Thousands of Taiwanese citizens a day are choosing to declare their nationality as ‘Taiwan, Japan’ in digital forms, apps and international platforms.

It is a silent but powerful gesture that signals how the new Taiwanese generations are redefining their geopolitical, cultural and emotional identity. This apparently marginal phenomenon is actually a political thermometer of the new Taipei-Tokyo axis and the gradual fading of Chinese influence on Taiwanese national identity narratives.

The Tokyo-Taipei axis

The ties between Taiwan and Japan are rooted in a complex history, marked by the colonial period but also by a long cultural heritage that manifests itself in language, food, railway infrastructure and urban modernity.
In recent years, this relationship has transformed from a simple historical proximity to a de facto strategic partnership, especially after the increasingly assertive signals coming from Beijing in recent times.

The government in Tokyo considers the stability of the Taiwan Strait a direct national interest, while Taipei sees Japan as a reliable, democratic and increasingly willing actor for regional security.
This convergence is becoming increasingly explicit in joint exercises, industrial dialogues and semiconductor supply chain security.

The dispute over the Treaty of San Francisco

Most surprising – and politically significant – however, is the spontaneous behaviour of thousands of Taiwanese on social networking sites, international booking forms, e-commerce platforms and global event registrations. Increasingly, where ‘Nationality’ appears, many Taiwanese select or write ‘Taiwan, Japan’.

This is not a mistake or a random choice: it is a soft form of bottom-up diplomacy, a declaration of identity, a way to signal cultural proximity and geopolitical affinity.

A gesture that also sinks in a certain legal ambiguity left open by the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, through which Japan renounced its sovereignty over Taiwan without, however, clearly indicating to which state the island was to be transferred.

This post-World War II ‘grey area’ continues to influence the identity debate and fuels, at least on a symbolic level, the perception that Taiwan’s international position has not been fully defined – a void that a large part of the population fills precisely by choosing alternative identity formulas such as ‘Taiwan, Japan’.

On the other hand, the Chinese Communist Party has put its own spin on it: in order to raise the tension against the Rising Sun , it has declared that the Treaty of San Francisco is ‘illegal, null and void’, forgetting, however, that Taiwan would still be a Japanese possession.

‘If they force us to be Chinese, we might as well be Japanese’

Taiwan is not recognised as a sovereign state by many global platforms, which still list it under ‘Taiwan, Province of China’.
As a reaction, many users prefer to associate Taiwan with a democratic neighbouring country, such as Japan.
In addition, there is a growing cultural affinity: the boom in tourism, Japanese pop culture, design and higher education in Japan contributes to the perception of a community of values.

Thus, writing ‘Taiwan, Japan’ meanscommunicating that Taiwan is not China, that Tokyo is considered the most reliable partner in the region, and that, in the absence of full recognised sovereignty, citizens symbolically choose an alternative ‘geopolitical family’.

The phenomenon is now visible on a large scale and has become an integral part of the internal discussion on Taiwanese identity.

The diplomacy of everyday friendship

In recent years, gestures and symbols have acquired an increasingly intense political significance. From the Japanese president’s tweets to parliamentary visits to Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s choice to visit a sushi bar as a political message, relations between Tokyo and Taipei have become part of a public narrative involving both civil societies.

The Japanese media themselves are closely observing this rapprochement, which sees Taiwan as a key partner in the security of sea routes and global chip chains. For many think tanks, a new Japanese-Taiwanese solidarity is forming, based on shared democratic values and a common fear of Chinese expansionism.

Japan’s role in the Taiwan Strait

Tokyo, through PM Takaichi, reinforced the language on regional security, emphasising that a unilateral change of the status quo (i.e. a Chinese takeover of Taiwan) would not be tolerated. A position that, although diplomatically calibrated, marks a clear distance from the more cautious posture of the past and is closer to the Abe doctrine.

Japan knows that a possible conflict in the Strait would have direct repercussions on its sea lines, economy and security itself, for instance in the case of the disputed Ryukyu archipelago. Despite this, Tokyo continues to move very carefully, avoiding direct provocations but strengthening technological, cyber and maritime cooperation with Taipei.

A winning choice

The choice seems to have paid off: polls indicate, in fact, that more than 75% of Japanese public opinion expresses a strong approval of Sanae Takaichi, a political figure who has built a reputation for steadfastness on regional security and strategic closeness to the United States and Taiwan (as well as, it must be said for the sake of completeness, hostility to immigration).

Meanwhile, Taiwanese trust in Japan remains very high, and more importantly, among the highest levels in Asia.

If governments continue to strengthen ties, it will be this fabric of popular affinity – made up of trust, identity gestures, symbolic choices and mutual appreciation – that will cement an alliance that, for many, is no longer merely strategic, but a natural component of the new Indo-Pacific to come.

A non-ideologised memory of the colonial age

Writing ‘Taiwan, Japan’ is not just a whim or a provocation: it is the reaffirmation of a history that the island’s citizens feel is their own, and which they want to remove from attempts at political reinterpretation from outside (Beijing voice wanted).

The Japanese colonial past also plays a role in this process of identity reappropriation: from 1895 to 1945, Japan ruled Taiwan, implementing modern infrastructure, educational systems and industrial transformations that have left an imprint that is still visible today. Although it was a colonial rule in its own right, many Taiwanese recognise that this era was also a period of accelerated modernisation and openness to the world.

It is not surprising, then, that in a contemporary context in which Beijing has often attempted to rewrite the island’s history in order to bring it back into a unified Chinese narrative, Taiwanese society reacts by valorising alternative historical elements more in keeping with its collective experience.
Today, Taiwan shows a lucid awareness of its origins, its path and its specificity: it continues to seek – even through small symbolic gestures – the most effective way to tell the world what it really is.