in Taiwan and South Korea. This convergence of rural development policies partially stems from U.S. influence over the region in the immediate postwar period, at least with respect to land reform. It also derives from active learning on the part of Taiwanese and Korean policymakers, who view Japan as a model of successful rural development.70 More importantly, however, rural policy convergence in East Asia is a legacy of the Japanese colonial era. Chapters 3 and 4 of this study address the colonial origins of farmers’ organizations in postwar Taiwan and rural campaigns in postwar Korea. To avoid redundancy, this section focuses not on the origins of postwar policies but rather the effects of colonial policy on rural development in these countries.
There is a consensus among scholars that Japanese colonialism had an overall positive effect on Taiwan’s agricultural development. As was the case with colonialism in other parts of the world, Japan monopolized the colonial administration, controlled the most lucrative parts of the economy (the sugar industry), and extracted heavily from the rural sector, which had the effect of suppressing rural consumption despite gains in agricultural production.71 Japanese authorities did not, however, conform to the normal colonial pattern of neglecting agriculture. Under the policy of “Industrial Japan, Agricultural Taiwan,” the colonial government engineered a shift from subsistence to export agriculture, transforming Taiwan into a major supplier of rice, sugar and other agricultural products for Japan’s domestic market.72 In Tun-jen Cheng’s words,
70 Moore 1988: 119-120. 71 Clark 1987: 332-333. 72 Liao et al. 1986: 5.
“Japan took a high cost and high yield approach to colonizing Taiwan, pursuing extensive programs for economic growth before exploiting the proceeds.”73
In the early 1900s Japan developed modern systems of transport, taxation, finance, education, and administration in Taiwan. Before Japan arrived, Taiwan had almost no roads or railways, but by 1908 the two major harbors of Keelung and Kaohsiung were connected by railway, and by 1940 Taiwan had over 900 kilometers of railways and over 12,000 kilometers of roads.74 The government introduced a standardized system of weights and measurements in 1904, and completed a cadastral survey in 1905. These reforms clarified property rights in
Taiwan and greatly facilitated tax collection.75 Currency reform was also carried out in 1905, and the number of financial institutions (banks and cooperatives) expanded from zero in 1898 to more than 400 by the late 1920s.76 In addition, the government expanded access to education, albeit in limited ways.77 Literacy, defined as the ability to read and write Japanese, rose from 1% in 1905 to 27% in 1940, and enrollment in primary school rose from 8.7% in 1905 to 71% in
73 Cheng 2001: 20. There are at least two reasons for this deviation from the normal pattern of colonialism. First, economic policy in Taiwan was “predetermined by its assigned role in the Japanese empire.” In Korea, where industry was prioritized, less attention was paid to
agriculture; see Cheng 2001: 19. Taiwan was likely assigned this role because its subtropical climate allows for the cultivation of several crops per year; see Ho 1978: 1. Second, Taiwan needed an effective state to transfer the agricultural surplus to Japan. However, unlike Korea, Taiwan did not have a well-developed pre-existing administrative structure, so state-building efforts were much greater there; see Cheng 2001: 21.
74 Huang 2006: 44-45. Of Japan’s total expenditures in Taiwan for the 1898-1939 period, about 62% went to transport and communication, and about 15% went to agriculture; see Ho 1978: 28- 29, 35-36.
75 Huang 2006: 44-45; Koo 1968: 9; Stavis 1974: 35; Gallin 1966: 16. The colonial government became self-financing in 1904, largely due to the efficiency of its taxation system; see Lee 1971: 40.
76 Huang 2006: 44-45; Ho 1978: 28-29. 77
1943.78 Perhaps most importantly, an effective system of government administration was
established that, for the first time in Taiwanese history, “penetrated right down to the villages.”79 Taiwan’s agricultural sector underwent a green revolution in the 1920s-1930s, which is remarkable considering it occurred a full 40 years before the rest of Asia. The green revolution, which involved the adoption of chemical fertilizers, high-yield varieties of rice, and new
cultivation practices, can be traced to at least three factors—changes in irrigation, land tenure, and the provision of agricultural extension services.
Before 1900, rice cultivation was uncommon in Taiwan because of undeveloped
irrigation systems. Most farmers engaged in dry farming, growing wheat, soybeans, sorghum and sweet potatoes as staples.80 In 1901 the government initiated an irrigation program aimed at drought prevention and the expansion of paddy land.81 Between 1906 and 1942, irrigated farmland expanded from 200,000 to 545,000 hectares, or from 32% to 64% of total cultivated land.82
Japan also carried out a land reform program that simplified Taiwan’s tenure system. In 1905 the colonial authorities forced Taiwan’s “big landlords” to give up their rents in exchange for government bonds and conferred property rights on “small landlords.” The traditional three- level tenure system of large absentee landlords, small landlords and tenants was reduced to a
78 Ho 1978: 33, 99-100, 104; Gold 1986: 45-46. 79 Wade 2004: 232.
80 Gallin 1966: 15-16. 81 Lee 1971: 44.
82 The government shouldered nearly 60% of the cost of irrigation, and irrigation associations covered the rest; see Ho 1978: 36-37.
