Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-73.220.89.40-20150318192417/@comment-749631-20160109000833

As an outsider, I believe there are quite a few different factors that lead to the current sceanrio there which some sympathize Imperial Japan, including:
 * The initial occupation of Taiwan by Japanese people were 120 years away and that's too far away, and after some unrest (massacre included) during the early occupation the situation settled down without any further major incident betwwen Japan and local people, except differential treatment received by local people. But what happened back then were usually not experienced in first hand by people live in nowadays either so probably they don't know what that mean.
 * Then WWII happened, since Taiwan is already a Japanese colony for several decades, little military action were taken on Taiwan proper afaik (or relatively little), and thus what Imperial Japan damaged on Taiwan would be forced labour, comfort women, conscripting people and putting some people into jail and torture them. These can't be compared to what Japanese Army done in other area that they newly occupied and thus a different level of emotion would be understandable especially for those who have weaker sense of affiliation with the Chinese ethnicity and neglect what happened outside Taiwan back then.
 * After Japan's defeat, Republic of China rule Taiwan, and they're welcomed by local people initially. But after one or two years, tension between local people and those who come from mainland increase, causing what being known as 2.28 incident later which include a massacre that killed 18-28 thousands people according to official report, and soon after that the government enforced a martial law for more than four decades until early 1990s. It meanconsiderable amount of modern Taiwan people grow from this age, which due to the relatively high pressure policy enacted by government when martial law is enforced, most people grow up in this age would still have an emotional attachment on mainland China I suppose (but I am not sure about it).
 * Then, after the end of martial law rule, different idea surface, including the idea of an independent Taiwan, and soon it become the guiding principle for the largest opposition party (DPP). As a opposition party formed right after martial law end, it include lots of people being suppressed during the martial law age and gained support among who share similar political view. In year 2000, they become ruling party till 2008, and during the period they revised textbook and changed their use of word to make Taiwan more close to independence. As it go, people would look back on the history, and for those who don't have much attachment onto their Chinese ethnicity, they would think those bad-doing committed by Japanese Army in mainland China like massive massacre have little to do with them. Then, they look back onto what Imperial Japan have done to Taiwan, compare that with what the martial age government have done to Taiwan, some of those people would then say Imperial Japan would be better than the martial age government, which the ruling party during martial law time (KMT) is still one of the two largest party in Taiwan nowadays, but I am not entirely sure how that make some people think Imperial Japan would be good to the current Taiwan. Some arguments I have seen from Taiwan that favour Imperial Japan were that they've built many infrastructure and opened some institute in Taiwan, but these doesn't make those people sympathize Imperial Japan. I've yet to met someone who actually have sympathy on Imperial Japan from Japan thus I can't really talk about what they think.

On the other hand, I think it's not unique to Taiwan, for instance as I read from Wikipedia few weeks ago, after WWII, in the Mariana Islands, the different in feeling towards Japan among those islands rule by Japan since the end of WWI's German defeat and those islands once acquired by Japan during the WWII resulted in some serious conflict, and in both North and South Korea there's a need of decolonization from their government which even nowadays South Korea government placed some regulations on Japanese cultural product, and in North East China which were ruled by a Japanese proxy government sonce 1931, according to what I read on Chinese internet, there're some intra-regional divide on the topic if emotion against Japan due to individual experience during the era.