Imperial Gateway.

Having loved A City of Sadness (see this post), I decided to read Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan’s Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945 by Seiji Shirane and now that I’ve finished it, I’m impressed enough to recommend it to anyone interested in the topic (according to that Amazon link, the Kindle version is free at the moment). I’ll quote some passages of linguistic interest:

Although Taiwanese interpreters left few written accounts from Xiamen, recollections published in The China Incident and Kyokuei Academy (1940) provide a brief glimpse—albeit through the lens of Japanese censors—into their activities. According to Xu Rongzong, he and his Taiwanese colleagues in Xiamen translated for the navy and helped supervise Chinese construction workers. Xu’s Japanese colleague, Gotō Kaoru (also a teacher from Xiamen Kyokuei Academy), recalled that their duties included interpreting for Japanese interrogators of Chinese prisoners and spies; serving as local guides for military personnel; and promoting Japanese war propaganda.

There were occasions when Taiwanese interpreters could not understand the spoken Chinese of GMD soldiers, whether it was Mandarin or a dialect from outside South China. Most Taiwanese had never received formal Mandarin education in Taiwan, and their spoken Chinese was generally limited to the southern Chinese dialects. In Guangzhou, they also had trouble with the Cantonese dialect, which was mutually unintelligible with the Taiwanese dialects. Indeed, some Japanese army commanders complained that most Taiwanese could not understand Cantonese. In cases where Taiwanese had problems understanding the Chinese, they resorted to “brush talk” (J. hitsudan, C. bitan)—written communication through Chinese characters.

To meet the military’s increasing demand for trained Taiwanese interpreters in various Chinese dialects, the Taiwan Government-General inaugurated three-month-long “Training Workshops to Prepare Those Entering South China.” Held five times in Taipei Commercial Higher School from 1938 to 1940, each workshop offered a “South China Curriculum” for one hundred Taiwanese males at least eighteen years old with upper-level primary education or equivalent Japanese-language proficiency. Over two-thirds of the curriculum consisted of Chinese-language classes: Mandarin (96 hours), Cantonese dialect (50 hours), Xiamen dialect (12 hours), and Fuzhou dialect (12 hours).

Since most Taiwanese spoke a form of the Xiamen or Fuzhou dialects or could learn them quickly, more hours were spent studying Mandarin and Cantonese. While Taiwanese teachers were placed in charge of the Fujian dialect classes, Japanese were assigned to teach Mandarin and Cantonese. The Taiwan Education Bureau appointed Tanemura Yasusaburō, a high-ranking translation official, for Mandarin and Yamashita Noboru, a Japanese businessman with years of experience in Guangzhou, for Cantonese. The curriculum also offered two content courses: “South China Affairs” (24 hours), taught by Taipei Commercial Higher School professor Satō Tasuku, and “Elevating the Imperial Spirit of Those Entering South China” (12 hours), taught by Taipei Imperial University professor Gotō Shunzui. Thus the workshops relied on existing Taiwanese linguistic skills for Xiamen and Fuzhou dialects, yet delegated instruction of Mandarin, Cantonese, and ideological content to Japanese experts. Hundreds of Taiwanese youth completed the training workshops before being deployed to South China as interpreters and policemen.

Yet the linguistic training did not account for the local dialect in Hainan, which was distinct from the Fujianese and Cantonese dialects. So when several thousand Taiwanese military assistants were sent by the navy for guerrilla warfare against Chinese troops in Hainan in 1939, many were unprepared to communicate with local residents. According to Zhang Zijing, the Cantonese he studied in Taiwan did not help him understand Hainanese, so he had to learn the latter from a local Chinese teacher. To help Japanese and Taiwanese learn the various southern Chinese dialects, the Government-General published a series of language primers. In 1941, Wang Jinxiu and Chen Shaozong—Taiwanese interpreters and Japanese-language teachers in Hainan—compiled A Practical Intensive Hainanese Reader, while the Taiwan Southern Regions Association published Colloquial Hainanese.

From a later chapter:

Unlike Malaya and the Philippines, where the number of Taiwanese quickly declined, Siam offered new Taiwanese opportunities after 1937. In part, this was because the Thai government quickly cracked down on overseas Chinese boycotts to maintain good relations with Japan. It was also due to support by the Taiwan Government-General, which provided financial aid to Taiwanese merchants who remained in Siam to market Japanese products; it also dispatched Taiwanese graduates of Taipei Commercial Higher School to the Bangkok offices of Japanese companies. Taiwanese youth were given travel and language-study funds to work as business interns in Siam, where they quickly picked up the Thai language. By 1940, the Japan Trade Office head in Bangkok observed: “Japanese merchants are at a disadvantage competing with the overseas Chinese, but we now have Taiwanese who share their language, customs, and lifestyle and serve as our commercial warriors (shōgyō senshi). Before 1937 there were only ten Taiwanese stores in Bangkok, but now there are sixty successful ones.” There were over 150 Taiwanese in Siam by the eve of the Asia-Pacific War, with the majority working in commerce.

The Taiwan Southern Regions Association, founded by the Government-General in 1939, was also instrumental in training prospective Taiwanese settlers to Southeast Asia. Enlisting scholars from Taipei Imperial University and Taipei Commercial Higher School, the association taught relevant foreign languages including French, Vietnamese, Dutch, Malay, Thai, and Tagalog. Taipei Imperial University professor Shimada Kinji oversaw French instruction while other languages rarely studied in Taiwan, such as Vietnamese, were taught by native speakers recruited from Indochina. Asai Erin, a Taipei Imperial University linguistics professor, edited language textbooks such as Malay Primer and Vietnamese Primer.
[…]

Indigenous Taiwanese had a linguistic advantage over other colonial subjects that allowed them to mediate between Japanese soldiers and indigenous residents. With their shared Austronesian linguistic affinities, indigenous Taiwanese quickly picked up local indigenous languages in the Philippines and New Guinea. Pasao (b. 1924, C. Zheng Wangjinzong, Amis tribe) recalled learning Visayan and Tagalog in his spare time from Filipino children, noting that his native Amis language was quite similar to Visayan since they were from the same Austronesian family. In New Guinea, Pawan Taimo (b. 1924, J. Satō Toshiaki, C. Liao Xinyi, Atayal tribe) quickly learned the local Papuan language and interpreted for his Japanese officers. He established cordial relations with indigenous chiefs by exchanging gifts such as Japanese cigarettes and alcohol for pigs. Pawan also taught the Japanese language and agricultural skills to residents and recruited spies against Allied forces that landed in Rabaul.

We’ve discussed Hainanese a couple of times (Bathrobe’s comments in 2007 and 2020).