In order to trace the TPN incident to the encounters and conflicts between colonial state and local society, he details Japan's institutional and social control through the legal system, community policing, census and the household registration system and emphasizes the impacts of economic policies such as land taxes and the sugar and forest industry.

The study concludes that the government "has not passed laws to reform the property registry or implement new land taxes, there has been no movement toward the regularization of indigenous peoples' communal lands, and nothing has changed with regards to the inequitable distribution of land in the countryside.

Because they were soon repealed, the land taxes in the 1909 Budget are remembered as no more than a curious interlude, but as we are reminded by Dr.