two-level system of landlords and tenants.83 Under pressure to meet regular tax payments, the new landlord class (former small landlords) became leaders of the “pao-chia” system and worked with Japanese authorities to stimulate agricultural production through the promotion of new seed varieties and cultivation practices.84
In addition to using the pao-chia system and the police, Japan developed an extensive system of farmers’ organizations (agricultural associations and cooperatives) to provide
agricultural extension services. By the 1930s there were 40,000 people employed by the farmers’ organizations, or approximately 1 worker for every 32 rural households.85 In the 1920s-1930s chemical fertilizer use became common and farmers started growing a high yield variety of “ponlai” rice, which resulted in a 45% increase in rice yields.86 Taiwan’s green revolution resulted in remarkable growth rates—agricultural production grew 5.12% annually during the 1920s and 3.32% annually in the 1930s.87 Much less clear, however, is the effect of the green revolution on rural living standards. While Taiwanese sources tend to emphasize the poverty and insecurity inherent in the prewar farm tenancy system, Alice Amsden has suggested that
83 Gallin 1966: 89; Ho 1978: 44-45, 330; Koo 1968: 12; Amsden 1985: 79-81.
84 Gold 1986: 37; Lee 1971: 41. The pao-chia system was a community-based policing and defense system used throughout China during the Qing dynasty.
85 Stavis 1974: 62; Cheng 2001: 21; Ho 1978: 64.
86 Yager 1988: 48-49; Stavis 1974: 7; Kay 2002: 1082; Francks 1999: 164-165; Liao et al. 1986: 5. Taiwan started using chemical fertilizers in 1910, and fertilizer consumption grew to the second highest level in Asia in the 1930s; see Ho 1978: 52, 153. Ho writes that the spread of ponlai rice “may have been the single most important agricultural innovation” of the colonial period; see Ho 1978: 59-60.
Taiwanese farmers actually enjoyed a higher standard of living than Japanese farmers, in terms of housing, clothing, bank deposits and other indices.88
Finally, Japanese colonialism affected Taiwan’s pattern of industrialization in a way that benefited the rural sector. Decentralized, rural industrialization in Taiwan dates back to the development of the sugar and food processing industries in the colonial period. In 1930 the food processing industry accounted for 64% of all registered factories, 55% of factory employment and 76% of total factory production.89 In the late-1930s Japan moved several of its industries to Taiwan, mostly for security purposes during the war. These included shipbuilding, oil refining, pulp, basic metals, textiles, and fertilizers. Taiwan was still an agrarian society at the end of the colonial period, but in Samuel Ho’s words, it “had an industrial superstructure to provide a strong foundation for future industrialization.”90
In the postwar period, dispersed rural industries provided farmers with off-farm sources of income. Ho reports that rural areas absorbed 46% of all newly hired workers in the
manufacturing sector between 1956 and 1966.91 This pattern had important income distribution benefits; rural incomes more than doubled between 1952 and 1972, mostly as a result off-farm activities.92 Like Japan, Taiwan experienced a dramatic rise in part-time farming in the postwar period. Taiwan’s share of part-time farm households in total rural households increased from
88 Amsden 1979: 348; Amsden 1985: 79-82. 89 Ho 1978: 70-72.
90 Ho 1978: 90. See also Clark 1987: 332; Hsiao 1981: 41-42. 91 Ho 1979a: 83.
about 51% in 1960 to 91% in 1980, after which it declined only slightly.93 It is fair to say that the effects of the “developmental squeeze on agriculture” in Taiwan were partially mitigated by the availability of off-farm rural employment. Compared to South Korea, where little effort was made until the 1970s to develop rural industry,94 Taiwan’s postwar development was more equitable.
The Japanese colonial government in Korea took similar steps to modernize its systems of transport, taxation, finance, education and administration. Most importantly, a comprehensive cadastral survey was carried out in 1910-1918, which legally recognized private ownership rights to land, formalized the position of landlords and tenants, and provided a foundation for land taxation. As a result of this survey, Atul Kohli writes, “the colonial state secured a revenue base and, less obviously, enhanced its control over the Korean agrarian sector by bringing in the landowning classes as ruling partners.” Kohli continues, “The relatively successful penetration by the Japanese colonial state of the agrarian periphery then stands out as a fairly unique display of state efficacy in the comparative history of colonialism.”95 Unlike the case of Taiwan,
however, Japanese colonial authorities were focused on developing heavy industry instead of
93 Huang 1993: 51; Liao et al. 1986: 4.
94 These different patterns of industrialization in South Korea and Taiwan may be attributed to different initial conditions and postwar economic policies. Whereas the KMT prioritized agro- processing and rural industrialization, the Park regime focused on manufactured goods and urban industrialization. The KMT may have pursued rural industrialization not only because of
Taiwan’s pre-existing colonial infrastructure, but also because of the KMT’s need for rural legitimacy. As discussed in Chapter 4, one goal of Factory Saemaul in Korea was to encourage the industrialization of rural areas, but this was largely a failed effort. Since this campaign was launched well after the cities had industrialized, factory owners found it more costly to operate out of rural areas.
agriculture. In fact, the Korean agricultural sector was largely neglected until after the Japanese Rice Riots of 1918.
