Imperial Tokyo as a Contact Zone: the Metropolitan Tours ...

The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 12 | Issue 10 | Number 4 | Article ID 4089 | Mar 03, 2014

1

Imperial Tokyo as a Contact Zone: the Metropolitan Tours ofTaiwanese Aborigines, 1897-1941 コンタクト・ゾーン(接触地帯)としての帝都東京―台湾原住民の「内地観光」、1897年-1941年

Jordan Sand

Summary:

Overlooked by most scholars of Taiwanesehistory and almost entirely forgotten in thehistory of Tokyo, sightseeing tours organizedby the Japanese colonial government broughtgroups of Taiwanese aborigines to the imperialcapital twenty-one times between 1897 and1941. The aim of these tours was to show theaborigines the "light of civilization" andimpress upon them Japanese superiority. Theaboriginal tourists, however, did not alwayslearn the intended lessons of their visit. Thetours made Tokyo the stage for complexcultural encounters that undermined the simpleimperial narrative of civilization and savagery.

A number of studies in recent years haveexplored the relationship between Japanesecolonizers in Taiwan and the island's aboriginalminorities. Although aborigines made up asmall percentage of the colonized population,they occupy a disproportionately large place inthe colonial archive because they represented aspecial project for imperial Japan. From theirfirst encounter with the Japanese military in1874 until the early 1930s, many resistedJapanese encroachment with violence, andJapanese colonial administrators resolved tobring them under the yoke of civilization bywhatever means necessary. They were alsoobjects of anthropological study and popularfascination. Among the diverse Asianpopulations that came under Japanese colonialrule, Taiwan's aborigines were the only peopleto be referred to in official documents as

"savages" (banjin 蕃人). This term derived fromChinese usage, a reminder that the Japanesewere inheriting a colonial relationship whoseterms were to some extent already established.Taiwanese aborigines were thus a minorityoppressed twice over: first under Chinese thenunder Japanese dominance. As the empire'sfirst and only designated "savages," they werealso a test of Japanese claims to be the bearersof a civilizing mission.1

One component of this relationship betweenimperial civilizers and colonized savages wassightseeing tours. Groups of aborigines werebrought regularly to Taipei to be shown theeffects of Japanese rule, or to be taken todidactic exhibitions, as well as to meet colonialofficials. The colonial government also sentgroups to Japan proper. The first of these tourstook place in 1897, just two years after theQing cession of Taiwan to Japan. Groups camesubsequently in 1911, 1912, 1918, 1925, andalmost annually thereafter until 1941. Severalof the tours included more than f i f typarticipants and more than one tour groupcame in some years.2 The trip usually involvedabout two to three weeks in the metropole,roughly one week of which was spent in Tokyo.These officially sponsored tours were notembassies. They involved neither imperialaudiences nor negotiations with officials apartfrom a token lecture from a colonia ladministrator or military officer. Nor were theyleisure visits: at least in the early tours, a highlevel of coercion was involved.

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

2

Figure 1: postcard of Taiwanese aboriginesrepresenting several tribes arriving inTokyo, 1910s.

Despite this contrast to what we wouldordinarily call a tourist trip, the tours werereferred to at the time as kankō 観光, using theterm that today is the standard equivalent ofthe English "tourism." Kankō, however, was notin common parlance in Japan in 1897, when itfirst appears in the colonial archive withreference to the naichi kankō (metropolitantour) of a Taiwanese group. Neither thedictionary Nihon shinjirin (Sanseidō, 1897) northe dictionary Kotoba no izumi (Ōkura shoten,1898) has an entry for kankō. The SanseidōNew English-Japanese Dictionary of 1902 offersother Sino-Japanese words rather than themodern kankōkyaku as translations for"tourist." Just a few years later, however, in1909, Sanseidō's English-Japanese Dictionaryinc luded kankō as a t rans la t ion for"sightseeing." It thus appears that kankō wasjust coming into use at this time.

This Sino-Japanese term derives originally froma phrase in the Book of Changes: 観国之光, 利用賓于王, which meant something like "Seeingthe light of the country and thereby makingoneself useful as a guest of the king"(Book ofChanges XX, "Kwan" hexagram). Presumablydrawing upon this classical reference, Japan'sfirst steamship, given by the Dutch to theshogunate in 1855, was christened Kankōmaru.Kankō zusetsu (1893), one of the few Meiji-

period publications to use the term in its title,was a compilation of military regalia.

