To buy the first decade of the 20th-century, Japan had become a modern society. Japan was considered a full-fledged member of the international community of modernized nations. In 1912 the Meiji Emperor, who had led Japan into the modern world, died, leaving Japan in the hands of his successor Taisho Emperor, and the intellectual and spiritual unity of the Meiji period became fragmented, and a call for a new political consciousness emerged. Japanese society was riddled with social unrest. Rapid industrial growth provoked the development of economic extremes in Japanese society: "thousands of young country people crowded into the great city slums, creating a restless, floating population is discontent was a new political phenomenon."

At the advent of World War I, American president Woodrow Wilson moved into the limelight, delivering speeches alluding to freedom, democracy, "self-determination," and equal opportunity. In February, 1918, President Wilson delivered a speech that sparked an immediate response among the Taiwanese students in Japan:

People are not being handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference Board and understanding between rivals and antagonists... National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consult. 'Self-determination' is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statement will henceforth ignor at their peril...

     Taiwanese students in Japan absorbed the excitement of the era through the "books and articles they read, through their contact with Japanese students and through their contact with scholars and thinkers of the emerging liberal and radical groups of Japan." The Taiwanese Students Were Becoming Aware of the Political Activities of students in other colonies as well. Korean and Chinese students in Japan Informed Them of the March First Independents Movement in Korea (1919). The effect of these new intellectual, political, and social movements start the Taiwanese students growing consciousness of problems at home.

     The first steps in resistance to Japanese rule in this period materialized in the form of legitimate resistance organizations. Taiwanese students created political organizations with legitimate goals, and use lawful tactics to promulgate. As more and more students, influenced by diverse factors became involved in these groups, factions began to develop and a trend towards radical leftism emerged.

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