The Anti-Colonial Movement (2)
In 1920, Cai, who had moved to Tokyo in 1915 to enroll in Tokyo Higher Normal School, joined with other members of the New People's Society (Shinjinkai) and the newly formed Taiwan Youth Association (Taiwan seinenkai) to lobby the Diet for the law's permanent repeal. Contrary to their demands, however, the Diet made the law permanent in 1921 (now as "Law 3").
With this avenue for political reform closed, Cai and the Taiwan Youth Society turned their energies toward achieving even bigger changes in the distribution of political authority in the Japanese Empire. In 1923, Cai, who had returned to Taiwan in 1922, joined other Taiwanese activists to petition the Taihoku Police for permission to establish a new organization, the League for the Establishment of a Taiwan Parliament (Taiwan gikai). Rebuffed by the colonial police in Taihoku, Cai traveled to Tokyo. There, he applied to the Tokyo Police for permission to establish the organization in Tokyo. The Tokyo police granted his request, and the League for the Establishment of a Taiwan Parliament was born. The League submitted petitions to the Diet for the establishment of a Taiwan parliament every year between 1921 and 1934 (the first petitions were filed by members of the New People's Society, but without the organization's name). Usually signed by one thousand to two thousand individuals, the petitions represented the voice of the socioeconomic middle ground of Taiwanese society, with over sixty percent of the signatories having completed elementary or elementary-equivalent education but not higher school or college. The Diet denied each petition (Chen 1972, 483-88).