On November 29, 2014, the international symposium "Japan's Colonial Policy: A View from the West" was held in Tokyo.Researchers from Japan, Russia and Taiwan took part in it.

The symposium was organized by the Takuseku University Center for International Scientific Cooperation, which was established in late 2013 to coordinate international research projects of the university's faculties and institutes, as well as research conducted by them outside Japan. One of them is the trilateral Japanese-Russian-Taiwanese project "Taiwan under Japanese Rule: A New Perspective on History", implemented since 2013 (preparatory stage in 2012/2013) by Takuseku University in cooperation with the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Taiwanese History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Taipei).

Opening the symposium, Toshio Watanabe, President of Takuseku University and head of the Center for International Scientific Cooperation, noted that this is the first scientific event of the Center that goes beyond the university, and that this program is the first international project of the center that has already achieved concrete results. These results were reviewed at the symposium, which focused on Taiwan in four of its seven reports.

The first report, "Colonial Taiwan as a Model for Regional Development," was delivered by Toshio Watanabe. Recognizing that the history of Japanese rule had not only "bright" but also "dark" sides associated with the exploitation of the local population, the speaker noted the progressive nature of most of the measures taken by the colonial administration to develop the island's economy and economy. Giving an analysis of Japan's economic strategy for the development of Taiwan, Watanabe stressed that it was carried out according to a detailed plan, taking into account both the experience of economic and colonization policies of other countries, and local conditions. The speaker showed how the Japanese authorities sought to use not only its resources and economic potential, but also social and cultural factors, including education and local traditions and customs, for the development of Taiwan. The achievements of Japanese development policies in Taiwan laid the foundation for the post-war "Taiwan economic miracle" and became one of the successful models of regional development in Asia and beyond.

Report of E. V. Molodyakova, Deputy Director of the Institute of Japanese Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Head of the Center for Japanese Studies " Perception of Japanese Colonial Policy in Russia: from a black-and-white image to a color one" presented an overview of the perception and evaluation of Japanese colonial policy in the Russian Empire, the USSR, and modern Russia. Pointing out that at the beginning of the XX century. The Russian Empire did not have colonies separated from the mother country, and the speaker explained the weak attention of pre-revolutionary analysts to the colonial policy of Japan and other powers, although the economic, military, and to a lesser extent political position of Taiwan and Korea as Japanese

colonies interested Russia in terms of possible rivalry in the region. During the Soviet era, interest in colonial politics increased enormously and was maintained at the highest level, since the country's leadership saw the world powers as its main opponents, and in their colonies as the "reservoir of world revolution". The study of the situation in the colonies and colonial policy has become of great practical importance. However, it was carried out under strict political control and ideological dictates of the authorities, who ordered to portray colonial policy only in "black paint", completely ignoring its achievements. This left a strong imprint on all Soviet research on this issue and largely reduced their value.

E. V. Molodyakova also presented the book by V. TS Golovachev and V. E. Molodyakov "Taiwan in the era of Japanese rule. Sources and research in Russian. Analytical Review" (Moscow, 2014), released as part of a joint project. Due to the low popularity of the topic, the report and the book aroused great interest among Japanese and Taiwanese colleagues.

The report of Zhong Shu-min, Deputy Director of the Institute of Taiwanese History, "The Philippines under American rule and Taiwan under Japanese rule: Contacts and cooperation in the Deng Kenjiro Governorship (20s)" was based on the materials of the Taiwan Governor General's Archive, which are being introduced to scientific circulation for the first time. The colonial development of Taiwan and the Philippines began around the same time, and both the Japanese and Americans lacked knowledge and experience in this matter, so the administrations of both colonies showed interest in foreign experience, including each other's achievements and mistakes. Analyzing information about the Philippines in documents and printed publications of the Taiwanese colonial administration, Zhong Shu-min showed the dynamics of her interest in the Philippine experience, which peaked during the tenure of Kenjiro Deng, the island's Governor-General, a prominent statesman of pre-war Japan and the first civilian to hold this post. Special attention was paid to a brief visit to Taiwan in 1921 by the Governor-General of the Philippines, L. Wood.

