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Greetings dear visitors, the audio tour you are listening to has been specially recorded by the Southern Universe Archive for visitors to the museum. The tour lasts about 21 minutes, and in it you will be introduced to seven themes selected from the archive; drawing upon material and immaterial documentation, these themes include the Taiwan Expo, shipping ports, nurseries, monopolies, coal mining and other infrastructural facilities of the Southern Colonies. By listening, you’ll feel as though you have been transported right back to colonial times.
Before each section begins, you will be given its title, the period in which it takes place, and some background information. Now, we invite you to assume a comfortable position, to concentrate on your breathing, and our guided tour will soon begin.
The tour will start when you hear this sound: 🔔🔔. Each time you hear this sound 🔔, the audio file will automatically switch to the next pre-recorded file. At the end, when you hear this sound again 🔔🔔, the tour will be over.
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I. News of the Taiwan Exposition in Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of Japanese Rule, no. 8, 1935
Now, there is a newspaper spread in front of you. It is a special issue published by the Office of the Taiwan Governor-General for the Taiwan Exposition held to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Japanese rule. The newspaper includes various admission information of the exposition, along with articles celebrating the achievements of the Office of the Taiwan Governor-General over the past four decades. For instance, one article mentions the Keelung Harbor, which is the harbor that received you when you first arrived in Taiwan. Since 1899, the harbor underwent five expansion projects, which stopped due to the defeat of Japan in 1945.
Keelung was Japan’s gateway to the south, as well as the starting point of the North-South Railway completed by the colonial government in 1908. After passing through the Keelung custom, you would take the train to the Taipei Station, which was right across the Taiwan Governor Museum. The Taihoku New Park (or The Taipei New Park), where this museum was located, was the second venue of the Taiwan Exposition. In order to provide more convenience for people from the Empire to travel to the colony, the Office of the Taiwan Governor-General offered a special subsidy for the Osaka Shosen Kaisha (Osaka Mercantile Steamship) to run the Keelung-Kobe liner and other similarly designated routes during the exposition. With Taiwan as the gateway to the south, travelers could sail to other harbors in the Southern Universe.
Another important report in the News of the Taiwan Exposition in Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of Japanese Rule (始政四十周年記念臺灣博覽會ニユース) talks about the most up-to-date opium monopoly system. At that time, the Office of the Taiwan Governor-General required all Taiwanese opium addicts to register before they could be allowed to purchase opium. Those who took opium illegally would need to receive compulsory treatments. This progressive monopoly system not only won appreciative criticisms in the League of Nations, but also brought in much needed funds for the government to carry out more constructions in the colony. In short, the Taiwan Exposition demonstrated Japan’s accomplishments in terms of developing Taiwan into a modernized colony.
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II. Chu Tien-Jen, “An Autumn Letter,” 1936
As a matter of fact, not everyone had a good impression on the Taiwan Exposition. Archive II to be introduced next is one of the examples. These yellowed pages come from a short story in the Colloquial Chinese, titled “An Autumn Letter” (秋信), written by Chu Tien-Jen (朱點人). It was published in issue 2, volume 1 of La Formosa Nov-Literaturo (臺灣新文學), which came out on March 3, one year after the Taiwan Exposition. If you have read this story, you would know that there was still a group of nostalgic intellectuals missing the old times when the exposition took place.
In the story, the protagonist Mr. Dou Wen (斗文先生), wearing a traditional Chinese garment and with the queue hairstyle, plans to take the train to visit the exposition in Taipei. Along the way, people stared at him, but he did not care. That was until he is scorned for not understanding the Japanese slogan on a poster. Maddened and decide to leave, he does not know where to go. He thinks of the Taiwan Provincial Administration Hall from the Qing dynasty, not knowing that the building has already been moved to the Botanical Garden outside Taipei City Wall. After the war, even though the building has been preserved, how long can the memories about it be kept? Besides, who knows what memories would be forgotten and what preserved?
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III. The Taihoku Tree Nursery (The Taipei Tree Nursery), 1896-1899
Following Mr. Dou Wen’s trip, you now arrive at the nursery – the Archive III that we have prepared for you. This is the Taipei Tree Nursery, which would be re-named the Taipei Botanical Garden later. At the end of the 19th century, the nursery belonged to the Forestry Experimental Station of the Production Bureau. Tashiro Yasasuda (田代安定), the technician at the Office of the Taiwan Governor-General, decided on the site of the nursery. That’s right. He was the one who planned the Tropical Plant Breeding Farm and the other four mother tree gardens in Hengchun in 1906. When Japan first took over Taiwan, there were not many foreign plants on the island, and the Japanese had to import seeds from the south through the consulates. After much effort from a lot of people, the Taipei Botanical Garden became a popular dating venue. It was one of the few places where natural sceneries were maintained, even though such “nature” was the result of reformation.
