Science and laboratorium interventions

During its rule in​​ Taiwan, the Japanese introduced two agricultural reforms: the land tax and a mechanism for new agricultural methods. These reforms coincided with the success of Horai rice. However, the cultivation of Horai rice posed significant challenges to Taiwanese Farmers. 

Horai rice produced more yields than native Indica rice but required higher production costs. When growing Indica, Taiwanese farmers only needed manure that they could make themselves. With Horai rice, farmers had to buy chemical fertilizers and depended on government-built infrastructures for irrigation and transportation. In other words, the Taiwanese farmers fully surrendered their autonomy to the colonial government when they cultivated Horai rice.

As noted by historian Andrew Grajdanzev, “the expansion of area under Horai is therefore not so much a sign of prosperity, as it would at first sight appear, as a sign of the growing need of the farmer to pay taxes, to pay for irrigation, and to pay for the tobacco which he formerly produced himself (and is now a state monopoly)” (Grajdanzev 1942: 55).

Reference
Leow, W. Y. (2020). Horai Rice in the Making of Japanese Colonial Taiwan. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 9(1), 40-66. https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-33/leow


Grajdanzev, Andrew J. 1942. Formosa Today: An Analysis of the Economic Development and Strategic Importance of Japan’s Tropical Colony. New York: Institute of Pacific Relations.