In Memory of Fang Quei Quo, professor emeritus

By Tsuyoshi Kawasaki

The Department of Political Science remembers Fang Quei Quo, professor emeritus, who passed away on March 26^th, 2021 at the age of 88.

Dr. Quo mentored SFU Political Science Professor Tsuyoshi Kawasaki when he began his career at the university in 1994. What follows is Professor Kawasaki’s tribute to Dr. Quo:

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Dr. F. Quei Quo, and I would like to convey my sincere condolences to his family. As the pioneer of Japanese political studies at SFU, Dr. Quo made enormous contributions to the field. 

He took me under his wing when I started my SFU career back in 1994. I fondly remember our conversations and his jokes—all in perfect Japanese—in his AQ office while he kept smoking (it was allowed in those days). I presumed that he spoke Japanese at home, his wife being from Japan and his daughter living in Japan after graduating from a Canadian university; that was more than 25 years ago.

I knew Dr. Quo was from Taiwan, given his family name, but I was curious to know how he eventually came to Canada. This is what he told me:

When he was growing up in Taiwan, it was still a Japanese colony. When the country went back to the Republic of China after the Japanese defeat in World War II, Dr. Quo fled to the United States under duress. Taiwanese nationalists resisted the unruly behavior of the KMT (Chinese Nationalist Party) government, which eventually resulted in the February 28 Incident of 1947, a brutal crackdown by the KMT. The KMT’s “White Terror” against the Taiwanese followed, and Dr. Quo was blacklisted under the 1949–1987 Martial Law. When I visited the 228 Peace Memorial Park in Taipei (that commemorates the 1947 Incident) in 2012, I could not help but wonder how he could ever have escaped the White Terror and left Taiwan. But he did.

After obtaining an American PhD, Dr. Quo taught in Alaska for a while, if my memory serves me right. He eventually settled in Canada. By the end of the 1990s, he had started a new academic life at a Japanese university near Tokyo after taking an early retirement from SFU. I still remember that when I met him in a Tokyo café, he was telling me, with a big smile, that he finally went back to Taiwan after the Martial Law was lifted—with a Japanese TV crew to tape his emotional homecoming! I thought that his entire life story could have been made into a TV series. 

Dr. Quo went through dramatic phases in his life, but eventually he found a restful place here in Canada as an established scholar of Japan. I was lucky that I could have him as my mentor.  Thank you very much, Dr. Quo.