Bank of Taiwan Head Office Building

The Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行, Taiwan Ginkō) was established by special charter in 1899 as the central policy bank of Japanese-ruled Taiwan, tasked with issuing currency, financing colonial development, and facilitating trade between Japan, Taiwan, South China, and Southeast Asia. It functioned as a de facto central bank for the colony, issuing "Taiwanese yen" banknotes that circulated on the island from 1899 until they were replaced by the Old Taiwan dollar in 1946.

The original head office, a late-Renaissance-style brick building designed in 1903, stood at the same site on what was then known as Honmachi (本町) — the financial heart of colonial Taipei. By the early 1930s, severe termite damage necessitated demolition and reconstruction. The Japanese government commissioned architect Yoshitoki Nishimura (西村好時, 1886–?), a graduate of Tokyo Imperial University's Department of Architecture who specialized in bank and government buildings, having previously designed the Daiichi Bank head office and the Aichi Prefecture Government Office.

Construction began on August 4, 1934, carried out by Ōkura Doboku-gumi (大倉土木組, predecessor of today's Taisei Corporation). The new building was completed on June 30, 1937, and inaugurated in 1938. The design is characterized by stripped neoclassical architecture: a symmetrical three-story reinforced-concrete structure with one basement level, featuring an eight-pillar colonnade of two-story-high Corinthian columns across the main facade, four massive corner columns, and stone vasiform balustrades. All exterior walls and colonnades are clad in granite, giving the building an imposing presence that symbolized the financial authority of the Japanese colonial state.

During the Pacific War, the Bank of Taiwan played a critical role in wartime finance. It managed military currency issuance for occupied territories in Southeast Asia, facilitated war bond subscriptions, and channeled funds to strategic industries including sugar refining, mining, and military production. The bank maintained branch offices across the Japanese empire — in Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, Bangkok, Saigon, Batavia, New York, and London — making it one of the most geographically extensive financial institutions in wartime Asia.

On May 31, 1945, during the major Allied air raid on Taipei (臺北大空襲), the head office building suffered bomb damage to its roof structure. Despite the damage, the granite exterior walls and colonnade survived intact. After Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, the Republic of China government assumed control of the bank. The roof was repaired, and operations resumed on May 20, 1946. The Bank of Taiwan went on to issue the Old Taiwan dollar (from 1946) and the New Taiwan dollar (from 1949), remaining the issuing bank until the Central Bank of the Republic of China took over that function in 2000.

On May 4, 1998, the Taipei City Government designated the Bank of Taiwan Head Office Building as a Municipal Historic Site (市定古蹟), recognizing its architectural and historical significance as a premier example of Japanese colonial-era financial architecture in Taiwan. The building's main banking hall, with its soaring columns and granite interiors, was used as a filming location for the 2007 Japanese television drama "The Magnificent Family" (華麗なる一族). Today the building continues to serve as the active headquarters of the Bank of Taiwan, one of Taiwan's largest state-owned commercial banks.