Kondo the Barbarian A Japanese Adventurer And Indigenous Taiwan's Bloodiest Uprising [1 ed.] 1788692829, 9781788692823
Kondo the Barbarian is a gripping and revealing account of the colonial Japanese era in Taiwan, focusing on the Musha Re
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“Part act, part ction, an engrossing account o colonial benevolence and violence. Lucid, learned, and superbly translated, Kondo the Barbarian is an indispensable source or those interested in Taiwan’s colonial history, Japanese settlers’ writing and events leading up to the inamous 1930 Musha Uprising.” —Leo T.S. Ching, author o Becoming Japanese: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics o Identity Formation “A ascinating account by a gure who lived a unique colonialist-adventurer lie. Barclay’s expert introduction and notes demonstrate a rst-rate historian’s skill to veriy and contextualize Kondo’s account.” —Sayaka Chatani, author o Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies “This should become an essential source or understanding one o the most important acts o resistance to Japan’s rule o Taiwan and the complex relationships between Japanese colonizers and indigenous Taiwanese.” —Evan Dawley, author o Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City, 1880s-1950s “Barclay not only gives us a masterul translation o Japanese colonialist Kondō Katsusaburō’s memoir but puts it into rich historical context. This book is an invaluable resource or understanding the ground-level dynamics o Japanese colonialism in Taiwan.” —Seiji Shirane, author o Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan’s Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945
“Barclay’s beautiul translation brings Kondō the ‘Barbarian,’ a Japanese who lived with Indigenous Peoples in colonial Taiwan, back to lie. Engaging, lucid, and illuminating. Highly recommended.” —Hiromi Mizuno, author o Science or the Empire: Scientic Nationalism in Modern Japan “Kondo the Barbarian ‘de-anonymizes’ the Indigenous Peoples o Taiwan, who are here individuals with names, lie trajectories, and their own voices, in the process orcing the reader to reconsider the nature o colonial rule in Taiwan.” —Nadine Willems, author o Ishikawa Sanshirō’s Geographical Imagination: Transnational Anarchism and the Reconguration o Everyday Lie in Early Twentieth-Century Japan “Barclay’s masterul research oers the reader critical context to understanding Kondo’s lie and perspective, as well as the implications o Japanese colonial rule and the Musha Uprising or Taiwan’s history.” —James Lin, Assistant Proessor o International Studies at the University o Washington “With the inamous 1930 Musha uprising as the historical underpinning o the book, Barclay introduces us to this world partly through the eyes o a Japanese adventurer — Kondō “the Barbarian” Katsusaburō — all the while never losing sight o the delicate interplay and agency o Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples. A story that resonates beyond time and place.” —Kirsten Ziomek, author o Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives o Japan’s Colonial Peoples
KONDO THE BARBARIAN
Published by Eastbridge Books, an imprint o Camphor Press Ltd 83 Ducie Street, Manchester, M1 2J United Kingdom www.camphorpress.com Copyright © 2023 Paul D. Barclay. All rights reserved. ISbN
978-1-78869-282-3 (paperback) 978-1-78869-283-0 (hardcover)
The moral right o the author has been asserted. Set in 12 pt Libertinus Seri. Except in the United States o America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way o trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any orm i binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Kondo the Barbarian A Japanese Adventurer and Indigenous Taiwan’s Bloodiest Uprising
Paul D. Barclay
An Eastbridge book
Contents
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
INtroductIoN Two Legendary Figures A Brie History o the Musha Rebellion The Rebellion’s Impact and Reception in Japan Japan’s Dark Valley to World War II and the Eclipse o the Musha Rebellion Kondō the Barbarian’s Place in Contemporary Historiography and Culture Kondō Katsusaburō and Mona Rudao in Historical Context
1 3 25 43 47
traNSlatIoN o the Saga o KoNdō “the barbarIaN” KatSuSaburō: a Key to uNderStaNdINg the MuSha rebellIoN The Dramatic Site o Kondō’s Investigations Kondō Arrives in Puli The Ill-ated Fukahori Mission Kondō Explains Seediq Mentality Commerce in Puli Disrupted Kondō is Adopted by Baso Bōran “Kondō the Barbarian” Goes Headhunting The Sole Survivor Searches or His Captain’s Head Kondō Completes His Work in Truku Country Kondō’s Return to Puli The Headhunting Problem
67
Ix
53 59
69 73 75 79 81 85 89 93 97 99 103
12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.
