The Princess and the Policeman – S6-E18

The Taiwan History Podcast: Formosa Files · Jul 16, 2026 · 34m

In 1911, Baike Daole, the daughter of a powerful Atayal chief in the mountains of central Taiwan, was pressured to marry the Japanese policeman Shimoyama Jihei. Their “strategic marriage” was intended to help Japan control Indigenous communities, but it produced a family caught between cultures and governments. We follow their story – and the extraordinary life of their son, Shimoyama Hajime – from Japan’s violent campaign to control Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples and the bloody 1930 Wushe Incident to the 228 uprising of 1947, when Hajime was arrested and tortured, and the uncertain first years…