By June Tsai
After 18 months of intensive work, the Institute of Taiwan History at Academia Sinica, the country's top research body, set up an exhibition and released a book about the life of Sun Jiang-huai. Thanks to interviews and documents Sun had collected throughout his life, historians were able to piece together the lives of common people in the country over the past 100 years.
Sun was born in 1907 near Tainan, in the southern area of the island, where he still lives today. When the institute's historians met the old man for the first time, they discovered a trove of priceless documents. They were amazed by how carefully the documents had been preserved, and that Sun still remembered many details about past events and people. The researchers started their oral history project with Sun in January 2007. In May, Sun proposed to donate to the institute his archives, which included 35 boxes of documents and over 1,700 photos.
"What Mr. Sun had was an incredible treasure for researching Taiwan's history in terms of its commerce, legal institutions, but also for the study of the region," Lin Yu-ju, an ITH associate research fellow and project member, said Nov. 1. Part of the collection was displayed at an exhibition organized at Tainan County's International Center for Humanities and Social Sciences Research, Oct. 12-18, and at the Taipei-based Academia Sinica Oct. 25-Nov. 2.
Having completed only elementary school education, Sun managed to master the legal profession through practice and self-study. He started his career as a secretary to a "baozheng" at the age of 15. A baozheng was a district chief in charge of the security and administration of a determined group of households, who assisted Japanese police in administrative affairs during the colonial period (1895-1945). In 1923, Sun turned to business and started a grocery store. That same year, Japanese commercial and civil laws were implemented in the island colony.
Because he was often in contact with notaries and lawyers to solve business disputes, Sun developed an interest in the law and became an assistant to a Japanese notary. He eventually became a notary himself in 1932 and later opened his own firm specializing in both public and civil affairs.
Under the Japanese system, a notary handled the same tasks as a lawyer except he could not defend clients at court. Sun's documents revealed the key role notaries played in smoothing communication between ordinary people and the colonial government. "They actually helped solve many difficulties for the people when even the local gentry could not," ITH Director Hsu Hsueh-chi explained.
While court verdicts tell which legal articles were used in determining a case, Sun's papers show the whole procedure, such as the debates between the defendant and the plaintiff, Hsu said. "Sun's documents give us a picture of the people's life and how Imperial Japan enforced its colonial rule on the island, and how that rule was different from, for example, that in Korea."
What makes Sun noteworthy is his tireless effort at learning. If he had questions, Sun would write to judges and jurists, looked through old cases, and browsed law books.
"People had great trust in the law and the legal profession at that time," Hsu pointed out, though the court ignored or delayed cases when a ruling might have compromised Japanese interests. "The level of trust in the rule of law declined after the war," the historian continued, and the examination procedure for notaries ended in 1969 under the Kuomintang government. Notaries lost their prestige becoming nothing more than land brokers, she added.
As for his commercial activities, between 1923 and 1945 the entrepreneurial Sun dealt in retailing, manufacturing, orchid growing and investment realty. He also founded or co-founded five companies under the 'wartime controlled economy' that Japan started imposing in 1937. "His experiences are those of a typical Taiwanese entrepreneur forced by the environment to focus on business rather than politics," Lin said.
Sun was a successful businessman, and generous too, Lin remarked. Being an amateur photographer, Sun often went on trips. When he traveled, the businessman often took his whole family and company staff with him. And, like many of his contemporaries, he adopted western fashion. "Life must go on. The Taiwanese people's response to being ruled by outsiders has been to focus on trying to lead as decent a life as possible and win other people's respect," she observed.
Sun's collection documents as well the way Japan mobilized the colony's people and resources in preparation for World War II. "Official documents barely reveal anything regarding the actual operation of the wartime controlled economy, let alone its impact on people's daily life," Lin said. Sun's archives, however, fill that blank.
An important part of Sun's collection records his participation in public affairs, the historians said. Sun led a local business association in 1928 that once lodged protests against a sugar company, backed by the Japanese government, for polluting the environment. It also organized an ink painting and calligraphy exhibition with 350 works from around the island. Yet, Sun gradually withdrew from the public arena because of his father's opposition.
Though he was watched by the Japanese police for several years for heading the business association, Sun was asked to join the Kominhokokai, or Imperial Subject Service Association, a wartime organization that rallied local leaders and conscripted colonial subjects into the imperial forces. Upon the regime change after the war, Sun resumed his activities. He continued working as notary and thanks to his experience and extensive contacts, he helped the government in dealing with civil affairs reconciliation. In 1946, the versatile man raised funds to establish a high school in his hometown, and 10 years later he tried to invest in business again. He liked keeping busy.
However, only one of the 15 chapters of the interview, published last month, is dedicated to his life after the war. "Sun did not wish to talk about what happened locally after the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan," Lin said. Hsu believes this silence speaks for the difficulties ordinary Taiwan people of that generation faced in merging two cultures after being subjected to the rule of two different regimes, both imposed by outsiders and both seeking to deny the people's own identity.
"Having access to people like Sun, who had many interesting experiences and lived long enough to tell them, is a great opportunity for historians," she concluded. "They make history feel closer to us."
This article is published in Taiwan Journal Nov. 13, 2008.
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