Japanese colonial forestry and treeless islands of Penghu: Afforestation project and controversy over environmental history

Abstract

Scientific forestry and its environmentalist vision influenced the modern Japanese approach to forestry in the mainland as well as its colonies. Annexed into the Japanese empire with Taiwan in 1895, the Penghu Islands played a significant role in colonial forestry in two ways: The treeless landscape gave rise to an afforestation project by colonial foresters, including Tashiro Antei, and encouraged the construction of Honda Seiroku’s understanding of forest zones and the environmental history of “devastation.” Although the plantation project in the islands did not succeed due to dry climate and strong sea breeze, Honda’s vision of Penghu with a tropical forest in the past was reinforced by Ino Kanori’s historical research and was accepted among colonial foresters in Taiwan through dispute, compromise, and a fusion of understandings. It supported the colonial forestry with an environmentalist expectation of a “reforestation” project, criticizing the Chinese population for creating the treeless landscape before the Japanese colonization. This shows a complicated relationship between scientific forestry and colonialism, in which an environmentalist idea developed parallel to the establishment of forestry science through communication between the metropole and the colony.