The Names Were Changed to Protect the Citizenship

"Now that you mention it, this is also something the American military helped out with," points out Shiryu Otaki, the owner of a produce shop in Ishigaki Island. During the US military era, Taiwanese immigrants gained the right of permanent residence, but they had to return to Taiwan every so often to go through a procedure, which was troublesome. Therefore, when the US returned the Ryukyus to Japan, they expressed the wish to "change over to Japanese citizenship as quickly as possible" on behalf of Taiwanese immigrants; only then did the heretofore invariably xenophobic government of Japan reluctantly agree to arrange citizenship for Taiwanese immigrants.

What's in a Name?: The citizenship process was complex and time-consuming. Shiryu Otaki, who came to Ishigaki in his teens, was successful only after the application had been entered for four or five years. Kanei Goya, who was born in Ishigaki and whose parents had settled here during the era of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, was nineteen years old before he and his parents all received citizenship. In the Japanese occupation era, the "Taiwan identity card" and Japanese citizenship were two quite different things. If you wanted to become a Japanese citizen, it was necessary to adopt a Japanese surname. This regulation, which is rarely seen in immigration laws anywhere in the world, made Taiwanese immigrants even more hesitant.

Chinese are extremely sensitive and meticulous about lineage and surnames, but laid out in front of them were naked practical questions of gain and loss: If they did not become citizens, they could not acquire the rented land which they had invested so much effort to pioneer, could not leave their land holdings or houses to their children, could not get jobs as civil servants, could not vote, and they would face discrimination in both schooling and employment. They would never be able to assimilate into Japanese society.

Still Looking Out for Future Generations: Caught between a rock and a hard place, Taiwanese immigrants made some compromises: Accept a name change to become a citizen, but retain the original Chinese characters as much as possible. Thus, for example, Yono Ota simply added the character tien (field) to his original Chinese surname Wang to make his Japanese surname "Ota." (Chinese surnames commonly have only one character, Japanese surnames usually two or more). Similarly, there are the surnames Kyota, Kanta, Takada, Sone, or Harimoto, which are two-character compounds, the first character being the same as a common Chinese surname. Lin's were able to keep the same Chinese character for their surname, giving it the pronunciation Hayashi, which is common in Japanese. In other cases, a Chen family may cut away part of the character, using only the radical, which then becomes the first character in a Japanese surname, Togo, or the surname Huang may have an extra radical added to it to become the first character in the Japanese surname Yokoyama. Countless in number, and each wondrously resourceful, they ultimately hope that their descendants can remember their original surnames through these clues.

"This is a very sincere, attractive aspect to those Taiwanese immigrants who established themselves in agriculture," notes Chien Jui-hung, a staffer at the Council for Cultural Planning and Development, who has a rich knowledge of Taiwanese immigrants in Ishigaki. The overseas Chinese in the Yokohama-Nagasaki belt, because most of them are in commerce and place greater emphasis on interpersonal relations and social status, usually adopted the most common Japanese surnames when they became citizens, like Yamamoto or Fukuda, so that they could completely assimilate into Japanese society. When you look at these two markedly different mindsets, it makes you wonder.

[Picture Caption]

This plot of land is where Taiwanese graves are concentrated. Among them, collective graves of people from the same hometown accepted many Taiwanese who came to Ishigaki alone. In front of the photo is Otaki's son. (photo by Huang Lili)