Savage Construction and Civility Making: The Musha Incident and Aboriginal Representations in Colonial Taiwan

In 1911 Japanese colonial officials led forty-three selected aboriginal leaders from Taiwan on one of the seven “tours to Japan proper” (naichi kankō). The tours were organized in conjunction with the initial stage of military subjugation of the natives after the pacification of the Taiwanese-Chinese islanders. Four such tours took place between 1911 and 1912 at the height of the military campaign under the directives of the fifth governor-general, Sakuma Samata. Previously, the colonial government had only sponsored one tour in 1897 and, since 1912, only two tours, in 1918 and 1925, respectively. These tours presented a calculated structure of visibility. The visuality of Japanese metropolitan grandeur was to complement the brutality of Japanese colonial force in the larger colonial “enterprise of governing the savages” (rihan jigyō).1 The visiting savages (banjin) were directed to and shown various industrial and military facilities, the imperial palace, and Shinto shrines. These carefully orchestrated itineraries were intended to