I noticed that a lot of those “Republic of Taiwan” flags all look like the Japanese flag, with the
big red sun in the middle… Yesterday I saw another one in a news photo. It was the flag
used by those people who had a flag-raising ceremony…
Is this just a coincidence or have these people who promote Taiwan independence never seen
a Japanese flag?
Thanks for any intelligent replies! 
The short answer is that yes, the flags are reminicient of the Japanese flag by design.
The long answer – Wikipedia knows all:
Flag on the left:
Flag on the right:
From a purely aesthetic point of view, I prefer the flag on the left. Words and numbers, in general, are simply bad design characteristics of a flag, especially the way they have it on the right. It’s way too cluttered. The Chinese font is ugly as well.
If the flag was meant to be a “History of Taiwan”, shouldn’t there be some Chinese imperial yellow in there? Afterall, the Chinese imperial rule was the longest of any. Perhaps a yellow merging into blue merging into green kinda thing. One might want to argue getting the Dutch and Portugese colours in there as well, but they never really controlled the whole island. Perhaps a splash of some aborigine tribal colours around the edges would look nice. But really, the flag is just too ugly to be effectively repaired.
Don’t forget that the idea behind the KMT flag was also based on the Japanese flag. So perhaps there’s really no escaping it.
I think, with very limited exceptions, flags are all based one in anothers…
Flags with round objects in the middle exist for the following countries:
Flags with flowers:
Flags with 3 vertical bars, being the middle one white:
Flags with 3 vertical bars, being the outer ones green:
Flags with 3 horizontal bars, being the middle one white:
(Enough or should I continue?)
[quote=“mr_boogie”]Flags with flowers:
But back to your point. Yes, flags all around the world have similar characteristics. But the concept of the sun within the KMT flag was borrowed from the Japanese. It wasn’t simply an aesthetic imitation, but rather partially a symbolic one.
The first time I saw the 908 flag (on the right), I thought it was a screen capture from a TV show. Kinda like when a show is just about to start and the title screen comes on. The design is simply four-cheese-pizza-kind-of-cheesy imho.
Their subconsious Fruedian slip have been revealed.
[quote=“sjcma”][quote=“mr_boogie”]Flags with flowers:
[/quote]Yeah, I was just thinking that, too. :loco:
Well the current flag is quite similar to the Burmese flag.
The flag does justice to Taiwan’s hertiage as it shows the positive era that Japanese Imperial rule has brought to Daiwan. People who are critical of the newer designs should be ashamed of themselves because they do not love Daiwan as Wang Benhu has said time and again.
I … am … so … ashamed. 
I have reformed myself.
I now love four cheese pizzas. I do, I really really do.
It’s great to see more people interested in Taiwan vexillology. And I never saw the flag on the right before. Seems like every time I turn around, somebody else is promoting a new Taiwan Independence flag. (There’s another thread on this somewhere…)
Another Japanese knock-off appeared in several of the newspapers a year or so ago. Picture a white flag with a green Taiwan in the middle, surrounded by “rays” of red, blue, and orange (so far as my limited color vision could decipher).
In Western tradition we frown on putting maps on flags (for much the same reason that we avoid words and letters), but over here they obviously haven’t even thought about the issue. Many national flag proposals (remembering from I got to see the Tai Lien Dang’s contest submissions a few years ago) owe a whole lot to the “flags” which you see set up on street corners and such, and which are really just ads. On the other hand, at least that particular flag (the winning entry, unless I am mistaken) clearly got across the basic idea of what it was for.
The Taiwanese are capable of vexillological greatness. I recently saw a set of Buddhist / Taoist / folk religion flags flying in front of a temple which I thought were brilliant works of art.
BTW my two-year-old nephew-in-law, on seeing the ROC flag, always says “Ma Ying-jou”!
[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]Another Japanese knock-off appeared in several of the newspapers a year or so ago. Picture a white flag with a green Taiwan in the middle, surrounded by “rays” of red, blue, and orange (so far as my limited color vision could decipher).
In Western tradition we frown on putting maps on flags …[/quote]
Well, if you remove the map from the flag and just leave the multi-colour rays, is this what you end up with?
The Inca flag?
Yes, indeed. I’m sure you are fully aware of the fact that the Taiwanese aborigines went across the Taiwan Strait, migrated northeast, then went across the ice bridge of the Bering Strait, and then down south where they setup the great Inca Empire.
Try going up to Alishan and dig around for an old aborigines constitution. You’ll see that it states that the Inca Empire includes Taiwan AND a big swath of land which is now currently occupied by Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. The aborigines has never relinquished its claim and states that they will one day “take back the mainland” from the insurgents (aka 南美匪).
But until that happens, they will have to settle for the Inca Empire on Taiwan.
When reunification becomes reality, the aborigines of Inca Empire will once again stand up and proudly wave their six colour flag – one flag, one people across the Pacific Ocean.
I wonder what the elders of some of the interior aborigninal groups think about this horrid looking flag. Especially those who can remember the times around the turn of the century. When the Japanese repeatedly pushed the limit of logging & camphor industries, having to protect workers (hired drones) from native attacks. Punitive expeditions were severe, pushing the native population into ever increasingly isolated regions.
Not a great episode in overseas Japanese expansionism.
sjcma & Chris
Now Annette Lu’s idea to move aborigines to Central America to save them from landslides doesn’t seem so farfetched. She was empire building! Who else remembers this report, or am I imagining things again?
I find it ironic that the TI flag looks like one of China’s monstrous SAR flags.
[quote=“TheGingerMan”]
Not a great episode in overseas Japanese expansionism.[/quote]
I can’t think of even one “great episode”…
[quote=“Doctor Evil”][quote=“TheGingerMan”]
Not a great episode in overseas Japanese expansionism.[/quote]
I can’t think of even one “great episode”…[/quote]
Not even the Hello Kitty expansionism?
[quote=“cream”]Is this just a coincidence or have these people who promote Taiwan independence never seen
a Japanese flag? [/quote]
Au contraire, they’ve seen it too often (like in their wet-dreams). It’s a deliberate imitation because a Japanoid must worship her master.
For explanation, check out crwflags.com/fotw/flags/jp_imp70.html