Japanese Invasion of Taiwan (1895) - Casualties

Casualties

Japanese combat casualties in the invasion of Taiwan were relatively light: 164 officers and men killed and 515 wounded. Casualties from disease, particularly cholera and malaria, were far higher. The cholera outbreak in the Pescadores at the end of March 1895 killed more than 1,500 Japanese soldiers, and an even higher number of Japanese soldiers died in September 1895 in the wake of the malaria outbreak at Changhua shortly after its fall to the Japanese. According to Japanese sources, 4,642 soldiers died in Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands of disease. By the end of the campaign, 5,246 Japanese soldiers had been hospitalised in Taiwan and a further 21,748 soldiers had been evacuated back to Japan for treatment.

Japanese casualties from disease included Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa, who fell ill with malaria on 18 October. His condition rapidly worsened and he died in Tainan on 28 October, seven days after the city's capitulation to the Japanese. His body was carried to Anping, the port of Tainan, by a troop of wrestlers who by special imperial permission had accompanied the Imperial Guards Division, and shipped back to Japan for burial aboard the steamer Saikio Maru. The cruiser Yoshino escorted the prince's body back to Japan. A story widely circulated in Taiwan at the time, that the cause of the prince's death was a wound he received during the Battle of Baguashan, is quite untrue.

Chinese and Formosan casualties were far higher, but are difficult to estimate. The Japanese recovered the dead bodies of around 7,000 enemy soldiers from the various battlefields of the war, and the total number of Chinese and Formosan dead has been estimated at around 14,000.