Happy Water Tiger Year
According to the Chinese zodiacal calendar, this year of the tiger began on the new moon of February 1, 2022. Many know of the cycle of twelve Chinese zodiac animals, but fewer people know of the cycle of five elements. While each animal rules a year (thus taking twelve years to complete a cycle), each element rules an animal in succession — in other words, each animal has a wood, fire, earth, metal, and water version. All told, when the combinations of elements and animals run through their full cycle, it takes sixty years to return to the same element-animal combination. This is why the 60th birthday in Chinese cultures is such a big deal.
With that baseline introduction out of the way, the purpose of this post is going back in time to find the year of the water tiger during the Japanese colonial era. Keep in mind that although Taiwan (both the geographical environment and the ethnolinguistic culture) became “Japanified”, the culture has always retained much of its Chinese heritage. For example, the five elements in Japan is slightly different (instead of metal, the Japanese version is air — but Taiwan has always maintained the Chinese version). The Japanese don’t celebrate a lunar new year, but Taiwanese people always have.
If we count backwards to the last water tiger year(s), we get:
2022 - 60 = 1962 (about halfway through KMT martial law period)
1962 - 60 = 1902 (seven years into the colonial period)
And so we find ourselves in 1902 Taiwan. At the top of the food chain is Gentarō Kodama, the fourth governor-general of Japan’s colony. His path to this position was a little different from his predecessors. The imperial “org chart” mandated top military officials as the only ones professionally qualified to govern colonial territories. While the others were appointed as part of their military duties, Kodama actively sought the position. He was friends with the third governor-general, who didn’t particularly like this part of his assigned portfolio — Taiwan at the time was a backwoods, malaria-infested outpost, overrun with small-time merchant Chinese immigrants and savage indigenous tribes. At one point he had suggested Taiwan be sold back to the Qing dynasty, or perhaps to the French.
Kodama heard his friend’s complaints and simply said, “It’s not that the natives are difficult to control. It’s that you have people who don’t know how to manage a colony.” And so he lobbied to become the governor-general and eventually got his way, starting his tenure in February 1898 (just shy of three years after Taiwan became a Japanese colony). His first order of business: fire 1080 staffers for incompetence. His second order of business: hire Shinpei Gotō. (Arguably, it could have been the other way around; Kodama was also good friends with Gotō.)
Of his eight years as the fourth governor-general of Taiwan, Kodama really spent only two years on the island — the rest of the time he was off fighting in other parts of Asia to add territory to the empire of Japan. He left the business of modernizing the island to his capable civilian governor, Gotō. It was under Gotō’s vision and leadership that Taiwan’s infrastructure began to take shape, forming the foundation for the Taiwan that exists today. A doctor by training, and while still working as the Sanitation Bureau chief of mainland Japan, Gotō visited Taiwan in 1896 as a consultant and suggested various plans to improve the hygiene issues of the island. When he returned as the de facto #1 of the colony, he brought with him William Kinnimond Burton, a Scottish water engineer, and together they set to work in transforming the sanitation infrastructure of Taiwan. The Gotō-Burton team was responsible for building the underground sewage system, canals to drain the island of typhoon rainwater, and developing a system for potable water. Gotō also recruited Inazō Nitobe, an agricultural economist who, among his many credits, was responsible for developing the sugar industry of Taiwan and setting in motion the long-term forestry plan that would have become a major source of lumber for Japan — thus supplying the imperial homeland the way Egypt supplied Rome.
Kodama would leave office in April 1906, but Gotō stayed on for two more years until 1908. However, by 1905 (ten years after the colony began), Taiwan was economically self-sustaining and independent from Japanese government budgetary support. That was because Gotō’s efforts resulted in a road network that was triple its original size, a postal system and news network established and fully functioning, communications systems (telephone/telegraph) also established, and the Bank of Taiwan organized and in full operation to support import/export economics. The brutal military police force had been reorganized to a more civilized (but nonetheless strict) community-based policing system. The water infrastructure planning and execution that began under Gotō’s tenure was the basis for the famed irrigation network in Tainan’s WuShanTou Reservoir. Built by water engineer Yoichi Hatta, who was first assigned to work for Burton’s Japanese protégé, the story of a barren wasteland turned into lush rice fields has taken on alchemical proportions, with Hatta practically revered as a demi-god in southern Taiwan. And it all started with Shinpei Gotō, a medical doctor who just wanted to clean up the water system in Taiwan for better hygiene and public health.
And so we come back to the water tiger, and its significations. The tiger is one-half of the most powerful animal pair in Chinese mythology — the yin to the yang of the dragon. The tiger is inherently defensive, and represents earth and matter (while the dragon is offensive, and represents heaven and spirituality). While the dragon was traditionally adopted by Chinese emperors as a sigil, it was only when an emperor ruled with absolute virtue and honor that a mythical white tiger would make an appearance. That’s because although the dragon signified strength and power, a tiger signified courage and leadership. And water? Considered full yin, water represents intelligence and wisdom, elegance and adaptability. Let’s hope the 2022 water tiger is as forward-thinking and ambitious as the 1902 water tiger was.
To learn more about the genius that was Shinpei Gotō, read his biography written by the current president of JICA (the Japanese government agency responsible for providing economic and developmental aid to developing countries) — Gotō Shinpei: Statesman of Vision.
For a brief rundown of the colonial era governors, check out the @JapaneseColonial Instagram page and look for the highlights titled “Governors”.
Special thanks to my uncle, Komei Kure, who first suggested back in 2010 that I read Inazō Nitobe’s Bushido: The Soul of Japan and then later in 2018 that I look up William Kinnimond Burton. Neither of us knew then that some day I would be looking to Shinpei Gotō as my role model for urban planning and economic reform. Well, maybe my uncle knew — my mother tells me he has always had shelves lined with books dedicated to Shinpei Gotō in his study.