last night the public television station here had a show on old taiwanese 78s. a few things i learned from this show:

• in 1914 the first taiwanese recordings were released in japan. these recordings were of hakka origin.
  
  
• in 1928 the first japanese recordings were released in taiwan.
  
  
• in the 1930s the most popular recordings in taiwan were of taiwanese opera. the government(read:the japanese) were not so happy about this, as apparently it was in these songs that people expressed their disatisfaction with things.
  
  
• taiwanese opera is from ilan and grew out of a local song tradition. when the taiwanese opera recordings were first played for the people of ilan, some of them didn't believe it was possible, and the record player had to be taken apart to prove that there were no drums hidden within.
  
  
• in 1928 western music was introduced to taiwan and dances such as the fox trot became all the rage.
  

after seeing this program, i stumbled upon this page on the history of taiwanese pop music. they even have mp3s of some of the songs they talk about. the information on this page seems to be a little different from the show i'd seen, and oddly enough they don't mention nagashi. nagashi is basically a taiwanese version of japanese enka music. but to my ears much more interesting than the japanese or korean enka i have heard. i've been led to believe that nagashi is a style of music, but maybe it's not known widely by that name and some of the music written about on that page is indeed nagashi.