Entanglements of ethnographic images: Torii Ryūzō's photographic record of Taiwan aborigines (1896–1900)

Abstract

The ethnographic photographs of Taiwan aborigines by the Meiji anthropologist Torii Ryūzō enhance our understanding not only of the native culture but also the colonial maker himself. Against the backdrop of Japan's colonization of Taiwan, this photographic record reveals the particular features of the aboriginal culture in which Torii was interested, the way he captured and portrayed his subjects, as well as possible motivations behind his work. More than just scientific evidence, these pictures are ‘social artifacts’ that expose as much about the historical, political, and personal agenda of their creator at the turn of the twentieth century as they do of Taiwan aboriginal vestiges.

Notes

 All the illustrated photographs are reproduced from The Torii Ryūzō Photographic Record of East Asian Ethnography (TRPREA) by courtesy of Tokyo University.

 The author would like to thank Dr. Deborah Waite and Dr. Paul Barclay for their invaluable support for this article and Dr. Takeru Akasawa for his permission to use the photographs.

 This small island lies to the Southeast of Taiwan and has many names. The Japanese at the time called it Kōtōsho, while the Europeans named it Botel Tobago. It is called Lanyu by the Han Chinese. The island was the major residence of the Yami tribe, which called the island Ri-Taiwan.

 Scherer, ‘The photographic document’, 33.

 Scherer, ‘The photographic document’, 32.

 For the concept of agency, see Gell, Art and Agency.

 Edwards, ‘Visuality and history’, 49.

 Morse's discovery of the ‘Omori shell mounds’ was Japan's first scientifically excavated archaeological site. Based upon the evidence of skeletons he unearthed and other findings, he concluded that the early inhabitants of Japan were cannibals. See Morse, Shell Mounds of Omori. This controversial assumption sparked the interest of Japanese in archaeology and anthropology. Many theories have been introduced to identify these prehistoric residents of Japan, including the different viewpoints of Torii and his teacher Tsuboi.

 Shimizu, ‘Colonialism and the development of modern anthropology’, 129.

 Barely mentioned in Chinese history and geographic records, Taiwan was still undeveloped at the turn of the sixteenth century. In 1624, the Dutch claimed dominion of the island. Between 1661 and 1662, Cheng Cheng-kung (also known as Koxinga) of the fallen Ming dynasty (1368–1644) expelled the Dutch and established an independent kingdom in Taiwan. Finally, Cheng's kingdom was defeated by the Manchu in 1683, and Taiwan became a part of the Qing empire (1644–1911). In 1895, it was ceded to Japan as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War.

 Barclay, ‘An historian among the anthropologists’, 118.

 Torii, ‘Jinruigaku kenkyu Taiwan’, 1–74.

 Japanese sources have long maintained that the first camera arrived in 1841 through Deshima, brought in by the Nagasaki merchant Ueno Shunnojo. Although this claim may be doubted, photography was certainly available in Japan around the mid-1840s. It became very popular in the Meiji period. For the history of photography in Japan, see Bennett, Early Japanese Images; Winkel, Souvenirs from Japan; Worswick, Japan Photographs.

 The Japanese word ‘sha-shin’ was originally a classical Chinese-character compound referring to realistic images in paintings. The Meiji intellectuals used the term to translate the modern European words, ‘photograph’ and ‘photography’. See Liu, Translingual Practice, 320. The term was later re-introduced back to modern Chinese although with a different connotation.

 Barclay, ‘An historian among the anthropologists’, 133.

 Torii's Taiwan photographs were organized and catalogued by Tsuchida Shigeru, Himeno Midori, Suenari Michio, and Kasahara Masaharu.

 Torii called the people who lived on Botel Tabago ‘Yami’, a name that he claimed was used among the natives themselves. It has become the official name for this tribe. Torii, ‘Kōtōsho no dojin’, 579–584.

 Edwards, Anthropology and Photography, 4.

 Botel Tabago ‘became a staple of Torii's popular and accepted theory of Japanese racial origins that the so-called Negritos of the Philippines donated their curly hair to the Yamato gene pool. By the Taisho period (1912–1926), Torii had settled upon four types of migrants to explain the variation in physical types to be found in Japan: Asians from China via the Korean peninsula, Indochinese from the Vietnam/Chinese borderlands, Ainu from Hokkaido, and Indonesians from the Pacific Islands, who had admixtures of Negrito blood’. Barclay, ‘An historian among the anthropologists’, 129.

 Botel Tabago ‘became a staple of Torii's popular and accepted theory of Japanese racial origins that the so-called Negritos of the Philippines donated their curly hair to the Yamato gene pool. By the Taisho period (1912–1926), Torii had settled upon four types of migrants to explain the variation in physical types to be found in Japan: Asians from China via the Korean peninsula, Indochinese from the Vietnam/Chinese borderlands, Ainu from Hokkaido, and Indonesians from the Pacific Islands, who had admixtures of Negrito blood’. Barclay, ‘An historian among the anthropologists’, 118, 128.

 Torii categorizes the aborigines in Taiwan into nine main groups: Ami, Bunun, Puyuma, Yami, Paiwan, Tayal, Tsou, Siuo, and Salisan. However, he did not take and organize his photographs according to his nine-group classification, as he included some of the minor tribes and Chinese in his photographic record.

 Edwards, Raw Histories, 8.

 Scherer, ‘The photographic document’, 33.

 Goldman and Hall, Pictures of Everyday Life, 148.

 Ainu was a distinct ethnic group that resided in the northern part of Japan and Hokkaido. They were believed by many Japanese anthropologists to be the creators of the ‘Omori shell mounds’, and thus, the progenitors or at least related to the ancestors of the Japanese (Yamato) race. The Ainu people became a colonized minority under Meiji Japan and were presented to the Japanese audience through photography. Cheung, ‘Men, women and “Japanese” as outsiders’, 230.

 Edwards, Raw Histories, 139.

 Edwards, Raw Histories, 72.

 Edwards, Raw Histories, 89.

 Torii, ‘Torii Ryūzō shi no kinshin’, 459–460.

 Torii, ‘Taiwan tsushin’, 592–594.

 Shimizu, ‘Colonialism and the development’, 121.

 Torii, ‘Shinkozan chiho’, 575–579; ‘Horisha’, 525–529.

 Barclay, ‘An historian among the anthropologists’, 128.

 Clifford and Maecus, The Predicament of Culture, 22.

 For more details on Inō, see Barclay, ‘An historian among the anthropologists’.

 Barclay, ‘An historian among the anthropologists’, 133.

 Shimizu, ‘Colonialism and the development’, 136.

 Tonkin et al., History and Ethnicity, 3–4.

 Shimizu, ‘Colonialism and the development’, 136.

 Shimizu, ‘Colonialism and the development’, 136.

 Barclay, ‘An historian among the anthropologists’, 117, 133.

 Edwards, Anthropology and Photography, 5.

 Fabian, Time and the Other, 28.

 Zhan and Liu, Da Taipei, 11.