On June 17, 1917, on the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo (日日新報), Tashiro mentioned that Hashiguchi Bunzo (橋口文藏), the direcotor of the Production Bureau, had visited Mexico to see coffee, chocolate, and other crops. After he returned, he advised the government to establish the Production Bureau, with the objective to grow foreign plants with economic value in the colony. In 1901, Fujie Katsutarō (藤江勝太郎) introduced Ceylon olive from Ceylon. Yokoyama Souji (橫山壯次) brought in tamarind, two-ball nitta tree, rain tree, rubber tree from Java and Ceylon. The next year, Imai Kenji (今井兼次) introduced royal palm from Hawaii. In 1903, Yanagimoto Michiyoshi (柳本通義) introduced several dozens of plants from Vietnam and Java. The year after, Kawakami Takiya (川上瀧彌) imported kapok, and Kanehira Ryozo (金平亮三) brought in snake plant from the south. With the thirty-three plants introduced by Tashiro, more and more foreign plants had literally taken roots in Formosa. Until the 1930s, a wide variety of southern plants had flourished in the colony. Of course, there was also poppy – described by Lai Ho (賴和) as “fu rong hua” (afyun flowers) – which was brought into Taiwan in Qing dynasty as the raw material for opium.(註1)
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IV. Arakawa Asakichi, The Integration of Opium in the Southern Sphere, in Understanding Opium (阿片の認識), 1943
Speaking of the opium problem, although it is limited to East Asian colonies, it should still be viewed as a global issue of international politics. Like what is mentioned earlier, one of the reasons is that opium has been used as a unique weapon by the Western powers to invade and exploit East Asia; but now that the empire has sounded the alarm, and these Western powers have been utterly defeated by national awakening. However, even though white people have left, the bad habit they developed over the past century has become so entrenched that it is now difficult to remove. So, how to deal with the problem is a crucial matter that decides the future of East Asian nations. One has to muster the power of the entire nation to face it with the most serious attitude. This is the reason why opium, which is equally important as rice and salt, is viewed as a fundamental problem in formulating countermeasures for East Asia.
However, we already possess forty-five years of techniques and experiences in Taiwan. The future looks indeed promising. First of all, all the people in the colonies have awakened from the dream of liberalism, and have entered a transitional stage of national totalitarianism. It is only natural that opium will soon be eradicated. This is because opium is the most despicable habit in individualism —facing major situations related to the future of a nation, to want to indulge indifferently in daydreaming alone in the room should never be allowed. Besides, the leaping economic and cultural development, combined with the transition from individualism to national totalitarianism, has increasingly turned opium into a taboo. To name a somewhat unfitting example: in the Philippines, the popularization of movie and dancing has achieved great effect in terms of striking a blow against opium. Moreover, considering the fact that collective training and monopoly of liquor in Taiwan have made a contribution, I can say for sure that opium will be eradicated naturally, as the imperial instruction philosophy of national integration prevails.
Considering the forty-five years of experience in Taiwan, the opium problem in East Asia could be dealt with in two parts: One is the measures taken in China, and the other is the measures applied to the Southern Sphere.(…) Although the empire’s knowledge of opium includes the Manju-gurun and the Kantō-shū, its design is based on the research in Taiwan. In terms of the special circumstances in the north, it also takes into consideration the climatic conditions, such as high temperature, much rain, high humidity, and the ethnic conditions of overseas Chinese and the Hontō Jin [island’s residents]. Consequently, the Taiwan technologies and experiences require no modification, and can be put to practical use immediately. In particular, the demand of opium in the entire Southern Sphere is estimated at 300,000 kg, and the production capacity of Taiwan’s opium factory amounts to 250,000 kg. As it is mentioned earlier, it is acceptable to deal with production and sales by managing operation and setting up agencies in different colonies. (註2)
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V. Christopher Bayly & Tim Harper, The Forgotten Armies, 2004
If India was the jewel in the imperial crown, Malaya was the industrial diamond. In 1940, the governor of Singapore estimated, Malaya was ‘worth’ an estimated £227.5 million to the British Empire. Its exports were £131.25 million, of which £93 million were to foreign countries, especially to the United States, to which it sold more than any other territory of the British Empire except Canada. From 1895 until the Japanese war, at no point did British Malaya need financial help from outside. Its status as a model colony was achieved from its own resources, and its accumulated budget surpluses saw it through the Great Depression. The key to the great public works and civic conceits of the Straits Settlements was opium. Duty on opium accounted for between 40 and 60 per cent of its annual revenue. Its production was monopolized by the government’s ‘Chandu factory’ on Pepys Road in Singapore which turned out 100 million tubes a year. Much of the revenue burden of Malaya therefore fell upon the Asian, particularly Chinese, labourers who were the greatest consumers of opium. The British crescent in Asia was supported by narco colonialism on a colossal scale.