When Japanese officials began using it, kankōthus connoted considerably more than merelysightseeing: its derivation suggested both acivilizing function and the idea of duty to asovereign. Some time in the early twentiethcentury, however, kankō became the standardword for "tourism" generally. In 1930, theJapan Tourist Bureau, whose official name inJapanese until this time was a transliterationfrom English, was renamed Kokusai kankōkyoku (International Tourism Agency). By thistime, few would have known the originalclassical reference. If indeed the metropolitantours for Taiwanese that began in 1897initiated the circulation of the term, first amongofficials and later among the generalpopulation, then we might say that the originsof modern Japanese international tourism lay inthe colonial civilizing project. It is surelysignificant, in any event, that colonial officialschose this rare, morally laden word, ratherthan other common terms for travel, embassiesor study tours.

The Japanese would have found a variety ofhistorical precedents for this practice ofbringing colonized subjects to the metropole inorder to impress them. Since the sixteenthcentury, natives of the Americas had beenbrought to European capitals and sent back totell their countrymen what they had seen.Eighteenth-century French and Englishexpeditions to the Pacific returned with a fewislanders, some of whom became interpretersas well as objects of fascination in Europe. TheUnited States continued earlier Europeanpractice in North America by bringingdelegations of Indians to Washington DCfrequently throughout the nineteenth century.3Micronesians under German rule in the latenineteenth century were brought to Germany.Samoans under the rule of the United Kingdomafter World War I were brought to NewZealand to be shown modern farms and

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

3

factories.4 The Qing rulers of Taiwan had alsobrought aboriginal leaders to the continentbefore the cession to Japan.5 Yet none of thesecases of coerced or semi-coerced tourismappears to have been as systematic or asfrequent as the metropolitan tours arranged foraborigines under Japanese imperial rule.

Over the period of roughly four decades thatthese visits spanned, their meaning evolved asconditions in the empire changed. By the late1930s, they had contributed to the assimilationof some of the participants as loyal colonialsubjects of Japan, and were thus judged asuccess. Viewed more broadly, however, themetropolitan tours engendered complex andunanticipated interactions among colonialsubjects, administrators, and the mass public inthe metropole, questioning the terms and theboundaries of civilization and savagery withinJapanese imperial modernity, rather thansolidifying a unified narrative of empire.

The record of the Taiwanese visit in 1912shows that the group spent eight days in Tokyo.They were accompanied at all times by a policeescort. The sites they were taken to see wereoverwhelmingly military, beginning on day onewith a cannon factory, a bullet factory and anarmory. The group also saw the Double Bridgeat the entrance to the imperial palace, twotheaters in Asakusa, the Ueno zoo, an OverseasDevelopment Exposition, and the ShirokiyaDepartment Store. They did not visit highbourgeois cultural landmarks such as theImperial Theater and Imperial Hotel.6

A police minder accompanying another groupthat visited in 1912 recorded a summary of thetourists' impressions.7 Like any publicdocument alleging to represent the words andsentiments of people under colonial rule, thisreport must be treated as a highly mediatedform of knowledge, which tells as much aboutits author and prospective audience as it doesabout the colonial subjects themselves.Nevertheless, it allows us to glimpse something

of the Taiwanese group's experience of theirJapanese hosts' efforts to educate and, at thesame time, to intimidate them. Not surprisinglyin light of the tour itinerary, a large part of thesummary describes the impression the groupformed of Japan's military power. Even at theschool they were shown, the young pupils weredescribed as "studying war" (sensō gakumon onasu). The group's impression was based notonly on Japan's institutional or technologicalsuperiority, however. The aborigines wereapparently struck as much by the sheer numberand ubiquity of soldiers in Tokyo: "the militaryis positioned everywhere, in numbers beyondour ability to calculate," the report has themsay.

Figure 2: Postcard of Taiwanese aboriginesbeing shown mil i tary dr i l l in themetropole.

