1935 Taiwan Colonial Exposition

When we think about modern exposition culture, we usually think of world’s fairs held in the West—the Great London Exhibition of 1851 with its Crystal Palace, the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889 with the iconic Eiffel Tower, and the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 with its White City. Rarely do we think about similar expositions held outside of the West, let alone one held on an island colony ruled not by a Western power, but an Asian one.

The 1935 Taiwan Exposition was one such fair. As the largest and most extravagant exposition to be held in Taiwan during its half-century long colonization by Japan from 1895 to 1945, the 1935 Taiwan Colonial Exposition is a treasure trove for exploring contesting claims and strategies of how to present Taiwan through the eyes of a modern Asian empire.

Taiwan became Japan’s first formal colony in 1895 after being ceded to Meiji Japan by China’s Qing government after the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). As the only Asian nation to successfully modernize and mold itself in the image of a modern European-style empire, Japan was eager to promote this new acquisition to its domestic and foreign audiences alike as its “model colony.” One of the venues to achieve this goal was through various kinds of exhibitions.

Prior to Japanese colonialism, Taiwan had a diverse makeup including a Han Chinese majority who had migrated from the southeastern Chinese provinces of Fujian and Guangdong since the seventeenth century, and dozens of Austronesian indigenous populations whose roots on the island extended back roughly 8,000 years.

This online exhibition for Asia at the World’s Fairs explores how architectue was used by imperial Japan to represent varying claims of “Taiwanese-ness” to different audiences. This exhibition will take the audience not only to the 1935 Exposition itself, but strives to situate the fair within the larger theme of architectural production in Taiwan before, during, and after the fair.