The Japanese Colonial Origin Story

a.k.a. In Retrospect a.k.a. What I Wish I Had Known Then

I am asked a lot why or how I got into historic preservation, and specifically architectural history of early 20th-century Taiwan. It wasn’t any one thing or event, but more like an accumulation of lifetime incidents — certainly none seemed connected at the time.

The start date of all this can technically be many dates. It can be February 2020 because t…