It is difficult to determine, however, whether ornot the military display had the desired effectof intimidating the visitors. The TaiwanNichinichi newspaper reported on their visit toYasukuni Shrine on May 15, 1912. The groupwas taken to see the displays of arms in theYūshūkan, the shrine's arms museum.According to the newspaper, the group "wentonce around the exhibits, and finding a famoussword, commented brazenly 'What could becrazier than storing away [a good weapon] likethat? They ought to be able to give us at leastone that cuts well.'"8 The tone here does notappear to be one of awe. The Yūshūkan display

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

4

of usable weapons must have reminded themnot only of Japan's military superiority but ofthe fact that they had been forced to come toTokyo weaponless.

This ironic effect resulting from promotion ofTokyo as a place of arms and soldiers wasevident already in the response of the very firstaboriginal visitors. Taimo Miseru, the leader ofthe group on the first visit in 1897, wasreportedly asked by a newspaper reporter whyhe had joined the tour. He gave two reasons:first, he had heard that Japanese were allthieves without the skill to work themselves, sohe wanted to see whether anyone farmed inJapan, and second, since his people had beenforbidden guns and gunpowder, he was goingto demand that this ban be lifted so they wouldno longer be compelled to buy them illicitly.Everywhere they went in Japan, Taimo Miseru'sgroup requested guns of their hosts. Shortlybefore their return to Taiwan, he voiced hisfrustration to an interpreter in words that wererecorded as follows:

When we were leaving Taiwan, aJapanese chief at the GovernorGeneral's Office advised us,'abandon your headhunting.Japanese were once like you, butwe came to feel it was bad, andbecause we now deal with eachother in a friendly way these daysour houses and streets are all fineand complete. You too shouldquickly give up headhunting andwork hard to do as Japanese do,'and so on. Yet when we came toJapan, true enough, the streets andhouses were very pretty, but [wefound] you were producing lots ofcannon and gunpowder. Why in atime of peace are you so busymaking weapons? We were showncannon taken from the Qing andtold about them proudly in detail. I

wondered why it was that theJapanese were engaged inproducing so many weapons butdistributing them only to their ownunderlings, and not allowing us totrade in them.9

Upon returning to Taiwan, the tour group wasreceived in the capital by the Governor Generalhimself, who presented each participant with aceremonial Japanese sword. These they bluntlyrefused, saying they were useless (the phraserecorded was "these wouldn't even kill a wildpig"). The interpreter pressed them to acceptthe swords as mementoes of their visit, whichthey eventually did. But when the train leavingTaipei was delayed, they became exasperated,threw away their gifts and set out for home onfoot. The effort to impress Japan's might inarms upon the visitors, and to seek theiracquiescence, had the adverse result ofimpressing on them the selfishness of thecolonizers.

Encounters with crowds rather than militarydisplays may have been the most intimidatingexperience in the capital. In Asakusa, one ofthe groups visiting in 1912 was surrounded bygawkers, and the report of their police escortdescribes the aborigines as grateful that thepolice protected them from injury. In arevealing comment that could be the voice ofeither tourist or policeman, the episodeconcludes " I t would appear that themetropolitan people crowded around useverywhere because of our strange clothes orthe tattoos on our faces."10 Even where thecrowds were kept at a distance, the aboriginesknew they were being watched and reportedon, and must have felt the eyes of the Japanesepublic on them continuously. Awareness ofthemselves in the presence of this gaze of themetropolitan crowd had as profound an effecton aboriginal visitors as the fact of the crowdsthemselves, which were described in aboriginalaccounts as being numerous "like ants." In

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

5

public lectures that a group of returningtourists were made to give to their Taiwanesecountrymen roughly two decades later, in 1935,some spoke of the shame they felt when peoplein the metropole stared at the tattoos on theirfaces, and said they wished to have themremoved at a hospital in Taipei.11 Authoritiesin Taiwan had been attempting to eradicatetattooing since the 1910s, but local customsremained strong. According to a surveyconducted in 1930, 48% of Atayal people hadtattoos, with the percentage higher for thoseover 30 years old. A survey in August, 1940,indicated that 72 aborigine men and 23 womenhad by that time had their tattoos surgicallyremoved.12 At some time in the history of themetropolitan encounters, body markings thatwould have been the greatest points of pride athome had become sources of shame.

Figure 3. Commemorative photograph atthe Musha Branch Office of Japanesecolonial police in Taiwan with Atayalpeople and the heads of Salamao peoplekilled at the behest of the Japanese (1920).Photograph courtesy Lin Zhicheng 林致誠and East Asia Popular History Exchange,Taiwan. Source.

