About This Issue
During the Japanese colonial period, the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office conducted extensive scientific surveys across the island in response to administrative, political, and economic needs. These initiatives drew numerous Japanese scholars to Taiwan, many of whom arrived with the spirit of exploration. In 1905, a scientific expedition led by botanist Takiya Kawakami was dispatched to Yushan (Mount Jade), marking the beginning of Taiwan’s age of natural history.
For the young naturalist Tadao Kano, the summer of 1928 was “the most fruitful period of my mountaineering life.” Before setting out for Zhuoshe Great Mountain, he traveled on the slow Jiji Line railway, recording with remarkable sensitivity the landscapes and local cultures of towns stretching from Ershui to Checheng. That August, Kano ascended Mount Nanhu via Piyanang. Nearly a century later, botanists still retrace his routes, searching the mountains for the invaluable traces he left behind.
The early twentieth century can be described as an era of discovery and naming in Taiwanese botany. In 1910, several plant specimens collected by Ushinosuke Mori during a cross-island expedition of the Central Mountain Range went unseen for over a hundred years. Guided by Mori’s notes and preserved specimens, later botanists returned to the old Guanmen Trail, rediscovering a barberry species long lost deep within the mountain ranges—and recording the discovery of new species in the process.
The year 2021 marked the centennial of the naming of the Wulai Rhododendron. Behind this name lies a lesser-known friendship between botanist Ernest Henry Wilson and Ryōzō Kanehira. Another pilgrim along Taiwan’s rivers was Yasuyoshi Tashiro; through his handwritten manuscripts, we can imagine the fieldwork scenes of Taiwanese oil fir surveys conducted a century ago. Botanical research in Taiwan developed in close dialogue with scientific illustration, and no figure is more central to this history than Bunzō Hayata. Completed in 1921, his ten-volume Icones Plantarum Formosanarum enabled later generations to grasp Taiwan’s botanical diversity through exquisite drawings.
Beyond Taiwan’s main island, Orchid Island (Lanyu), isolated in the Pacific, also captivated countless adventurers. In 1897, anthropologist Ryūzō Torii landed there carrying notebooks, a camera, and a pistol, becoming the first outsider to set foot on what he called the “Island of Humans.” The elderly seafarers he studied—captured on glass-plate negatives—later reclaimed pen and paper after successive regime changes, speaking in their own voices for their people and culture.
Ushinosuke Mori once dreamed of creating a “Savage Paradise,” a vision never realized in his lifetime. A century later, paradise has been redefined, resurfacing instead as a tourist destination. The Dabaoxi River basin in Sanxia, New Taipei City, offers a telling example: once the homeland of the Atayal Daba community, its disappearance, the Japanese pacification policies, and subsequent tourism development together form a microcosm of Taiwan’s forest colonial history. Likewise, today’s bustling Taipingshan in Yilan—once one of Taiwan’s three major logging sites—was a key terrain for Japanese scholarly expeditions. This issue invites readers to revisit Taipingshan of the past, catching a glimpse of the naturalists’ romantic—and sometimes scandalous—dreams.
In addition to academic expeditions, this issue also traces the development of mountaineering in colonial Taiwan, resonating with today’s enduring enthusiasm for hiking and mountain travel. As readers walk these trails, they may encounter lingering traces of the Japanese era—shrine ruins, former police outposts—silent witnesses to histories shaped by fire, conflict, and time.
The column section features trail expert Hsu Ju-lin, who recounts her first exploration of the Zhuilu Cliff Trail alongside the late Yang Nan-jun, revealing both the romance and hardship of adventure. Looking back to the early twentieth century, we encounter restless spirits moving between mountains, seas, and everyday life; from the postwar years to the present, others continue to seek what technology cannot fully grasp in the wilderness. As contributor Tsai Szu-wei writes in this issue:
“Rather than saying that the times chose these people to come to Taiwan, it may be truer to say that Taiwan entered a new era through their efforts.”
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