Image and History: A Taiwanese Village under the Japanese Rule

Abstract

This study deals with the historical photographs during Taiwan's ”Japanese Era” (1895-1945) collected by the late Mr. Chen Chunmu陳春木(1909-2002) of Zuozhen左鎮, Tainan. In the ”Japanese Era,” few, if any, country folks in Tainan had cameras. Thus those photos were taken by studio-photographers hired by the Japanese rulers from afar. Since it was a big hassle and also costly to take these pictures, all the ones we are looking at were for glorifying the achievements by the Japanese colonists and none was about the daily life of the folks or about the adverse side of the administration. Mr. Chen Chunmu, with his long-term services at the local administration, had the opportunities to collect these photos. This paper discusses a recent development in historical anthropology, and focuses on Marshall Sahlins and Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. I think it was an admirable innovative idea on Sahlins' part to have brought structure into historical studies. However, I do not think that history was simply composed of events. History is a dynamic process, should also include process and context. Thus I think that Sahlins overemphasizes the importance of structure and events meanwhile ignoring the process and context of history. Furthermore, I think the significance of historical agency should be emphasized. In historical process, historical agency includes not only historical figures, but also common people, mass media (newspaper, radios, etc), and social institutions (schools, governmental agencies, etc.), for they all play different parts in historical process.