Japanese invasion of Taiwan: Battle of Baguashan: The Empire of Japan decisively defeats a smaller Formosan army at Changhua, crippling the short-lived Republic of Formosa and leading to its surrender two months later.

The Japanese invasion of Taiwan, also known as Yiwei War in Chinese, was a conflict between the Empire of Japan and the armed forces of the short-lived Republic of Formosa following the Qing dynasty's cession of Taiwan to Japan in April 1895 at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese sought to take control of their new possession, while the Republican forces fought to resist Japanese occupation. The Japanese landed near Keelung on the northern coast of Taiwan on 29 May 1895, and in a five-month campaign swept southwards to Tainan. Although their advance was slowed by guerrilla activity, the Japanese defeated the Formosan forces whenever they attempted to make a stand. The Japanese victory at Baguashan on 27 August, the largest battle ever fought on Taiwanese soil, doomed the Formosan resistance to an early defeat. The fall of Tainan on 21 October ended organised resistance to Japanese occupation, and inaugurated five decades of Japanese rule in Taiwan.

The Battle of Baguashan, the largest battle ever fought on Taiwanese soil, was the pivotal battle of the Japanese invasion of Taiwan. The battle, fought on 27 August 1895 near the city of Changhua in central Taiwan between the invading Japanese army and the forces of the short-lived Republic of Formosa, was a decisive Japanese victory, and doomed the Republic of Formosa to early extinction. The battle was one of the few occasions on which the Formosans were able to deploy artillery against the Japanese.

The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From 1910 to 1945, it included the Japanese archipelago, the Kurils, Karafuto, Korea, and Taiwan. The South Seas Mandate and concessions such as the Kwantung Leased Territory were de jure not internal parts of the empire but dependent territories. In the closing stages of World War II, with Japan defeated alongside the rest of the Axis powers, the formalized surrender was issued on September 2, 1945, in compliance with the Potsdam Declaration of the Allies, and the empire's territory subsequently shrunk to cover only the Japanese archipelago resembling modern Japan.