A concert was held in Penghu County on Thursday to mark the 122nd anniversary of the Japanese occupation of the outlying islands.
About 100 people attended the concert at a monument in Lizhengjiao (裡正角), the area where Japanese forces landed in Penghu on March 23, 1895.
The monument was established by Japanese commemorating the army’s landing and was renamed the Retrocession Monument in 1945.
Photo: Liu Yu-ching, Taipei Times
The concert was aimed at conveying a message of peace and love to the world through music, concert organizers said.
Japanese flutist Minoru Yano performed Japanese folk song The Moon Over the Ruined Castle and Taiwanese folk song The Torment of a Flower (雨夜花).
Huxi Township (湖西) Mayor Wu Cheng-chieh (吳政杰) on Wednesday said at a forum on the history of the Japanese occupation that Penghu had played a crucial role during that period and that the people had learned valuable lessons from it.
Yang Meng-cheh (楊孟哲), a National Taipei University of Education professor, presented photographs of Lizhengjiao from more than 100 years ago, while Aimen Elementary School teacher Hsu Yu-he (許玉河) told the audience that Magong (馬公) and Lizhengjiao are both names retained from the Japanese colonial period.
In 1895, Taiwan, including the Penghu islands, became a Japanese colony via the Treaty of Shimonoseki following the First Sino-Japanese War.
On March 23 that year, Japanese forces landed at Lizhengjiao in Penghu, a strategic gateway to Taiwan.
In related news, Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association Kaohsiung Office Director Fumio Yamashita on Thursday visited Penghu County Commissioner Chen Kuang-fu (陳光復) to express interest in establishing an office in the county and a tourism platform to advertise the beauty of Penghu to Japanese.
Yamashita also visited the county’s windmills, solar power facilities and a marine life propagation station with government officials.
He said Penghu has the most beautiful bay in the world and said he hopes the association could set up an office in the county so both parties could develop a close relationship in tourism, “renewable energy” and small and medium-sized business exchanges.
Chen said he had visited the Japanese island of Okinawa and Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture to learn about tourism and is promoting charter flights between Penghu and Okinawa.
Additional reporting by Liu Yu-ching
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