Taiwan colonization was 'good': Aso

FUKUOKA (Kyodo) Foreign Minister Taro Aso said Saturday that Taiwan's present high educational standards resulted from compulsory education implemented during Japan's colonization of the island and that he believes Japan "did a good thing."

"Thanks to the significant improvement in educational standards and literacy (during colonization), Taiwan is now a country with a very high education level and keeps up with the current era," Aso said in remarks that risk sparking criticism from Taiwan and other Asian countries that suffered from Japanese wartime aggression.

"This is something I was told by an important figure in Taiwan and all the elderly people knew about it," Aso told an audience in Fukuoka. "That was a time when I felt that, as expected, our predecessors did a good thing."

China ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 and the island remained under Japanese rule until the end of World War II.