鹿野忠雄的台灣高山行旅書寫 日治時期「自然」的現代知識建構與美學表現

Abstract

Kano Tadao’s With Mountains, Cloud and Aborigines (1941) is primarily a record of Kano’s travels in the mountains of Taiwan in 1931, and is considered a masterpiece of Nature Writing in Modern Taiwanese Literature. The fact that this text now has been translated, reprinted and republished after having disappeared for sixty years bears witness to the complex political, economic and cultural changes in Taiwanese society during that period. Re-evaluation of this pre-WWII work reflects the local and global communities’ anxiety about environmental destruction, civil society’s introspection on capitalist ideology, Taiwanese society’s efforts to retrieve historical memories, and Nature writers’ ultimate concern with ecological problems. Focusing on ＂Nature＂ itself, this paper examines the historical construction of modern knowledge and aesthetic expression in Kano’s writing. To explicate the nuances of nature in his work, the discussion is divided into two parts: the Japanese Empire’s development of science and Kano's unique travel writing style. The first part examines how modern knowledge of natural history in Taiwan has been formulated in relation to Western and Japanese scientific development. The second part analyzes Kano’s ecocentric approach and literary aesthetic, which finally transforms and transcends the colonial imagination of ＂barbaric＂ Taiwanese mountains and aborigines.