As some readers may have seen, a diplomatic uproar occurred this year surrounding the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 9, when the City of Nagasaki failed for the second year in a row to permit Taiwan’s representative in Japan to attend the ceremony in an official capacity.
As such, Li I-yang, the Representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan, decided not to attend the ceremony at all.
He instead directed Dr. Chen Ming-jun, a veteran diplomat serving as the Director-General of the Fukuoka Branch Office, to attend in his place.
Li was not boycotting the event per se, as Taiwan values the importance of close relations with Japan, Nagasaki Prefecture, and Nagasaki City. He was also not downplaying the significance of the ceremony, particularly in light of the fact that many Taiwanese died in the atomic bomb attacks at the time as citizens of Japan.
Instead, Li was correctly protesting the treatment he, as the effective Taiwanese ambassador to Japan, was accorded by the City of Nagasaki, once again.
The city had assigned the Taiwanese delegation, which was to include the senior most leadership of the Representative Office, seating outside the area reserved for the diplomatic corps, “thereby undermining Taiwan’s dignity and status as a state,” according to a statement Ambassador Li issued the following day.
I write “Ambassador” here as that is what he is. Indeed, despite the Embassy being called the “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office,” it is in fact an embassy.
It serves citizens of Taiwan and Japan, as well as third-country nationals, and carries out essentially all the diplomatic functions of an official embassy.
A Repeat of Last Year’s Snub
The same thing happened last year, exactly 11 months after Li assumed his post (on September 9, 2024). After much coordination, Li attended the event, essentially in a private capacity, for the first time but only because he requested to attend.
He was not treated as the head of an officially invited foreign diplomatic delegation and was thus not allowed to sit with the other diplomats, despite, as Li noted, Taiwan’s having participated in “numerous events at both the national and local levels in Japan.”
Li I-yang, Representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan, attends the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony in Nagasaki on August 9, 2025. (Courtesy of the representative office website)
Indeed, Taiwan was allowed to participate officially at the Hiroshima ceremony just a few days before on August 6. Same type of ceremony, but different treatment.
Although Li was grateful for the opportunity to attend last year, it was a “humiliating experience.” He expressed his regrets over the treatment afterwards and directed the Fukuoka Branch Office to begin negotiations on permitting his official attendance for this year.
Pressure From Beijing
Sadly, the City of Nagasaki did not act in good faith, most certainly under pressure from the People’s Republic of China which has a consulate in Nagasaki in addition to nearby Fukuoka.
Ironically, it is from these consulates, as well as its other consulates in Japan and its Embassy in Tokyo, that the PRC conducts its well-documented espionage and destabilization activities led by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department.
The City of Nagasaki seems to have fallen prey, long ago, as seen by its efforts to prevent Taiwan’s full participation.
As Li mentioned in his statement, the City of Nagasaki “apparently failed to recognize that its erroneous decision was serving as an instrument of China’s ‘lawfare’ against Taiwan—that is, China’s claim that ‘Taiwan is not a country, possesses no sovereignty, and is part of China’.”
Ambassador Li reiterated that “Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country and is not subordinate to the People’s Republic of China. China has never governed Taiwan for even a single day. The Republic of China on Taiwan was established before the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China.”
He lodged “a solemn protest against and criticized the City of Nagasaki for yielding to pressure from the PRC, diminishing Taiwan’s status as a state, and insulting Taiwan’s dignity.”
This was particularly sad and ironic for Ambassador Li as he pointed out in his statement that “it is China that is currently expanding its nuclear-weapons development program, thereby posing a threat to world peace. China also frequently conducts military exercises throughout the Indo-Pacific region and has become the greatest disruptor of regional peace and a source of potential conflict.”
The author couldn’t agree more.
Moreover, while the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony calls for the “abolition of nuclear weapons” and the “realization of lasting peace,” sadly, Nagasaki mayor Suzuki Shiro skipped the sentence that read, “We strongly urge steady progress toward disarmament.”
This is one of the key phrases in the speech and thus its absence does not appear to have been a mere mishap but instead something ordered by the PRC, as was the pressure to prevent Taiwan’s participation.
Taiwan-Japan Ties Run Deep
Ambassador Li reminded readers in his statement of the various relations and people-to-people bonds between Taiwan and Japan.
For example, he explained that “TSMC’s investment in its Kumamoto plant is expected to generate an economic impact of ¥23 trillion [about $144 billion] in the Kyushu region over a ten-year period, from which Nagasaki will also benefit.”
Moreover, following the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, “donations from Taiwan ranked among the highest in the world, and in response to the recent Kumamoto earthquake, fundraising and relief activities have once again been actively undertaken throughout Taiwan.”
Furthermore, during the first half of this year, “Taiwanese travelers made approximately 3.97 million visits to Japan, ranking Taiwan second among countries and regions in visitor numbers, while their spending totaled ¥752.3 billion ($5 billion), the highest of any group.”
As such, Li stressed that the bonds of friendship between Taiwan and Japan are profound and that the two sides have long maintained friendly relations.
He also noted that “although Taiwan’s population of approximately 23 million ranks 57th in the world, its stock-market capitalization ranks fourth globally, behind only the United States, China, and Japan. Taiwan has become the world’s most important manufacturing base for hardware in the high-technology sector, and its economic growth rate during the first half of this year reached a remarkable 13.72%.”
He stated that “the world cannot ignore Taiwan’s presence or its value.”
While the message was directed at Japan as a whole, those in the City of Nagasaki probably most need to hear it. The city’s handling of the situation was shameful, hypocritical, devious, and unrepresentative of what a municipality calling for peace should do.
It needs to wake up and reject the PRC’s not-so-subtle pressure and domestic interference, especially when so many people in Japan like and respect Taiwan. Nagasaki is harming Japan’s national interests by continuing to do the PRC’s bidding.
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Author: Robert D Eldridge
Dr Eldridge is the author of “The Necessary Commander and the Unnecessary Fight: Colonel Nakagawa Kunio and the Battle of Peleliu” (Reed International, 2024) and the former political advisor to the Marine Corps in Japan.
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