Tapani Incident (Xilai Temple Incident) — Largest Armed Uprising Against Japanese Rule in Taiwan

The Tapani Incident (噍吧哖事件), also known as the Xilai Temple Incident (西來庵事件) and the Yu Qingfang Incident (余清芳事件), erupted in the summer of 1915 in southern Taiwan and was the largest and deadliest armed uprising against Japanese rule in the fifty years of the colonial period (1895-1945). It was the culmination of two decades of accumulated grievances: oppressive taxation, discriminatory laws and an all-pervasive police system. Yu Qingfang (余清芳, 1879-1915), a former low-ranking colonial policeman, used the Xilai Temple (西來庵) in Tainan as a front for fundraising and recruitment. Drawing on Zhaijiao (齋教) lay Buddhist traditions and folk religious prophecy, he proclaimed the 'Great Ming Compassionate Nation' (大明慈悲國), declared himself Grand Marshal, and distributed 'bullet-repelling talismans' (避彈神符) to followers who believed themselves invulnerable to Japanese firearms. His associates were Luo Jun and Jiang Ding, who had long been in hiding in the mountains.

The authorities got wind of the plot in May-June 1915 and Luo Jun was arrested in Chiayi on June 29, forcing Yu and Jiang to rise early. Armed attacks began on July 9 with strikes on police posts in the Jiaxianpu (甲仙埔) district; on August 2 the insurgents overran the Nanzhuang police station, and they intended to advance toward Damujiang (大目降, modern Xinhua). The decisive battle was fought on August 5-6 at Tapani (噍吧哖, modern Yujing) around Hutou Hill, where Japanese infantry and artillery crushed rebels armed with swords, bamboo spears and farming tools. Yu Qingfang was captured on August 22 and hanged in Tainan on September 23, 1915. Jiang Ding kept up guerrilla resistance until he was induced to come down in April 1916; he was arrested with 272 followers on May 18, 1916 and later executed.

The colonial government's response was ferocious. Of 1,957 people arrested, 866 were sentenced to death by a special tribunal in Tainan, the largest mass death sentence in Taiwan's colonial history, which drew criticism in Japan itself. On November 10, 1915 Governor-General Ando Teibi (Sadayoshi) commuted about three-quarters of these to life imprisonment, citing Emperor Taisho's enthronement; Japanese sources say 95 were actually executed, while another figure is 132. The same sources put the Japanese killed in the uprising at 95. Figures for Taiwanese deaths vary: the Tainan City Cultural Affairs Bureau's 2015 data records 1,412 dead and 1,421 sentenced, with records from two Kaohsiung districts lost. The violence engulfed the districts of Nanhua, Nanxi, Yujing and Zuozhen, and whether and on what scale Japanese forces carried out reprisal massacres of villagers there remains disputed; English Wikipedia cites figures such as 251 deaths at Zhuwei and 82 at Yujing.

The Tapani Incident was a watershed in Taiwanese resistance history. Its catastrophic failure ended the era of armed Han anti-Japanese uprisings and ushered in the nonviolent cultural resistance movement, exemplified by the Taiwan Cultural Association (台灣文化協會, founded 1921) and the Taiwan Parliament petition movement. Today a monument to Yu Qingfang stands on Hutou Hill in Yujing and a martyrs' memorial erected in 1977 in Nanhua; on November 27, 2015, the centenary year, Tainan City opened the Tapani Incident Memorial Park in Yujing.