Upriver Empire: Imperial Japan, Watersheds, and Dispossession in Colonial Taiwan

Observers of environmental policy in Japan have long celebrated an approach towards ameliorating lowland flooding that emphasizes planting trees in upland watersheds–what is called chisan chisui (治山治水). In this talk, I interrogate both the conceptual foundations of this strategy and its consequences for peoples in spaces colonized by the Japanese Empire. In the early 1910s, devastating inundations of Taiwan’s coastal areas led Japanese colonial foresters to travel upriver into mountainous areas. Driven by the conviction that attacking the problem of flooding at its source required controlling headwater areas, there they came to define highland Indigenous environmental practice–rather than natural conditions–as the fundamental cause of downstream flooding. Taming Taiwan’s chaotic rivers thus entailed not only afforestation and hydraulic infrastructure but also violently reforming Indigenous livelihoods. Though contested, this interpretation of chisan chisui became dominant in colonial Taiwan.