Maps Tell Stories I:Grandma's Bound Feet and the "Taiwan Bao" Maps

This map of rates of foot binding among women in Taiwan in 1930 was drawn by Yap Ko-hua using statistical data from the era of Japanese administration. From the distributions of regions of high foot-binding frequency on the map, we can see that this practice was not a custom among all ethnic groups. This "perverse game" wasn't played in Aboriginal areas, where the cultural conventions differed markedly from those of the Han Chinese, nor in areas heavily populated by the Hakka, where women had to do the farming. The phenomenon of foot binding was pretty much confined to Hoklo areas.

There were also disparities within the Hoklo regions. The areas with the highest concentration of foot binding were heavily Hoklo populated regions like Tanshui and Hsinchuang in the north, as well as Penghu and Tainan, where 20-30% of women had bound feet. On this basis, it can be seen that people were less likely to disregard established social norms in places with higher ethnic homogeneity and stronger identification. It appears that in central Taiwan the proportion of Hoklo-assimilated Hakka was quite large, and many Han Chinese men had Aboriginal wives. But because it was so long ago, further research is needed to uncover the truth.

Nevertheless, this isn't the greatest value of the map: take a look at the administrative divisions. Not quite the same as today's, are they? The basic divisions from the "Taiwan Bao" maps are formed by machi and sho-the smallest administrative units during the Japanese occupation. The machi (towns) were more populated urban centers, whereas sho (villages) were rural places with sizes similar to today's villages. The reconstructed map is packed with interesting information.

Searching high and low

Starting in 1898, the Japanese created the Taiwan Bao maps over a period of over six years. It's the first complete set of maps of Taiwan constructed using modern cartographical techniques, and as such is extremely important for research into Taiwan's history. However, three sheets of this map set-Keelung, Kaohsiung and Penghu-were designated as military strongholds during the Japanese occupation and as such were kept from public view. Generations of geographers after the war were unable to locate them.

Yap made the hunt for these lost maps a major life goal. He searched high and low, visiting libraries large and small throughout Taiwan, and joined private map collectors' clubs. He also consulted the military, and even went to search in Japan's National Diet Library, but as before found nothing. Then one day, out of the blue, the missing maps were discovered in the US Library of Congress by an Academia Sinica researcher, who brought copies back to Taiwan.

The Taiwan Bao maps are valuable for historical research of Taiwan, but they were once an important tool for Japanese control over every inch of Taiwan during the period of colonization. Shown here is a 1921 revision of the Changhua sheet of the maps.

Yap's secret technique

Images of the entire set of Taiwan Bao maps can be browsed at the Academia Sinica website Taiwan History and Culture in Time and Space. But Yap's magnum opus is the product of incomparable patience: he spent three years mapping the boundaries of 2,991 machi and sho from 466 sheets of the Taiwan Bao maps, and digitizing them through GIS technology. But for what purpose?

The Japanese kept copious statistical records during their occupation of Taiwan, but this information was recorded based on the administrative divisions of the time. For this reason, missing sheets of the Taiwan Bao maps and unknown or undigitized administrative boundaries have meant that most historical research on this data has been on the national level, without clearly distinguishing differences at the local level.

Now that Yap has digitized the machi and sho boundaries using GIS technology, he is able to accurately incorporate the data into the regions, such as the foot-binding data from his 1930 map, obtaining a clear representation of spatial distributions.

This is something only cartography guru Yap has done!