Japanese soldier executing an Atayal tribe fighter with a katana during their military repression in Taroko, Imperial Japan occupied Taiwan, 1914

Japanese soldier executing an Atayal tribe fighter with a katana during their military repression in Taroko, Imperial Japan occupied Taiwan, 1914

FYl during Imperial Japan's occupation of the island of Taiwan (1895 - 1945), one of the biggest headaches they encountered was the resistance of the indigenous tribes, one of the reasons were due to these tribes mostly living deep the mountains, which makes traveling and navigating for the Japanese forces very hard.

Therefore, the Japanese later on deployed the strategy of utilizing

the conflicts between these tribes to have them hunt each other themselves and later conquer them all.

The Tapani incident or Tapani uprising in 1915 was one of the biggest armed uprisings by Taiwanese Han and Aboriginals, including Taivoan, against Japanese rule in Taiwan. Alternative names used to refer to the incident include the Xilai Temple Incident after the Xilai Temple in Tainan, where the revolt began, and the Yu Qingfang Incident after the leader Yu Qingfang.[6] Multiple Japanese police stations were stormed by Aboriginal and Han Chinese fighters under Chiang Ting (Jiang Ding) and Yü Ch'ing-fang (Yu Qingfang). The rebels declared the Tai Gongheguo (泰共和国, Tai Republic), the existence of which only lasted 12 days before the revolt was suppressed

Modern Taiwanese historiography attempts to portray the Tapani Incident as a nationalist uprising either from a Chinese (unification) or Taiwanese (independence) perspective. Japanese colonial historiography attempted to portray the incident as a large scale instance of banditry led by criminal elements. However, the Tapani Incident differs from other uprisings in Taiwan's history because of its elements of millenarianism and folk religion, which enabled Yu Qingfang to raise a significant armed force whose members believed themselves to be invulnerable to modern weaponry.

The similarities between the rhetoric of the leaders of the Tapani uprising and the Righteous Harmony Society of the recent Boxer Rebellion in China were not lost on Japanese colonial authorities, and the colonial government subsequently paid more attention to popular religion and took steps to improve colonial administration in southern Taiwan.

The aboriginals carried on with violent armed struggle against the Japanese while Han Chinese violent opposition stopped after Tapani.

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