As we all know, after the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, the Beiyang Marine Division was completely destroyed, and the Japanese army invaded Chinese mainland, causing a horrific massacre in Lushun. In 1895, Japan coerced the Qing government into signing the Treaty of Maguan, which stipulated that Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou would be newly opened as treaty ports. Hangzhou thus had an imperialist port.
In November 1895, the Japanese Consul General in Shanghai, Zhen Tian, came to Hangzhou to open a concession by the West Lake next to yongjinmen, but the Chinese government refused, only to designate the north of the Gongchen Bridge and the east bank of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal 15 miles north of Hangzhou as a public residence for foreigners similar to the north bank of the Ningbo River, and China retained administrative rights. Inspector Liao Shoufeng of Zhejiang immediately began to open up roads and build customs in this area. On September 27, 1896, after fierce disputes, China and Japan finally signed the "Hangzhou Sedelmen Original Japanese Concession Charter", which delineated the 1,809-acre Foreign Settlement, which belonged to the foreign settlement area managed by the Chinese government, of which about 900 acres in the northern half was a Japanese settlement area.
On May 13, 1897, King Zuguang of Hangjiahu Daodaotai and the Japanese consul in Hangzhou, Oda Che Wanshousuke, re-signed the charter for opening up the Japanese concession in Hangzhou, the "Statute of renewal of the Japanese Concession in Hangzhou", stipulating that the Japanese settlement area should be changed to a Japanese exclusive concession, and the expenses of the Chinese government such as road construction would be reimbursed by the Japanese in the future. However, after the concession area was roughly demarcated, some Japanese went to the public shopping malls south of the concession and opened a large number of brothels, reaching 233 in 1929. The Japanese consulate in Shita'ertou was once an intelligence stronghold for the Japanese invasion of China, and submitted the "Catalogue of Good Books Collected by the Zhejiang Provincial Library" and the names, schools, grades, places of origin, and residences of Taiwanese students in Zhejiang.
In February 1943, in order to win over the Chinese traitors, the Japanese imperialists falsely handed over the Hangzhou Japanese Concession to the then Wang puppet government. Wang Jingwei's government took over the Japanese concession, but only expanded the Japanese puppet's own power.