Former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui repeatedly said that he had been Japanese until the age of twenty-two and continued to express profound affection for Japan.
Through Yoshiko Sakurai’s essay, this article records Lee’s contribution to Taiwan’s democracy, his warnings about Chinese authoritarianism, and his call for Japan to recover its confidence and national resolve.
Constitutional reform, stronger Japan–Taiwan cooperation, and a clear commitment to defending democracy in Asia would constitute Japan’s answer to Lee Teng-hui’s enduring love.

August 3, 2020
Lee Teng-hui, who repeatedly said that he had been Japanese until the age of twenty-two, poured into Japan a warmth and affection almost unimaginable in the leader of a foreign country.
Yet after its defeat in the war, Japan sometimes disappointed Taiwan.
The following is taken from Yoshiko Sakurai’s regular column, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title, “Respond to Lee Teng-hui’s Love.”
Yoshiko Sakurai is a “national treasure” in the sense defined by Saichō.
Former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui always expressed frankly his warm regard for Japan and his affection for the Japanese people.
Whenever we met, he would wrap his large hand around mine as though embracing it, lead me inside and speak in a firm voice that retained the vitality of a young man.
When he began discussing the love of humanity and philosophy rooted in the great works he had devoured in his youth—including Kitarō Nishida’s An Inquiry into the Good and the writings of Kanzō Uchimura and Inazō Nitobe—one would lose all awareness of the passing time.
When he discussed the problem of China confronting the Taiwanese people, his wife, Tseng Wen-hui, who listened quietly beside him, would also say:
“The Taiwanese people went through truly terrible experiences, including the February 28 Incident.
I cannot help feeling profound sorrow for the people of Taiwan, who were not even taught the truth about their own history.”
It was precisely for this reason that Lee Teng-hui broke through the limits of the Kuomintang and confronted China as a Taiwanese president.
I believe that his unshakeable position was also sustained by the ideal form of human society taught by Nishida and the other thinkers who preceded him.
Lee, who often said that he had been Japanese until the age of twenty-two, gave Japan a degree of warm affection rarely seen in the leader of another country.
Yet Japan sometimes disappointed Taiwan after its defeat in the war.
The most typical example was Japan’s severance of diplomatic relations with Taiwan amid the shock waves created by the sudden announcement of President Nixon’s visit to China.
The United States, where the upheaval had originated, subsequently enacted the Taiwan Relations Act.
Lee Teng-hui looked back on this history in the following terms:
“Americans strongly believed that Taiwan must not be lost.
This was a matter of geopolitics.
The thinking of the Americans was comparatively clear.”
By contrast:
“Japan was unable to think in the same way as the United States.”
“Regrettably, Japanese politicians lacked the spirit of bushido.”
These remarks appear in The Lee Teng-hui Record, supervised in Japanese translation by Mineo Nakajima and published by Sankei Shimbun Publications.
Even when considered in the context of present relations among Japan, the United States, Taiwan and China, Lee’s words retain great importance.
Unless a country understands the essential nature of Chinese political thought, sets aside private interests and devotes itself to the national interest, it will not survive in the rapidly changing world after the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The future is all the more uncertain for Japan, which has still not revised its Constitution and remains inferior in military strength.
Lee Teng-hui was selected by President Chiang Ching-kuo and served as vice-president from 1984 for three years and eight months.
From his position beside the president, he learned the governing ideas and methods of the Chinese political tradition.
He fully observed both the exceptional abilities of the Chinese and the danger they could pose.
The warnings born from that rare experience were penetrating.
In 1999, when Lee advanced his “two-state theory,” defining Taiwan and China as relations between one state and another, one of the first people to criticise him was Democratic United States Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Feinstein’s husband was conducting business in Shanghai.
Lee told her:
“Americans cannot defeat the Chinese.
You still do not understand what politics really is.
By the time you begin practising politics, the Chinese will already have become immortals.”
This is a warning that the profit-seeking Japanese business community, above all, should take deeply to heart.
Lee explained that China’s authoritarian government possessed methods to suppress completely anyone who opposed it.
China advances several steps and then immediately returns to its old position.
This is because its people have “always remained inside the pickling jar of their culture, continually returning to that jar and believing it to be their only path to survival.”
This observation appears in The Lee Teng-hui Record.
Does this description not inevitably bring to mind President Xi Jinping, who dreams of becoming a second Mao Zedong?
Lee stressed that the Chinese retreat into restoration because they lack ideals, and that for this reason they do not truly develop.
What is absent is the ideal of building a nation on universal human values and constructing a democratic system that places the happiness of all people first.
There was an interesting dispute between Lee Teng-hui and former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, whom Henry Kissinger and other international thinkers regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on China.
Regarding how Taiwan should confront China, Lee Kuan Yew argued that Taiwan should respect nationalism.
Lee Teng-hui maintained that democracy and a closer relationship with the United States were essential.
The American political scientist Samuel Huntington observed:
“Lee Kuan Yew’s nationalism will disappear with his death, but Lee Teng-hui’s democracy will survive after his death as Taiwan’s democracy.”
That judgement was correct.
The fruits of Taiwanese democracy now stand before our eyes.
President Tsai Ing-wen and the Democratic Progressive Party government have inherited Lee’s aspirations.
They are steadily advancing Taiwan as a democracy, a society governed by law, a country in which government and citizens cooperate, and a Taiwan belonging to the Taiwanese people.
The foundations were unquestionably prepared by Lee Teng-hui.
When I visited his home in 2015, Lee said in his customary cheerful voice:
“Japan should have greater confidence in itself.”
Japan should demonstrate the power of democracy to both the Chinese government and the Chinese people and state its own views clearly.
Prime Minister Shinzō Abe clearly protested on behalf of the government over both Hong Kong and the South China Sea.
Japan, however, must not stop there.
The role of the Diet is to gather the voices of the people and express a clear national will as their representative.
The Liberal Democratic Party and every other political party should therefore debate these issues in the Diet, protest and adopt resolutions.
It is widely known that what opposition parties such as the Constitutional Democratic Party are doing is the exact opposite of Sakurai’s entirely natural proposal as a sound-minded Japanese citizen.
Even while the Wuhan virus and the Senkaku Islands placed the country in danger, they sought to summon Prime Minister Abe to the Diet in order to attack him.
It is no exaggeration to say that the people controlling NHK’s news division, commercial television news departments and wide-show programming—who do not even attempt to criticise such outrageous conduct—are all operating under Chinese influence, or rather, are Chinese agents.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s message in July announced the deepening struggle of values between the United States and China.
It is the choice identified by Lee Teng-hui: democracy or its opposite.
Japan left in Taiwan a Japanese spirit that values ethics, humanity and the rule of law.
The time has now come for Japan to raise the banner of those same values and express its will forcefully for the sake of Japan, Taiwan and the nations of Asia.
At that moment, we must ask ourselves:
Can we summon the resolve to undertake constitutional reform?
Can we substantially strengthen cooperation between Japan and Taiwan?
Can Japan speak on behalf of the nations of Asia seeking to realise democracy?
A Japan that answers these questions positively would be the Japan capable of responding to Lee Teng-hui’s overflowing love.