'Gaining Confidence and Friendship' in Aborigine Country: Diplomacy, Drinking, and Debauchery on Japan's Southern Frontier

Abstract

From the I 870s, agents of Japanese southward expansion recorded numerous instances of participation in alcohol-centered exchanges in Taiwan's interior For foreigners entering the camphor-rich highlands of treatyport Taiwan, sharing cups and providing gifts of distilled spirits were prerequisites of trade and diplomacy Following the annexation of Taiwan in 1895, Japanese officials feasted prospective Aborigine allies with liquor and food to secure allegiance to the colonial government. By century's turn, however, this strategy came into conflict with the financial imperatives of making Taiwan into a putatively modern colony. A general, colony-wide pattern emerges from the state-sponsored ethnographic records investigated herein. From the view of Japanese officialdom,Taiwan Aborigines ceased to be allies or foes to be negotiated with over ladles of fermented potables, instead becoming troublesome subjects who were nonetheless ethnologically interesting for their variety of locally brewed beverages and consumption rituals. In the end, officials and publicists regarded the Aborigines as impoverished primitives whose drinking habits held them back from making economic progress.This essay elucidates a long-term dynamic in the history of empire while describing something of how colonialism was experienced by those at the far periphery of Greater Japan in the early twentieth century.