In May 2007, Lee Teng-hui approached reporters with a smile and spoke to them in fluent Japanese when visiting the Fukagawa area in Tokyo to look around places related to "Oku no Hosomichi" (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), the famous travelogue by haiku poet Matsuo Basho.
"Japanese are rare people who have a high spirit that harmonizes with nature," Lee said. "Be proud of yourselves who were born in Japan."
Lee, who often said, "I was Japanese until the age of 22," was born in Taiwan when the island was under Japanese rule and studied at Kyoto Imperial University.
His Japanese name was Masao Iwasato. While studying agricultural economics, Lee also became familiar with Japanese classics, such as Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and "The Tale of Genji," and works of literature from around the world, as well as the philosophy and thoughts of Kitaro Nishida, Daisetsu Suzuki, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and others, all through books written in Japanese. He kept these books, which he started collecting from that time, in his library at home, sometimes rereading them. He was proud that some of his Japanese books are no longer available in even Japan.
Lee was assigned to an army antiaircraft artillery unit in a student mobilization. When World War II ended, he was a lieutenant.
Taiwan, to which he returned after the war, was ruled by a government led by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT). Many Nationalists fled from mainland China after a civil war there, but more than 80% of Taiwan's population consisted of people who, like Lee, were born on the island.
During talks with writer Ryotaro Shiba in 1994, Lee described the circumstances in which he was unable to do anything for Taiwan despite being born there as "a sorrow of a person who was born as a Taiwanese."
However, Lee turned the "sorrow" into the driving force for a pro-democracy movement. During his 12-year presidency, which began in 1988, the pro-democracy movement, which he pushed for, reached its historic climax when a direct presidential election was realized in 1996. Lee won the first election and became Taiwan's first popularly elected president.
Lee said in a later speech that a "quiet revolution" was achieved without a drop of blood, through constitutional revisions on six occasions.
On other occasions, Lee also made remarks such as that Inazo Nitobe's book "Bushido" gave him a new perspective whenever he or Taiwan faced a crisis, and that the time of Japanese militarism unexpectedly trained him to become a man serving the public. In this way, he revealed his thinking that he had achieved democratization through his background as a "Japanese."
After Lee took office, China consistently stood against him. China strongly denounced Lee, who called China-Taiwan ties a "special state-to-state relationship," as a pro-independence activist for Taiwan. But he never flinched.
When visiting Okinawa Prefecture in June 2018, on his last trip to Japan, Lee said in a speech, "Democracy and freedom are the most important values for human civilization and the basis for peace, stability, prosperity and progress."
"China is trumpeting temporary prosperity through wealth and military power," he added.
Lee lived as a Taiwanese who deeply understood Japan. He believed that "democracy and freedom," which he personally helped to take root in Taiwan, were universal values that could change China.
-- Minamoto is a former Taipei Bureau chief.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