This photograph (figure 3) is not from one ofthe tours, but shows the people who wouldhave been tour guides and tourists, here seenin Taiwan following the suppression of an anti-colonial movement. The Japanese police usedthe colonized aboriginal tribes to attackresisters to colonial rule-even paying them forheads and thereby encouraging increased

incidence of headhunting. Although after 1913the Government General forbade commercialdistribution of photographs depicting severedheads, colonial police like those seen hereapparently felt no compunction about recordinga victory in their proxy wars with a photographthat included the heads of the vanquished(including a few that appear to belong to smallchildren).13 In the metropole, the Taiwanesevisitors would have found that outside of thecolonial setting the official iconography ofmodern empire did not overtly represent thedeath or humiliation of the conquered: insteadthey saw statues of armed men and displays ofweapons. Displaying severed heads was,however, a long tradition that warriors in Japanhad in common with warriors in Taiwan.Westerners visiting Japan in the 1860s saw thedecapitated heads of criminals on stakes nearthe highway leading into the capital. Althoughbeheading of criminals in Japan was abandonedafter the Meiji Restoration, replaced by thepreferred Western practice of hanging, itcontinued to be practiced by the military indealing with non-Japanese.14 And severedheads continued to flourish in Japanesemetropolitan popular culture. Following theSino-Japanese War, triumphal gates were builtand captured weapons displayed in Tokyo, butas Kinoshita Naoyuki writes, the publicapparently wanted heads. Victory celebrationsfeatured lanterns, balloons, and soap in theshape of Chinese soldiers' heads.15 Thisrecent-or living-Japanese tradition of displayingheads (which also remained commonplace inthe theater) made the Taiwanese aboriginesspecial objects of fascination and anxiety. Thefirst issue of The Savage Pacifier's Companion(Riban no tomo 理蕃之友), a journal publishedbeginning in January, 1932, for colonialofficials and police, opened with a discussion ofTaiwanese headhunting.16 As if fearing thatsome readers might equate the violent customsof the colonized with those of the colonizers,the author went to pains to distinguishheadhunting from the "manly" behavior ofsamurai, who announced themselves when

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

6

cutting off an enemy's head, he explained,rather than attacking secretly.17 TheTaiwanese tour party of 1936, which includedtwo women, found itself turned away at ruralinns by Japanese innkeepers who were afraid ofhaving their heads taken in the night.18

The character of the Taiwanese metropolitantours changed markedly in the late 1920s, withboth Japanese hosts and Taiwanese touristsadopting the masks of peaceful civilization forone another. We can glimpse the changingrelationship in the way that the visitors appearin surviving documents. Among records oftours up through the 1910s, a full list of tourgroup members' names appears only for thefirst tour, which was the smallest. Althoughsome of the early tours were followed bydetailed reports, the reports focus on a few so-called "tribal leaders" (shūchō酋長, tōmoku頭目). In contrast, tour records published in theSavage Pacifier's Companion of the 1930sinclude the personal names of a broader rangeof participants, and in a few cases, present theJapanese words of individual participants asdirect quotations. By this time, the colonialadministration had been in place for more thana generation. Aboriginal youth learnedJapanese in primary schools. As Paul Barclayhas recounted, the daughters of someaboriginal leaders had been betrothed toJapanese police officers in strategic alliancesencouraged by the colonial authorities.19 Forthe ninth tour, held in 1928, the Taiwanesepaid their own way. The emphasis in theiritinerary from this time shifted from militaryfacilities to the canonical imperial sites,beginning with the palace, along with culturalfacilities. For example, the twelfth tripitinerary, in 1935, included first the palace,then the Colonial Affairs Ministry, the TaiwanGovernor General's Tokyo office, the Asahinewspaper offices, Meiji Shrine, YasukuniShrine and the Arms Museum, the TōshōgūShrine in Ueno, miscellaneous sightseeing intown, the zoo, the subway, Asakusa, theMitsukoshi department store, and the night

view of Ginza. Records of some visits alsomention a lavish meal at the famous Gajōenrestaurant sponsored by an entrepreneur withinterests in Taiwan. It is not difficult to readthese as junkets for assimilated aboriginalyouth and the regional colonial police whoaccompanied them.20