Kondō Is Ambushed by Enemies Kondō Leaves Puli or Han Territory Kondō and the Guardline Governor-General Sakuma Hires Kondō Kondō Sets Out to Complete Fukahori’s Mission Kondō Recruits a Tgdaya Crew A Rocky Start on the Path to Hualien Harbor Kondō’s Team and the Bird Omens The Tale o a Forgotten Corpse Mission Accomplished (and a Feast o Wild Game) Kondō Joins the Kaku Kurata Mission Kondō is Called to Duty Once Again Kondō Organizes a Tgdaya War Party A Wedding-Day Feast Initiates Military Operations Kondō Negotiates an Extension o the Guardline Kondō Betrays Baso Bōran Kondō and Baso Bōran Reunited The Story o Kondō the Younger The Government-General Abandons Kondō’s Family Kondō Relocates to Hualien
107 111 113 117 121 125 129 133 137 141 145 149 153 157 161 165 169 173 177 181
NoteS 1. The Dramatic Site o Kondō’s Investigations 2. Kondō Arrives in Puli 3. The Ill-ated Fukahori Mission 4. Kondō Explains Seediq Mentality 5. Commerce in Puli Disrupted 6. Kondō is Adopted by Baso Bōran 7. “Kondō the Barbarian” Goes Headhunting 8. The Sole Survivor Searches or His Captain’s Head
185 187 191 193 196 198 202 205 206
x
9. Kondō Completes his Work in Truku Country 10. Kondō’s Return to Puli 11. The Headhunting Problem 12. Kondō is Ambushed by Enemies 13. Kondō Leaves Puli or Han Territory 14. Kondō and the Guardline 15. Governor-General Sakuma Hires Kondō 16. Kondō Sets Out to Complete Fukahori’s Mission 17. Kondō Recruits a Tgdaya Crew 18–21. Kondō’s Expedition to Hualien 22. Kondō Joins the Kaku Kurata Mission 23. Kondō is Called to Duty Once Again 24 & 25. Kondō Organizes Military Operations against Toda and Truku 26. Kondō Negotiates an Extension o the Guardline 27. Kondō Betrays Baso Bōran 28. Kondō and Baso Bōran Reunited 29. The Story o Kondō the Younger 30. The Government-General Abandons Kondō’s Family 31. Kondō Relocates to Hualien Timeline Acknowledgments Further Readings and Notes on Sources
xI
210 210 211 212 213 214 215 218 220 221 224 233 234 237 238 241 244 246 246 261 281 283
Maps 1. The “Aborigine District” and Indigenous Ethnolinguistic Groups 2. Tgdaya, Toda, Truku, and Atayal Settlements in Central Taiwan ca. 1911 3. Hualien Harbor, Taroko, and Nanshi ca. 1920
5 14 76
Figures 1. Japanese colonial-period ethnonyms or Taiwan Indigenous Peoples 2. Kondō “the Barbarian” Katsusaburō, circa 1910 3. Roundtable at the Taihoku Railway Hotel 4. Iwan Robao, circa 1898 5. Musha-town, circa 1920 6. Aborigine Goods Trading Post
xII
6 16 18 23 26 33
For my wie Naoko and daughter Megumi, my parents David, Mary, and Keiko, my siblings Barbara, John, Betsy and Yuko, my nieces Rachel, Alexis and Kimber, and my nephews Jordan and Brandan. In memory o Kiyoshi Ikegami,William Angus Barclay and Kerstyn Marie Keiner.
Introduction
1 Two Legendary Figures
T
hIS book presents the dramatic lie o Kondō Katsusaburō, a Japanese colonist who claimed to be an in-law and intimate o Mona Rudao,1 one o twentieth-century Taiwan’s most enigmatic gures. Mona Rudao was a member o the Seediq Indigenous People and led the storied Musha Rebellion o 1930, during the island’s era as a colony o Japan (1895–1945). Mona’s motives or launching the revolt — a central theme in this book — remain a topic o intense historical scrutiny and debate to this day. The current work sheds light on these controversies; it consists o a translation o Kondō’s own Japanese-language memoir (as related to a reporter), in addition to several chapters
Vis sins n is nm, inin n R, n R, n n R. Tis k s “n R” in i “n” is in nm n “R” is nm s is ’s in nm. Ain Pss Cnm Cins C is i B, “n R is sn imin mn’s nm s nn i in ” The Musha Incident: A Reader. p. 216, n. 1.).
3
Kondo the BarBarian
o explanatory material.2 Kondō’s musings on his activities as a trading-post operator, interpreter, and power broker revolve around the contentious and oen violent relations between Japanese colonists and the Seediq peoples o Taiwan. His recollections provide a ground-level view o the lived experiences o Japanese colonists who interacted with and dwelled among Indigenous Peoples, while oering unique insights into the dayto-day operations o state-building at the extremities o Japan’s East Asian empire (see Map 1 and Figure 1). Finally, Kondō’s saga illustrates how colonists at the bottom o the imperial pecking order took advantage o the opportunities aorded by Japan’s occupation o Taiwan, while acing numerous constraints, rustrations, and disappointments. In hindsight, we can see how Kondō benetted personally, and Japan collectively, rom the rontier wars in which he participated. But rom his perspective, these gains came with high costs, including the dishonorable treatment o Seediq allies like Mona Rudao. For Kondō, it was the Japanese colonial government’s high-handed treatment o Mona that was ultimately to blame or the inamous uprising o October 27, 1930.
