Journal paper

Issue No.	No. 49
Title	Silviculture Study Developed by the Taiwan Higher Agriculture and Forestry School during Japanese Colonial Era Focus on the Graduates of Forestry Department’s Theses
Author	Hsieh, Ming-ju
Page	207-260
Abstract	The Taiwan Higher Agriculture and Forestry School(臺灣總督府高等農林學校) is the only higher forestry school during Japanese Colonial Era. Based on the School’s graduate theses, this article investigates the direction and features of their sylviculture study. In the school’s teething phase, they focused on the specific geography of Taiwan, figuring out the kinds of useful tree species for Taiwan from Southeastern Asia. Their major purpose was to test Taiwan serving as the main base to develop tropical forest industry. This article argues that factors such as social milieu, the requirement of the Japanese state, and the personal favor of academic supervisors, all together affected and varied research topics and methods in four different periods. At the first stage, researchers of the School investigated the existing official and private forestation which had run for years. They accordingly gave advices to reshape the forests. The theses supervised by Kanemori Sadakichi, the first director of sylviculture department, were mostly of this sort, focusing on the survey of plantations in Taiwan, and giving practical suggestions such as shortcomings found in the field work. After 1932, Aoki Shige became the director of sylviculture department. At this time, the Japanese Empire was gradually isolated from international society, so the demand of developing tropical forest industry in Taiwan became urgent. Baring this in mind, together with his own ideas regarding a system of colonial tropical forest, Aoki had supervised theses, which shifted the focus on tropical trees, especially the systematic experiments of germination and reproduction on the Formosa Acacia. These theses had figured out the most suitable irrigation amounts, the seeding timing and density of planting. And it became the main feature of the school’s sylviculture research during this time. From 1937, the succeeding director was Tazoe Moto. He used his research experience of how the temperature affects the seeds’ reproduction and the roots of boreal conifer during his study at Hokkaido Imperial University to help the graduates elucidating the suitable temperature and the form of the roots system of the useful tree species such as teak and bamboo. These theses showed the relationship of sylvicultural research between Taiwan and Hokkaido. After 1939, coordinated with the national policy and the demand from the Office of the Governor-General’s Forestry Research Institute, the research objects were turned to the tropical trees related to the wartime goods supplement, but they still continued their research focusing on the form of root system and suitable growing temperature. Undoubtedly the sylvicultural research of Taiwan Higher Agriculture and Forestry School helped the Taiwan Governor- General's Office to grasp and explore the forest resource in Taiwan; at the same time, they precisely investigated the plantations and the situation of forestation, and clarified the planting particularities of Taiwan and Nanyang useful tree species. All these results have great importance that cannot be ignored on the founding of Taiwan Silviculture Study.
Keyword	Japanese Colonial Era, forestry school, forestation, Silviculture, forestry, specialized schools
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