From the moment of our arrival in Penang or Singapore, we were locked into a chain of bondage: to shippers of the ‘coolie trade’ who brought them to Malaya or to the lodging-house keeper who advanced them food and other necessities. Early pioneers had fought hard to retain a measure of control over our lives and work. We had banded together in kongsi, self-governing communities of towkays and their men, often sharing a common dwelling hut.(…) With their traditions of self-help they were demonized as criminal ‘secret societies’ by the British. By the 1930s most Chinese worked under labour contractors, who tendered mines and estates for work and docked commissions from labourers’ wages for goods and services. In the Depression government and business had tried to stem the flow of labour and force down costs. The tin-mining labour force more than halved and, in 1930-32, over 75,000 labourers were repatriated to China. This was an insecure world in which gambling and opium were the principal means of escape for us. British doctors justified the government monopoly in opium by arguing that Chinese workers could not tolerate the conditions without it.(註3)
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VI. Kawakami Takiya, The Shade of Coconut Trees, 1915 (Translated in Chinese by Tsai Szu-Wei)
What you now see in front of you is Archive VI. The author of this book was the famous botanist, Kawakami Takiya, who was the first director of the Taiwan Governor Museum, mentioned in Archive I. In 1911, Kawakami set out from the Port of Kobe. He first arrived in Hong Kong after Shanghai, where he visited the Hong Kong botanical garden, and then sailed for Malaya, Siam, and Java to investigate useful plants. During his stay in the Malay Peninsula, he wrote down his recollections of what he had read about the Asians:
In a book about the Malay Peninsula written by Europeans, it is said that “the Chinese are thieves; the Malaysians are lazy; and the Japanese are prostitutes.: As a Japanese, traveling on the peninsula has always made me break out in cold sweat when seeing Japanese girls wearing kimonos with obis and red bow ties acting willfully and unscrupulously.(註4)
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VII. Kawakami Takiya “Commemorating the Trip – On the Visit to the South” (Translated in Chinese by Tsai Szu-Wei)
There are many interesting things when it comes to the connection between Taiwan and Java. Throughout the forty-one years from 1622 to 1663, the southern Taiwan was occupied by the Dutch. During these years, many plant species were brought into Taiwan by the Dutch. The Gazette of Taiwan Prefecture (臺灣府志) and other books have recorded the plants brought by Ang Moh (the red-haired people), a nickname for the Dutch. Some are known by word of mouth until today. A rather obvious example is the mango tree. In Taiwan, this fruit is called “so-wa-ya” (ソワヤ). Mango, along with jack fruit, sugar apple, custard apple, and wax apple, are all fruits of Java system…. One can imagine that there must be weeds from Java in Taiwan as well. Because of this connection, I believe that transplanting Java’s useful plants in Taiwan will surely produce interesting results.
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VIII. ‘Asia for the Asians‘, 1941-1945
… Ironically, in view of their slogan ‘Asia for the Asians’, the Japanese began to sell opium in the best British imperialist style. They brought in quantities of it from sources in Taiwan and north China and their Burmese rural middlemen profited. For these changes were not seen only amongst the middle classes. (Christopher Bayly & Tim Harper, The Forgotten Armies)
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Well, doesn’t time fly? Our guided tour has now come to an end. However, there are still many documents in this archive that are difficult to categorise, and many voices that could not be included. Maybe the reason for this is due to a lack of historical evidence, or perhaps it is as a result of certain unspoken taboos. The archive, it should not be forgotten, is not only a collection of documents about the progress of civilisation, natural resources, or infrastructure of the southern colonies, it is also one of war, death, and betrayal.
For instance, when Australian painter Douglas Watson was sent to the prisoner of war camps in northeastern Borneo in 1945, he recorded the looks of Japanese soldiers that defied any simplified description. Then there was the Japanese prisoner of war ship that sailed from Singapore to Keelung in November of 1942, bringing with it more than a thousand Commonwealth soldiers to the rainy shores of Taiwan. More than five hundred of these soldiers were brought to the prison camp in Jinguashi, where they laboured daily in pits that exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, lacking oxygen and seeing no sunlight. By the end of the war many were never able to leave, forever remaining as parts of the archive.
Like boats floating in a sea of memory, these archives of the past accompanied the people of that time to their dream colonies. Today, through these nameless archives, we will also travel through time, and arrive at a future called the Southern Universe.
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