A recent diplomatic slip-up has exposed a deeper issue for Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT): its leadership sometimes struggles to articulate the party's own rich history with Japanese conservatives.
Reports emerged that senior KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) skipped a meeting with a visiting delegation from the youth wing of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In its damage-control statement, the KMT's communications office asserted that party ties with the LDP dated back to the Second World War. Critics quickly pounced, noting that the LDP was not founded until 1955, a decade after the war ended.
The statement was imprecise, yet it was not entirely off the mark. The mistake lay in treating the LDP as a conventional Western-style party rather than the loose federation of conservative factions it actually is.
The LDP Is a Coalition, Not a Party
Japanese conservative politics has long revolved around competing *habatsu*, or factions, whose roots stretch back to the Meiji era and predate the LDP's 1955 merger of the Liberal and Democratic parties. What united these groups was not a single foreign policy but a shared commitment to preserving the imperial system and opposing communism. Several of the factions that later formed the LDP had already existed before the war, meaning the KMT's connections were with specific conservative networks that eventually fed into the LDP.
Ties That Predate the War
Those connections run far deeper than 1945. Sun Yat-sen founded the Tongmenghui revolutionary alliance in Tokyo. The pan-Asian vision he championed, which called for China and Japan to stand together against Western colonialism, echoed early Japanese ideas that later evolved into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Many top KMT figures who later led the resistance against Japan — including Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Chang Ch'ün (張羣) and Ho Ying-chin (何應欽) — had studied in Japan and once viewed the two countries as natural partners. For them, the full-scale war that erupted in 1937 after the assassination of pro-China Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi (犬養毅) represented a tragic "fratricidal" conflict that ultimately benefited the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists.
Wang Ching-wei's Wartime Channel
Even during the war itself, contacts did not cease entirely. While Chiang's government in Chungking broke ties with Tokyo, Wang Ching-wei's (汪精衛) rival KMT regime in Nanjing maintained full diplomatic and party relations with Imperial Japan. Wang's foreign ministry operated consular offices across Japan, Japanese-controlled Korea and even colonial Taiwan. Through its overseas Chinese affairs commission, the regime kept links with ethnic Chinese communities and served as a channel for Taiwan residents curious about Sun Yat-sen and the Three Principles of the People. Many native Taiwanese who later joined the KMT first encountered the party through these wartime institutions.
On the Japanese side, the main counterpart was the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (*Taisei Yokusankai*), a mass political organisation created by Prime Ministers Konoe Fumimaro and Tojo Hideki. Among its members was Kishi Nobusuke, who would later become Japan's prime minister and forge close postwar ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan. In institutional terms, the Association served as a clear precursor to the conservative factions that coalesced into the LDP.
The White Group and a Tokyo Branch That Never Was
After Japan's surrender, Chiang Kai-shek chose reconciliation over reparations, a policy he called "repaying resentment with virtue." The gesture earned him lasting support from a group of former Imperial Army officers known as the "White Group" (*Baituan*), led by figures such as Okamura Yasuji. As the Communists advanced on the mainland in 1949, some Japanese conservatives went further. Academia Historica in Taiwan preserves a letter from Wachi Tsuneyoshi, a former senior military officer and Tokyo Imperial University researcher, proposing the creation of a KMT branch in Tokyo headed not by overseas Chinese but by Japanese nationals themselves. The suggested roster included Prince Mikasa (三笠宮崇仁親王), Ishiwara Kanji (石原莞爾) and Inukai Ken (犬養健). The plan never materialised, yet it illustrated the depth of feeling among a core group of pro-Taiwan Japanese conservatives who formed the nucleus of what became known as Japan's "Taiwan lobby."
Cold War Loyalty Had Its Limits
Cold War alignment between the KMT and LDP was real but never monolithic. Leading LDP figures such as Yoshida Shigeru, Kishi Nobusuke and Sato Eisaku supported Taipei largely because U.S. containment policy left them little choice. When Washington shifted, so did Tokyo: Tanaka Kakuei normalised relations with Beijing in 1972, and Fukuda Takeo signed the 1978 Japan-China Peace and Friendship Treaty. The most unwavering supporters of Taiwan remained the former military men of the White Group, for whom loyalty to Chiang and "Free China" was personal.
Archives With Gaps, History With Consequences
Much of this history remains incompletely documented. While KMT records in the United States are relatively continuous, wartime disruptions in Japan and sparse archival material on Wang Ching-wei's party-to-party contacts with the Imperial Rule Assistance Association have left gaps. The precise fate of Wachi's 1949 proposal and its possible links to today's KMT structures in Japan are still unclear.
A Party That Has Forgotten Its Own Story
The recent communications fumble reflects more than poor messaging. It points to a KMT leadership that has not fully internalised its own party's long and layered relationship with Japanese conservatism — a relationship that predates the war, survived it in complex ways, and shaped Cold War alignments. Supporters who criticise the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for being too close to Japan often overlook how much deeper and older the KMT's own ties are.
A Party That Has Forgotten Its Own Story
The recent communications fumble reflects more than poor messaging. It points to a KMT leadership that has not fully internalised its own party's long and layered relationship with Japanese conservatism — a relationship that predates the war, survived it in complex ways, and shaped Cold War alignments. Supporters who criticise the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for being too close to Japan often overlook how much deeper and older the KMT's own ties are.
Eighty years after the end of the Pacific War, that history offers the KMT a genuine asset rather than a liability. At a time when U.S. strategic reliability is uncertain and Northeast Asian security is under pressure, a party that understands its past can engage Japanese conservatives with confidence — not deference — and potentially serve as a pragmatic bridge between Beijing and Tokyo. The lesson is simple: the KMT does not need to invent or exaggerate its Japan ties. It only needs to remember them accurately.
*The author is a military history researcher. （Related： Taiwan's Nuclear-Free Anniversary Is a Reckoning, Not a Celebration ｜ Latest ）
Original Article in Chinese