This is not to say that peace now ruled in eithercolony or metropole, as metropolitannewspaper readers would have been keenlyaware in the early 1930s. The period 1930-33,which marked a hiatus between the tenth andeleventh visits, saw several famous violentincidents. In the First Wushe (Musha) Incidentof October 1930, a guerrilla force of Seediqtribesmen raided police armories for munitionsand attacked the largely Japanese crowd at aschool athletic event, killing 134. Their leader,Mona Rudao, had participated in one of themetropolitan tours. Over the next two months,Japanese forces killed 644 Seediq men inretaliation. The Second Wushe Incidentfollowed in April, 1931, when aboriginalsoldiers allied with the Japanese colonialgovernment massacred all the remainingSeediq men being held in a Japanese prisoncamp. News of this massacre ultimatelyprecipitated the resignation of TaiwanGovernor General Ōta Masahiro in March of1932 (by which time, metropolitan newspaperreaders were probably more absorbed in thecampaigns of the Kwantung Army and theestablishment of Manchukuo). Meanwhile, backin Tokyo, Prime Minister Hamaguchi wasmortally wounded in November, 1930, by thebullet of a Japanese ultranationalist. In May1932, a group of Japanese naval officers brokeinto the home of Prime Minister InukaiTsuyoshi and shot him to death. They alsoattempted to kill several other public figures,and had planned to kill Charlie Chaplin, whowas visiting Japan at the time.21 Althoughthese incidents in the mountains of colonialTaiwan and in the heart of the metropolitancapital bore no direct relationship to oneanother, their rapid succession in the same

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

7

time period serves as a reminder that despitethe claims of civilization and of the pacifyinginf luence of imperial modernity, thedisenfranchised and discontent continued toturn toward armed violence against civilians inboth places.

By 1937, the year in which the comprehensiveempire-wide campaign to make loyal subjectsof colonial populations was officially launchedunder the name kōminka, reports o fmetropolitan tours in the Savage Pacifier'sCompanion had turned into a boilerplate litanyof imperial pilgrimages, the tour organizersreporting how well behaved their chargeswere, and how they shed tears and sang theanthem at the sight of the Double Bridge, whilesome of the tourists themselves were quotedreporting (in post-tour gatherings held at policestations back in Taiwan) their awe, gratitudeand pride at being taken to the sacredmetropole. Ironically, the only exceptionmentioned in the journal was a representativeof the lowland-and therefore more "civilized"-Ami people who had had six years of formaleducation. Interviewed by a colonial officialupon returning to Taipei, the Ami touristanswered laconically that he had been mostimpressed by farms, trains, the Yawata IronWorks, and the quality of metropolitan rice. Hemade no mention of either imperial monumentsor emotions of reverence and awe.22 The deepinvolvement of colonial police in everyday lifein the h igh lands , together wi th themetropolitan effort to overawe the morerecalcitrant peoples, may finally havesucceeded in creating a stronger bond betweensome of them and the emperor state than didthe attempts at assimilation among aborigineswho had not taken up arms against thecolonizers.

Fig.4 Taiwanese aboriginal tourists andtheir pol ice minders posing for acommemorative photograph in front of theImperial Diet, 1940. Riban no tomo, no.102(June, 1940), 6.

In 1940, for the first time a photograph appearsin the Savage Pacifier's Companion showingthe tour group in front of the Imperial Diet inTokyo, apparently taken during their tour inMay of that year. Perhaps at this late date theorganizers were hinting at the prospect offuture political representation in exchange forloyalty. Ironically, by October, 1940, all partiesin the Diet would dissolve themselves into thefascist Imperial Rule Assistance Association,effectively ending prewar Japan's experiment inrepresentative politics. And even at this stage,despite increasing efforts to assimilate theaborigines through non-military means, theaboriginal tour itinerary still showed Tokyo as amilitary as well as a political capital, as indeedhad the tour itineraries of the flocks ofJapanese schoolchildren brought to Tokyo sincethe late Meiji period, who typically followedtheir visit to Yasukuni Shrine with a circuit ofpublic statues of military heroes, ancient andmodern. For the Taiwanese aboriginal visitor,however, the attempt to convey imperial awe inthe metropolitan capital was never entirelydivorced from the threat of violence.

