Despite the fact that Yunlin was first developed and settled by the Han-Chinese as early as in the Kangshi-Yungcheng era (i.e., the early eighteen century), there remained a large part of wild areas at the beginning of the Japanese-ruled period (i.e., at the end of the nineteenth century) because of the unfavorable physical environment. These wild areas were very soon claimed by the Japanese colonial government as public wild areas, which were subsequently granted, by way of “sale and grant for expected successful development”, to local authorities, other public institutions, private Japanese corporations, as well as specific local gentries. Three characteristics of the process of land grant and development stands out as follows. (1) extremely uneven distribution of land grantees. Over 95% of the land were granted to Japanese corporations as well as local gentries. For the land granted to Japanese corporations, cane-suger refinery corporations had the lion's share, while the Taiwanese and Japanese co-ownershiped corporations accounted for more than two-thirds of the land granted to local gentries. (2) frequent change of land development licenses. Cases of land development often failed largely because of insufficient capital and labor input, and development licenses were traded subsequently. (3) a distinct development objective from the previous Ching Dynasty period. While in the Ching Dynasty period the development of paddi rice field claimed the top priority, in the Japanese-ruled period cane sugar field prevailed.