Mitsuko Tamaki, a visiting researcher at Takuseku University, presented the report "Taihoku Provincial Archives as material for studying local Administration and local society in Taiwan under Japanese rule", which was a detailed account of a large-scale historiographical study that had just been completed. The value of the local administration materials studied and described by Tamaki for 1910-1956. (in the early 1990s, they were digitized and available at the National Archives of Taiwan, but so far have not attracted the attention of researchers) in that they have been preserved with great completeness for both the colonial and Kuomintang periods, without documenting the "gap" between them, which, according to the speaker, is large a rarity. The archive of the local and village administration includes an extensive body of documents of the general government, reports to the provincial administration and the general government, as well as part of the current document flow of local significance (it has not reached us completely due to the established retention periods for different categories of documents). This gives researchers a unique chance to study the Japanese colonial policy in Taiwan not only from the top down, but also from the bottom up, as well as the reaction of the local population to it at the lowest level.

The report of Professor V. E. Molodyakov of Takuseku University "Japan's policy in East Asia through the eyes of French intellectuals: around the "Manchurian Incident" "introduced the audience to the speeches of prominent" right-wing " French intellectuals-publicist Charles Morras, lawyer Jean Ray and novelist Claude Farrer-in support of Japan's colonial and expansionist policy in East Asia mainly in the 1930s.2000s. The occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army, the subsequent creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo under Japanese control, and the consideration of this problem at the request of China in the League of Nations led Japan into de facto international isolation and noticeably damaged its image in Europe and America. The speaker not only gave an overview of the pro-Japanese speeches of influential French "rightists", but also pointed out the main factors that determined their position: lack of any noticeable economic competition between Japan and France in China and Northeast Asia; sympathy for Japan as a conservative-traditionalist monarchy that pursued a tough domestic policy against communists and "leftists"; hopes that Japanese expansion in China would stop the further penetration of Soviet influence and Communist anti-colonial propaganda, including anti-colonial propaganda. including French Indochina; principled approval of the colonial policy as "civilizing". Interest

The audience was aroused by the now-forgotten interpretation of Japan as the "Far West", not the "Far East", expressed by K. Farrer in the second half of the 1930s.

Based on little-known materials from Japanese and Chinese archives, the report of Chen Yun-lin, a visiting researcher at Takuseku University, "Japanese Contribution to Urban Development in Shanghai", showed the role and scale of Japanese involvement in urban planning, construction, and development in Shanghai from the late 1890s to the late 1930s. The Japanese did not have their own compact quarter in the city, because they did not have the necessary funds for this, but they made a significant contribution to the development of architecture and infrastructure of the city, and then to its improvement and modernization, which was illustrated with numerous cartographic materials and photographs. What the Japanese did within the foreign settlement was in the general direction of the "Westernization" of Shanghai and left an imprint on its appearance in the pre-war and post-war years, although the current large-scale reconstruction of the city and its infrastructure destroyed many of their buildings.

Last on the program was a paper by Takuseki University Senior Researcher Shigeru Hasabe ,titled " An Englishman in Colonial Taiwan: Governor General's Advisor William Myers." The documents studied by the researcher, mainly from the archives of the General Government, for the first time in historiography fully presented the activities of this British doctor, who spent more than two decades on the island since the early 1880s. Assessing Myers ' contribution to the development of medicine, sanitation and hygiene in Taiwan, Hasebe drew attention to the possible political component of his activities, since The Myers Clinic was a convenient "lookout" for the situation on the island, and many years of experience allowed the doctor to objectively analyze and predict the situation. The speaker introduced the audience to Myers ' proposals for reducing opium smoking, which he presented to the Japanese General Government in the early years of the colonial period, and spoke about his strained relationship with the civilian governor, Simp Goto, also a doctor by profession, who is considered the main "architect" of the development and development of Taiwan under Japanese rule.

In his closing remarks, Lin Wen-tong, Head of the Department of Culture and Education of the Taipei-Tokyo Commission for Economic and Cultural Cooperation, thanked the speakers for their valuable and informative presentations, and the leadership of Takuseku University for organizing the symposium, emphasizing that it has not only academic, but also practical significance for the development of international scientific cooperation. For the opening of the symposium, the texts of the reports were published in a preprint in Japanese. The proceedings of the symposium will be published in Japanese by Takuseku University.

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