The Taiwanese tour participants themselveswere not the only audience that organizersconsidered when planning these tours. Thetours were built around the interests of

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

8

metropolitan Japanese as well. In fact, moneyseems to have been made from parading thetourists in commercial venues (as well as fromthe sale of postcards like those reproduced inthis article). A writer enumerating the lessonsof the tenth aboriginal tour in the SavagePacifier's Companion warned: "Seeking toplease newspaper companies and departmentstores by bringing savage costumes mustabso lu te l y be avo ided , " bu t addedparenthetically, "although it is of course ofteneconomically advantageous."23 This tourminder, who wished to show metropolitanaudiences how far the aborigines had advancedtoward civilization rather than how exotic theywere, resented that the spectacle of the visitingaborigines called for native dress. The solutionwas to dress the tour participants in thematching khaki uniforms of the youth corps(seinendan), a practice first introduced in the1929 tour. Nevertheless, a photograph printedin the Savage Pacifiers' Companion after thisdate shows the Taiwanese in native dressmeeting metropolitan officials. Clearly therewas an appetite in the metropole for properlyprimitive primitives. Although the premise ofthe tours was to bring "primitive" people to acenter of civilization and show them the pathleading from one to the other, in fact the eventwas a mutual per formance r i fe wi thcontradictions.

The long period of metropolitan tourism forTaiwanese aborigines divides roughly into two,with the transition taking place in the 1920s.Tokyo was the high point of the toursthroughout, but it had different meanings inthese two periods. In the first two decades ofcolonial rule in Taiwan, when the primary focusof aboriginal policy was an armed invasion ofaboriginal lands in the name of "pacification,"the visit to the imperial capital was supposed tobe an intimidating experience. The aborigines'tour of Tokyo was carefully orchestrated toshow the city as a powerful military citadel. Yetthe hosts could not orchestrate the tourparticipants' responses, which were affected as

much by their encounters with Japaneseofficials and the mass public as by the fact ofJapanese military and technological superiority.Instead of exposing savages to the "light" ofcivilization, the early tours exposed thecontradiction in the civilizing project, for the"savages" held up a mirror to the colonizers'own savagery by demanding equality of arms asthe condition for accepting "civilization." Onecan only imagine the awkwardness of themoment when Taiwanese Governor GeneralKodama Gentarō granted Japanese swords toTaiwanese subjects he believed to be savagesnewly civilized by their trip to the metropole,only to have his lordly gesture rejected. Add tothis that three years after this incident, TaimoMiseru, the leading aboriginal participant inthe tour, was killed in battle against Japanesetroops, and it seems doubtful that the tour hadhad the desired effect.24

The second phase, which began in the 1920s,involved more assimilated aborigines and adifferent itinerary in the capital. Now the hoststook the visitors' outward subjection toJapanese rule as a given, and presented thevisit as an opportunity for them to approach theaugust center of the emperor-state and toencounter directly a modernity toward whichthey were striving. Yet we have no morecertainty that the spectacle in this stage was asuccess than we have about the spectacle inthe earlier stage. Between the lines of loyalaborigines' accounts one senses that theirawareness of how they themselves wereperceived and treated in the metropole at thisstage too had at least as great an effect ontheir impressions of the tour as did theindoctrinating power of any sites they visited orthings they were shown. Some would go on tofight and die for the emperor. Survivors'testimony makes clear that l ike otheroppressed minorities mobilized for war, theywere driven to heroism by the determination toshow that they were equal or superior to theiroppressors.25

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

9

The colonial project as a whole was shotthrough with anxiety on the part of colonizersabout how to assimilate the colonized withoutgranting equality or implying culturalequivalence, as well as anxiety on the part ofthe colonized about how to gain equalitywithout the cultural erasure of assimilation.Having provisionally thrown in their lot withthe Japanese, the aborigines found uponarriving in the capital that their hosts weremaking every effort to impress them, but alsothat they were a spectacle themselves, exoticcommodities in the imperial economy. As muchas the highland frontier-or any colonial site-Tokyo too was a "contact zone," where peoplefrom different locations within the empireencountered one another, and where they feltthe gaze of others upon them, compelling themto acknowledge the imperial hierarchy and toidentify themselves within it.

This article draws on material from myforthcoming book, Teikoku Nihon no seikatsubunkashi (Everyday Life and Material Culturein Imperial Japan), to be published by Iwanamishoten in 2014

Recommended citation: Jordan Sand, "ImperialTokyo as a Contact Zone: the MetropolitanTours of Taiwanese Aborigines, 1897-1941,"The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 12, Issue 10,No. 4, March 10, 2014.

