Taiwan Governor-General's Communications Bureau

Modern postal and telecommunications services in colonial Taiwan were run directly by the Government-General. The Taiwan Governor-General's Communications Bureau (臺灣總督府逓信部) was the colonial counterpart of Japan's Ministry of Communications (逓信省), responsible for all postal, telegraph, and telephone services in Taiwan from the establishment of Japanese rule in 1895 until 1945, though administratively it answered to the Governor-General. Field post offices handled mail after the 1895 landing; a communications section was created under the Civil Affairs Bureau that year and public postal service began in 1896. Its name and status changed repeatedly: the Communications Division (1896), the Communications Bureau of the Civil Affairs Department (1901), an independent Communications Bureau (1919), and from 1924 the Communications Department of the Transportation Bureau, formed by merger with the Railway Department.

Its remit was broad: post, telegraph, telephone, postal savings and postal life insurance. A Taipei Telegraph Office was set up in 1928, and experimental radio broadcasting from Taipei began the same year, bringing broadcasting under its supervision; until 1943 it was also responsible for civil aviation and lighthouses. The bureau oversaw the construction and operation of Taiwan's modern communications infrastructure, including the Taipei Post Office as its principal facility. Post offices across the island were not only communication points but also gathered local funds through savings and insurance, forming part of the colony's fiscal and financial system.

The headquarters, in the old walled city of Taipei (now Changsha Street), was designed by Moriyama Matsunosuke of the Government-General's building section. Construction began in March 1923 and the main structure was completed in 1924, in Western classical style with a mixed steel-frame, reinforced-concrete and brick structure. With the nearby Government-General and Monopoly Bureau buildings it formed part of Taipei's colonial administrative core.

After war broke out with China, communications were treated as a military and security matter. During the Pacific War, the bureau operated under increasingly tight military control, implementing wartime communications control (通信統制), mail censorship (郵便検閲), and prioritization of military telegraph traffic, and postal savings and insurance were mobilised to finance the war; telecommunications facilities were damaged by air raids late in the war. After Japan's surrender, the bureau's functions were transferred to the Republic of China government, with postal and telecommunications services eventually separated into Chunghwa Post and Chunghwa Telecom. The building housed the Ministry of Transportation and Communications until 2006, when it passed to Academia Historica; it is now that institution's Taipei office and a designated monument.