Welcome to Revisiting the Sanrinka!

This building was once the residence of officials of the Sanrinka—the Forestry Division during the Japanese period. The neighborhood we’re in was then called Nishikimachi and was home to many Japanese. Taipei Higher School was located nearby, at the site of National Taiwan Normal University today.

So, what was the Sanrinka? And why devote an entire exhibition to it? The Sanrinka is the predecessor of today’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, Ministry of Agriculture. A hundred years ago, it began as a small office with a small staff and meager budget. But as the Government-General reformed forestry in Taiwan, this modest division grew into one of its most important departments.

The Sanrinka managed the empire’s forests across Taiwan. Foresters trekked into the mountains, surveyed and mapped the land, and drafted long-term plans for resource management. Step by step, they laid the foundations of Taiwan’s modern forestry system.

Now, a century after the Sanrinka’s first surveys, the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency presents this two-part exhibition. This is a significant moment—one that invites us to reflect on the past and to imagine the next one hundred years. If Taiwan’s forestry history is a long road, we are now at zero kilometers—the starting point.

In this first exhibition, you’re invited into the residence of the Sanrinka officials. Here, you’ll meet the Japanese foresters of a century ago, feel their ambitious, untamed spirit, and explore stories of their work.

In 1895, when the Japanese Empire took Taiwan, a group of eager foresters stepped forward to serve. They were children of the Meiji era, a time when Japan was racing to master Western science. These foresters embodied both the artisan spirit of traditional Japanese forestry as well as the scientific methodology and sustainable vision of German forestry, which they studied at top universities.

The two prints displayed in this room show the origins of the foresters’ practice. On the left, an ukiyo-e by Katsushika Hokusai, In the Mountains of Tōtōmi Province, speaks to the depth of forestry traditions in Japan. On the right, an illustration from an eighteenth-century German treatise shows foresters reshaping woodlands in pursuit of sustainable timber production.

The Japanese foresters knew that Taiwan’s mountains held expansive stands of camphor trees. Camphor could be refined into raw materials for explosives and celluloid—both indispensable to enhancing national power. So when Taiwan became an imperial territory, they were eager to apply their expertise and help strengthen the Empire’s foundations.

The first forester to serve in Taiwan was Arita Masamori, a graduate of Tokyo Imperial University. His teachers, Matsuno Hazama and Shiga Taizan, had both studied forestry in Germany. The textbooks they authored became definitive to the field in Japan.

When Arita sailed for Taiwan aboard the SS Yokohama, he was only in his early thirties but already recognized as a rising star in forestry circles. Later, he would recall that although Taiwan was famously known as “Formosa”—the beautiful island—it also had a dark reputation as a land of deadly “miasma.” In 1895, he gambled his life and future, giving up a promising career in Japan to serve the Empire in Taiwan.

What drew Arita, and the Empire, were Taiwan’s dense tropical forests. On the wall you’ll see a large map of the Empire’s forest zones, drawn by Tokyo Imperial University professor Honda Seiroku. Different forest types are marked by different colors: red for tropical, green for subtropical, and yellow for temperate. Taiwan, encircled in red, stands out as the Empire’s sole tropical domain. This distinction carried an irresistible allure—bringing Japanese foresters to the island, one after another.

The Sanrinka’s primary tasks were to survey Taiwan’s forests and create plans for their management. Ordinarily, before heading into the field, surveyors would first collect earlier maps and documents. However, maps created during the Qing dynasty showed Taiwan lying sideways, without coordinates of latitude or longitude. Most of them didn’t include forests—much less details such as tree species, area, or lumber volumes.

With so little to rely on, the Sanrinka foresters had to start from scratch. They depended on their field techniques, known as gaiyō—literally “outdoor work”—the essential first step in making forest maps. Across from the horizontal map of Taiwan, you can see some of the instruments they used: a survey beacon, a compass theodolite, and an optical level.

Surveying followed a clear sequence: from point, to line, to surface. First, surveyors set triangulation points, marking them with stones and tall beacons so they could be seen from far away. Surveying teams often posed for photos in front of survey beacons. In the exhibition, you’ll find a scaled-down beacon—step into the role of a surveyor, take a photo, and check in on social media!