Jordan Sand is a professor at GeorgetownUniversity in Washington, DC. His publicationsinclude House and Home in Modern Japan(Harvard, 2004) and Tokyo Vernacular:Common Spaces, Local Histories, FoundObjects (University of California Press, 2013.

Notes

1 See Paul Barclay, "An Historian Among theAnthropologists: The Inō Kanori Revival andthe Legacy of Japanese Colonial Ethnography inTaiwan,"Japanese Studies 21:2 (September2001): 117-136; "'Gaining Trust and Friendship'in Aborigine Country: Diplomacy, Drinking, and

Debauchery on Japan's Southern Frontier,"Social Science Japan Journal 6:1 (April 2003):77-96; "Contending Centers of Calculation inCo lon ia l Ta iwan : The Rhe to r i c s o fVindicationism and Privation in Japan's'Aborigine Policy',"Humanities Research 14:1(2007): 67-84; "Peddling Postcards and SellingEmpire: Image-Making in Taiwan underJapanese Colonial Rule," Japanese Studies 30:1(May 2010): 81-110; Robert Thomas Tierney,Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of JapaneseEmpire in Comparative Frame (Berkeley:University of California Press, 2010); Leo T.S.Ching, Becoming Japanese: Colonial Taiwanand the Politics of Identity Formation(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).For Qing encounters with and representationsof aborigines, see Emma Teng, Taiwan'sImagined Geography: Chinese Colonial TravelWriting and Pictures, 1683-1895 (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). Foraboriginal interaction with both Chinese andJapanese authorities, see Henrietta Harrison,"Clothing and Power on the Periphery ofEmpire:The Costumes of the Indigenous Peopleof Taiwan," positions: east asia culturescritique 11:2 (2003): 331-360. On indigenousTaiwanese memories of Japanese rule, seeScott Simon, "Formosa's First Nations and theJapanese: From Colonial Rule to PostcolonialResistance," The Asia-Pacific Journal. Posted onJanuary 4, 2006. There is much else, includinga large body of work in Japanese and Chinese. Iam particularly indebted to Paul Barclay for hisadvice and expertise.

2 This list of dates is based on Matsuda Kyōko,"'Naichi' kankō' to iu tōchi gihō: 1897 nen noTaiwan genjūmin no 'naichi' kankō o megutte,"Akademia: Jinbun, shizen kagaku hen dai 5 gō(Nanzan daigaku, January 2013), 87-88. I firstlearned of these tours in Leo Ching's seminalarticle, "Savage Construction and CivilityMaking: Japanese Colonialism and TaiwaneseAboriginal Representation," positions: east asiacultures critique 8:3 (Winter 2000): 795-818.Forthcoming work by Kirsten Ziomek analyzes

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

10

the role of interpreters in the tours discussed inthis article. South Sea Islanders were alsobrought to Japan annually from 1915, whenJapan claimed German colonies in Micronesianorth of the equator, until 1939. See SenjūHajime, "Nihon tōchika Nan'yō guntō ni okerunaichi kankōdan no seiritsu," Rekishi hyōronno.661 (May, 2005), 52-68.

3 Herman J. Viola, Diplomats in Buckskins: AHistory of Indian Delegations in WashingtonCity (Washington, DC: Smithsonian InstitutionPress, 1981), 13-21.

4 Patricia O'Brien, "Ta'isi O.F. Nelson and SirMaui Pomare: Samoans and Maori Reunited,"forthcoming.

5 Suzuki Sakutarō, Taiwan no banzoku kenkyū(Seishisha, 1977), 374-5. For an earlier case inwhich Taiwanese aborigines were brought toJapan in different circumstances, see AdamClulow, "A Fake Embassy, the Lord of Taiwanand Tokugawa Japan," Japanese Studies (Volume 30 Number 1 May 2010): 23-42.

6 "Dai yon kai naichi kankō banjin kansōhōkoku" (1913) . ( JACAR Kokur i t sukōbunshokan Ajia shiryō sentaa digital archive)frames 3-4.

7 Coming in the middle of the TaiwaneseGovernment Generals's five-year militarycampaign against Atayal aborigines, this wasalso a busy year for metropolitan tours.