Though not on the scale of Taiwan, the Japanese government in Korea implemented several important agricultural programs in the 1920s-1930s as part of a “Rice Production Increase Plan.” A network of farmers’ organizations, similar to the ones in Japan and colonial Taiwan, was expanded to implement the state’s policies in the villages.96 High yield varieties were promoted, and the share of paddy land planted with the new varieties increased from about 39% in 1917 to over 85% in 1936. Chemical fertilizer consumption rose from only 400 metric tons in 1917 to over 522,000 metric tons in 1936.97 The total amount of irrigated land also increased by about 10% a year between 1919 and 1938.98 The result of these efforts was substantial growth in rice output. Yields increased from 1.7 tons per hectare in 1920 to 2.5 tons per hectare in 1940, and overall output grew steadily at about 3% a year during this same period.99
These gains did not, however, improve the living conditions of farmers in Korea. The landlord class comprised less than 4% of rural population but controlled about 64% of all farmland; and Japanese landlords in particular controlled about 40% of all farmland. Tenancy conditions were similar to, if not worse than, those in Taiwan and Japan.100 The Rural
Revitalization Campaign, extended to Korea in the 1930s, managed to reduce tenancy disputes
96 Wade writes that Japan first established Irrigation Associations in Korea in 1908, a full two years before Japan formally annexed Korea; see Wade 1982: 24.
97 Keidel 1981: 89-90. 98 Kohli 2004: 45.
99 Wade 1982: 24-25; Keidel 1981: 89; Kohli 2004: 45.
temporarily, but it did not greatly improve Korean living standards.101 Under the tight
supervision of the colonial agro-bureaucracy, Korea was forced to export about 30% of its rice to Japan in the period 1925-1945.102 As this amount exceeded the gains in production, rice
consumption in Korea actually declined in the 1920s-1930s.103
Japanese colonialism may have resulted in the “spectacular industrialization of the peninsula,”104 but it also created widespread starvation conditions in the countryside. Albert Keidel writes of 1930s Korea:
Japanese statistics show that the numbers of rural people searching through the woods and fields for edible bark, grasses and nuts during the period of ‘spring hunger’ before winter barley harvests passed 50 percent of the rural population, and for landless tenant farmers the incidence of spring hunger was greater than 70 percent in the southern half of the country.105
Moreover, Keidel reports, more than 1 million Koreans, mostly from the southern agricultural provinces, migrated to Japan and Manchuria during the 1930s to escape poverty conditions at home.106
Finally, the southern half of Korea remained predominantly agricultural throughout the colonial period. As most industrial infrastructure (including fertilizer plants) was concentrated in
101 Shin & Han 1999. 102 Park 1998: 9-10.
103 Kohli 2004: 46; Hsiao 1981: 74-75; Ladejinsky 1977: 57; Burmeister 1988: 34; Brandt 1971: 81. Steinberg estimates that rice consumption, measured per person per year, declined from 111.5 kilograms in 1912 to 80.2 kilograms in 1944 (compared to 157 kilograms in Japan); see Steinberg 1982: 14.
104 Quote from Keidel 1981: 15. For an analysis of colonialism’s effect on postwar industrialization, see Eckert 1991; Kohli 2004.
105 Keidel 1981: 20. 106 Keidel 1981: 20.
the north, South Korea’s initial postwar conditions were less favorable than North Korea. And lacking the kind of decentralized agro-processing industry found in Taiwan, South Korea in the postwar period followed a more clearly urban-biased development pattern of rural extraction for the sake of urban industrialization.107
In summary, the legacy of Japanese colonialism is important insofar as it helps explain the origins of postwar rural development policies in South Korea and Taiwan. However, it by no means had a purely positive effect on the rural development experiences of these countries. High levels of extraction in Korea clearly impoverished the countryside. In Taiwan, the effects of colonialism on rural living standards are less clear, but heavy extraction and exploitative tenancy conditions ensured that the state, not the peasantry, was the primary beneficiary of Taiwan’s green revolution. Taiwan’s decentralized pattern of industrialization helped to mitigate the effects of urban-bias on income distribution in the postwar period, but this variable alone does not explain the Taiwanese case.
The strong performance of Taiwan’s agricultural sector in the 1950s-1960s is mostly related to the Taiwanese state’s emphasis on technological and institutional development. Taiwan’s network of farmers’ organizations was quickly revived and went on to play an extremely important role in rural development. South Korea inherited the same “elaborate agricultural research and extension service” as Taiwan, but the Rhee government dismantled it and “did almost nothing to replace it.”108 It was not until the 1960s that the Korean government tried to re-construct a system of farmers’ organizations, but as discussed in the following chapters, it played a much less important role in Korean rural development than in Taiwan.
107 Ho 1979b; Ranis 1995. 108 Ban et al. 1980: 269.