Once the points were set, they measured the angles and distances between them with theodolites and compasses, determining each point’s position, latitude, and longitude. Using leveling instruments, they measured elevation and drew contour lines to build a map’s initial framework. Only then did they turn to the forests themselves. With plane tables and bamboo tapes, they traced boundaries, treating each forest as a polygon. Starting from a known point, they would walk a forest’s edge, recording coordinates until its full shape came into view.

On the opposite table, you’ll find another set of tools: a diameter tape, a set of calipers, and a hypsometer. For the Sanrinka, mapping location wasn’t enough—it also needed to calculate how much timber forests contained. To do this, it treated each tree as a cylinder. Foresters first measured tree diameters with tapes or calipers, and tree heights with hypsometers. With these two measurements, they could estimate a tree’s volume. By repeating this process across a forest, they were able to calculate how much timber it could supply to the Empire each year.

After completing field surveys, the foresters processed their collected data and converted the maps they drew in the field into different scales. Field maps were drawn at a scale of one to one thousand two hundred—one centimeter representing twelve meters in the real world. But for everyday use, the maps had to be converted to a scale of one to fifty thousand, where one centimeter equaled five hundred meters. For this task, they relied on the pantograph, an instrument that resembles an oversized pair of scissors.

Once the maps had been scaled down, another step remained. To measure areas on the reduced maps, foresters turned to the planimeter. These measurements, once converted, yielded the actual size of forests. Planimeters are simple to use—you’re welcome to try one here at the exhibition.

With locations and areas, along with estimates of lumber volumes, the Sanrinka could estimate how many cubic meters of wood each square kilometer of forest would yield. Taiwan’s living forests were thus transformed: from three dimensions into two, and then again into tables of numbers, a process that defined resources that could be owned, planned, and put to use.

Remember the horizontal map we saw earlier? By the careful work of the Sanrinka, Taiwan was turned upright, with north at the top, and for the first time marked with latitude and longitude. Forests missing from earlier maps gradually became visible. Yet even after nearly thirty years of colonial rule, the Government-General had surveyed only the foothills of Taiwan. Knowledge of the mid- and high-mountain forests still remained limited. So, on the Taiwan Forest Survey Division Map of 1915, the island’s center still appears blank—an expanse of the unknown.

To address this, in 1925 the Government-General launched the Forest Management Project, calling on the Sanrinka’s expertise to chart the future of Taiwan’s forestry with science and sustainability. The project was a milestone, marking the beginning of scientific forest management on the island.

At its core were forest division surveys, which produced the maps you see here. Forests were split into three categories, each marked by a different color. Green shows Reserved Forests, managed directly by the empire. Pink marks Non-Reserved Forests, open to private logging and plantations. Orange indicates Quasi-Reserved Forests—lands designated for Indigenous settlement and governed by the same rules as Reserved Forests. Of these three, Reserved Forests were by far the largest, making up nearly eighty percent of the total.

When several maps are placed together, they reveal a complete survey district. For each district, two forest registration ledgers were compiled, with information on location, size, condition, geology, and ties to local communities. Two examples are displayed here.

The division surveys and forest registers are the earliest scientific records of Taiwan’s forests—a geographic information system created entirely without computers. For decades, these rare documents remained locked away in the cabinets of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency. This exhibition is the first time they are being shown to the public.

The Sanrinka foresters were skilled mountaineers. They crossed mountains and rivers to chart Taiwan’s forests. The terrain they faced was rugged and vast—sheer cliffs and landslide scars stretched across the slopes. Walking the ridgelines was like treading on thin ice: one wrong step could mean a fall into a bottomless abyss. Beyond these dangers, they faced unpredictable weather and the constant threat of malarial “miasma.”

Each expedition was a brush with death. Yet, the foresters revered these untamed mountain forests, and across their many journeys, grew to love their grandeur and beauty. They often jokingly called themselves yama-otoko, or “mountain men”—a name that originally referred to wild mountain spirits in Japanese folklore and later to woodcutters. By adopting the name, the foresters embraced an identity: men of science and reason, yet never fully tamed by civilization, with a spark of wildness still alive in their hearts.

