Kōtōsho (Orchid Island)

Orchid Island (蘭嶼, Lanyu), known as Kōtōsho (紅頭嶼) during the Japanese colonial period, is a 48-square-kilometer volcanic island located approximately 90 kilometers off the southeastern coast of Taiwan in Taitung County. Home to the Tao (formerly called Yami) indigenous people, an Austronesian group with cultural ties to the Batanes Islands of the Philippines, the island became a site of intense academic interest under Japanese rule.

Following the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, Orchid Island came under Japanese administration as part of Taitung Prefecture (台東廳). The Taiwan Governor-General's Office quickly recognized the island's unique anthropological value and designated it as a protected ethnological research area, prohibiting ordinary citizens from entering or developing the island. This extraordinary measure was intended to preserve the Tao people's traditional way of life as a subject of ongoing scientific study.

The pioneering anthropologist Torii Ryūzō (鳥居龍藏) conducted the first systematic survey of the island in 1897, documenting the Tao people's culture, language, and material practices. During his visit, when he asked the islanders their tribal name, he reportedly received the answer 'Yami'—likely a misunderstanding of the Tao word for 'we' (yami)—a designation that persisted in academic literature throughout the 20th century. Torii's research established Orchid Island as a key site for Japanese colonial anthropology, and subsequent scholars continued ethnographic, linguistic, and ecological investigations throughout the following decades.

During World War II, Orchid Island held limited direct military significance but was part of Japan's southern defense perimeter. The Japanese-built Kōtōsho Weather Station (紅頭嶼測候所), built in 1940–41 with labour conscripted from the islanders to monitor typhoon movements in the Pacific, represented the most substantial colonial infrastructure on the island. The station was damaged by American forces during the war but was later restored, with some original Japanese-era ruins still visible today.

After Japan's defeat in 1945, the Republic of China government assumed control and renamed the island from 紅頭嶼 to 蘭嶼 (Orchid Island) in 1947. The Tao people, who had been relatively protected under the Japanese research designation, subsequently faced new challenges including forced assimilation policies and, controversially, the construction of a nuclear waste storage facility on the island in the 1980s. Today, the island's colonial-era research legacy is remembered as a complex chapter—one that preserved indigenous culture through restriction while simultaneously treating a living people as subjects of scientific observation.