8 "Kankō banjin no kansō," Taiwan nichinichishinpō, May 16, 1912.

9 Quoted in Katsura Chōhei, "Mukashi nokankō," part 1, Riban no tomo, July 1936, 8-9.Matsuda Kyōko discusses this incident ingreater detail, quoting roughly the same wordsfrom the tour report of Fujine Yoshiharu, whoaccompanied Taimo Miseru and his countrymenin the 1897 tour. Writing in 1905, journalistand politician Takekoshi Yosaburō, who hadjust completed a tour of Taiwan for the colonial

administration, reported that rifles wereindispensable for the Ayatal people, amongwhom it was a source of shame for a man not topossess one, and that by ignoring theentreaties of Ayatal and other aborigines forarms, the government "hopes to reduce them toimpotence." Yosaburo Takekoshi, Japanese Rulein Formosa (1905), 221, 216.

10 "Dai ni kai naichi kankō banjin kansō gaiyō"(Taiwan banjin naichi kankō ni kansuru ken 1,1912), JACAR (Kokuritsu kōbunshokan Ajiashiryō sentaa digital archive) 823, 826, 832.

11 Gotō sei, "Banjin no me in eijita naichi:kankō banjin ni sono kansō o kiku," Riban notomo 4:6 (June, 1935, 8.

12 Yamamoto Yoshimi, Irezumi no sekai(Kawade shobō shinsha, 2005), 244, 250. ScottSimon, "Formosa's first nations" describes thepainful recollections of female informants whohad their tattoos surgically removed.

13 I have blurred the faces of the dead indeference to the feelings of descendants whomight recognize them.

14 Daniel V. Botsman, Punishment and Powerin the Making of Modern Japan (PrincetonUniversity Press, 2007), 152.

15 Kinoshita Naoyuki, Haribote no machi(Asahi shinbunsha, 1995), 273.

16 A range of translations is possible for theSino-Japanese term riban (理蕃) and indeed forthe character 蕃 itself, which I have hererendered as "savage." 蕃 (Chinese fan) has along and complex history as a designation forpeoples beyond the pale of Chinese civilization.Riban may also be translated with a moreneutral-sounding phrase like "administration ofaboriginal affairs," which might better conveythe character of the quotidian activities ofTaiwanese colonial administrators during the1930s, when the journal was published.However, at the time of the journal's founding

APJ | JF 12 | 10 | 4

11

in 1932, less than one year after the brutalresolution of the Wushe Incident, and perhapsafter as well, it seems reasonable to imaginethat administrators saw themselves as pacifiersof savages, and saw their mission in themetropolitan tours and other efforts at moralsuasion described in the journal as thecontinuation of a pacification project that priorto 1931 had involved assimilation andannihilation in equal measure.

17 "Banjin no kanshū kubigari," Riban no tomo1:1 (January, 1932), 3.

18 "Kankō no hankyō," Riban no tomo, July1936, 12.

19 Paul D. Barclay, "Cultural Brokerage andInterethnic Marriage in Colonial Taiwan:Japanese Subalterns and Their AborigineWives, 1895-1930," Journal of Asian Studies64:2 (May 2005): 323-360. These marriageswere discouraged following the WusheIncident.

20 Matsuda notes that the later tours alsoincluded visits to model farm villages as well as

to Ise Shrine. She points out that theTaiwanese visitors had been hoping from thevery beginning that the visits would introducethem to improved seeds and farmingtechniques, but this came about only after thelate 1920s. Matsuda, 91, 101-2.

21 Despite their idealization of native samuraitradition, these metropolitan terrorists were nomore inclined to forego guns for swords thanwere the Taiwanese guerrillas.

22 "Taitōchō Ami zoku ha kaku kataru!" Ribanno tomo, June 1936, 10.

23 Saitō sei, "Takasagozoku kankōdan'in otsurete," Riban no tomo, December, 1934, 10.

24 Matsuda, 99-100.

25 On the testimony of Taiwanese aboriginalsoldiers, see Chih-Huei Huang, "TheYamatodamashi of the Takasago volunteers ofTaiwan: A Reading of the PostcolonialSituation," in Globalizing Japan: Ethnographyof the Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe, andAmerica, ed. Harumi Befu and Sylvie Guichard-Anguis (London: Routledge, 2001), 222-250.