With the help of Indigenous porters, the foresters hauled heavy cameras high into the mountains to capture the sweeping landscapes. They developed the images into lantern slides, which they viewed and discussed as a group. After their gatherings, someone would step up to print the photographs, mount them onto black cardstock, and add captions and covers—crafting hand-made “mountain photo albums” for everyone to keep.

Here, in this quiet and welcoming space, we invite you to take in the beautiful images left behind by the Sanrinka foresters.

By the late 1930s, the Japanese Empire was steadily moving toward war, and timber was in high demand: hardwoods for rifle stocks, teak and cypress for ships, and, in the Southern Seas, cinchona bark for quinine to treat malaria.

With demand soaring, forestry became one of Taiwan’s fastest-growing industries. Forests were now treated as a national resource, something to be managed with care. Each year, from April second to April fourth, the Sanrinka celebrated Arbor Day, holding events across the island that promoted forest protection and encouraged people to plant trees.

The photographs here come from the collection of Mr. Yang Yuan-hsing (楊源興) of Liugui, Kaohsiung. His father, Mr. Yang You-sheng (楊友盛), once worked at Kyoto Imperial University’s experimental forest in the nearby mountains. In these images, you can see Indigenous workers felling trees, clearing land, and planting new forests.

To make Taiwan’s forests serve the empire more effectively, the Sanrinka divided them into forty management units—the foundational division of forest management. Sixty-six horizontal maps delineated their boundaries, which when placed together, stretched nearly eight meters long and more than three meters wide. Even today, management unit divisions still play a central role in Taiwan’s forestry system.

Before you is a rack holding all sixty-six maps. You are welcome to take them down to examine. Notice the red dots marking triangulation points, the blue lines outlining management unit boundaries, and their names written in red characters.

Each management unit had its own working plan, outlining a ten-year schedule of planting and logging. These plans were guided by the principle of sustained yield. Foresters calculated how much timber a forest could produce each year to set annual quotas for felling. 

At the same time, they hoped that the empire’s soaring demand for wood would allow them to create larger and longer-term plans of logging and replanting—envisioning nothing less than a complete remaking of Taiwan’s forests by war’s end.

But the Sanrinka did not foresee the empire’s sudden collapse. Within only a few years, its efforts toward sustainable production vanished into nothing.

In 1945, after Japan’s surrender, the Republic of China assumed control of Taiwan. To manage the island's forests, the new government created the Forestry Bureau under the Office of the Chief Executive of Taiwan Province. The incoming new foresters inherited tens of thousands of maps, registration ledgers, and reports from the Sanrinka. They marveled at the Sanrinka’s careful planning, yet grieved the immense damage  war had done to Taiwan’s forests. With ambition and optimism, they aimed to set forestry in Taiwan on firm ground, guided by the latest scientific methods.

One man, Kuriyama Tadao, had served more than 20 years in the Sanrinka. He offered a word of caution to the eager young foresters. The war, he said, had left a quarter of Taiwan’s forests in ruins. Unless the Bureau acted quickly to reforest, the next typhoon could bring catastrophic loss of life and property.

He also warned that the Sanrinka had modeled its forestry on temperate nations. But, as Taiwan is a southern, tropical island, northern methods might not be entirely appropriate. He urged the Bureau not to focus only on timber, but to consider the forests’ broader value—including the development of secondary forest resources.

The Forestry Bureau took his advice to heart. The new foresters asked themselves what “southern forestry” ought to mean. Even before this, however, they had made “Forest Preservation First” their central policy, proclaiming that “forests are the life of Taiwan” and that their mission was to “safeguard Formosa forever.”

1945 marked the beginning of the second half of Taiwan’s forestry history.  We next invite you to the Taiwan Design Museum in the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park to follow in the footsteps of another generation of foresters and understand a full century of forestry in Taiwan.

Thank you for listening to the story of the Sanrinka. Before you go, be sure to greet the Taiwan cow-tail fir in the courtyard!