The Taste of Colonization: the Production and Consumption of Skipjack Tuna in Postwar Taiwan (1945-1995) (1/2)

In the early twentieth century, the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan introduced the island to the production of dried skipjack tuna flakes (katsuobushi). Factories there would process the seafood and send the finished product back to Japan for consumption. After World War Two, the vanquished Japanese no longer controlled Taiwan but had bequeathed to it this technology, which remained an important facet of Taiwan’s economy. In this study, I explore both Taiwan’s production of dried skipjack tuna flakes and its consumption culture. In the study’s first section, I investigate the locations and production practices of dried skipjack tuna flake factories in Taiwan from 1945 to 1995. In the second section, I focus on post-war Taiwan’s production of dried skipjack tuna flakes, including the upgrades that Taiwanese technicians made to the inherited Japanese technology and the difficulties that Taiwanese producers faced in the dried skipjack tuna flake industry. In the third section, I explore the export trade of dried skipjack tuna flakes, with an emphasis on two specific topics: the role of dried skipjack tuna flakes in black-market trade between Taiwan and Okinawa after World War Two; and the ways in which Taiwan exported its dried skipjack tuna flakes exported to Japan. In the fourth section, I explore the consumption of not only Taiwan-made dried skipjack tuna flakes in Taiwan after World War Two but also other skipjack-tuna products, ranging from powders to canned foods.