T mmi originally appeared in the Taiwan nichnichi shinpō (Taiwan Daily News). It was serialized during late 1930 and early 1931. This translation is slightly abridged. It omits a few paragraphs that were duplicated across installments in the serialized newspaper versions. For the sake of readability, a couple of the original installments have been combined into a single section, and one installment has been divided into different sections. I have also added titles to each renumbered section of the memoir, again for readability. I have omitted a short section about Kondō’s brie residence in China, the details o which cannot be independently confrmed.
4
two legeNdary IgureS
Atayal=
Indigenous Ethnolinguistic Group
Keelung
Danshui
= Boundary Line Between Regular and Special Administration
Taipei
Aborigine District Kantaban = Subgroup mentioned in the text Yilan
Atayal Gaogan
Saisiyat Slamao
Atayal Malepa Xakut Truku Toda Tgdaya Puli
Seediq
Taroko
Taroko
Hualien
Pangcah
Kantaban
Bunun
Map 1. The “Aborigine District” and Indigenous Ethnolinguistic Groups. Although Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan ocially commenced in 1895, Japan was not able to assert eective rule throughout the island until decades later. Yes, Taiwan was annexed, on paper, as a condition o the Treaty o Shimonoseki signed by representatives o the ing and Japanese imperial governments on April 17, 1895. Nonetheless, to most Taiwanese, this agreement meant little. I the residents o Taiwan were not 5
Figure 1. Japanese colonial-period ethnonyms or Taiwan Indigenous Peoples. 6
two legeNdary IgureS
altogether indierent to the regime change, they were hostile. The nature, intensity, and duration o armed resistance to Japan varied by region and over time. From the 1895 annexation through 1902, Han Taiwanese rebels ought sustained guerilla campaigns against the new Japanese government in the western hal o the island. This territory had been administered by the ing government, which commenced rule in Taiwan in 1684. Over the course o two centuries, the ing asserted its authority over immigrants rom Fujian and Guangdong, and their descendants. On November 18, 1895, when Governor-General Kabayama Sukenori declared victory over the rst wave o rebellions, the wars o resistance in Taiwan’s plains and oothills had already produced some 17,000 Taiwanese atalities. On the Japanese side, 453 were killed in action, with another 10,000 souls lost to illness. From 1896 to 1902, a new round o guerilla wars occurred throughout the ormer ing realm on Taiwan. In this period, another 11,950 Taiwanese rebels, bandits, and bystanders were killed in action, executed, or died as collateral damage. Japanese orces suered an additional 2,713 atalities — again mostly rom illness. From 1903 through 1915, much shorter-lived and sporadic revolts targeted rural government outposts. The Xilai’an incident o 1915 marked the last spasm o Han armed resistance in western Taiwan, resulting in more than 1,000 deaths in total. Eastern Taiwan, including the island’s majestic Central Mountain Range, had largely eluded the control o the ing dynasty. From Japan’s rst months o colonial rule in 1895, that country’s leaders vowed to bring that topographically orbidding territory under imperial control. In western Taiwan, Japanese amiliarity with written Chinese and aspects o Han social and economic organization acilitated the identication o local collaborators, the collection o taxes, and the stationing o police among the 7
Kondo the BarBarian
population. In contrast, Japanese ocials in eastern Taiwan were strangers in a strange land. The ancestors o the politically decentralized and linguistically diverse communities o Austronesian speakers in Taiwan’s central highlands had lived on the island or thousands o years prior to the arrival o Han immigrants. Known today as Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples, the island’s Austronesian inhabitants shared little in terms o culture, religion, social organization, or material lie with the Japanese colonizers. In the territories that had been beyond the reach o the ormer ing administration, the Japanese were reliant upon local leaders — known variously as headmen, chies, and village heads — to establish the rudiments o state control. Like many o Taiwan’s highlanders, the Seediq peoples — who counted Mona Rudao among their number and with whom our protagonist Kondō Katsusaburō requently interacted — were unaccustomed to living under the constraints imposed by state bureaucracies and tax collectors. Mona Rudao was the headman o Mhebu Village and leader o the inamous 1930 rebellion that targeted the residents o nearby Musha Town. Kondō himsel married into two Seediq amilies. In his capacity as a mediator between the Japanese state and the lands beyond the reach o government administration, Kondō enriched himsel personally as an interpreter, trader, guide, and entrepreneur. He also deployed a network o trading partners and Indigenous kin to acilitate the extension o Japanese rule into Indigenous territories. In the time beore the colonial state could deploy airpower as an instrument o conquest, the steep terrain o Taiwan’s mountainous interior inhibited the expansion o the empire into Seediq lands. As a guide and interpreter, Kondō assisted the orces o
8
two legeNdary IgureS
the Taiwan Government-General in placing mountain guns in strategic locations in the heart o Seediq country. Aer placing artillery on these heights, with Kondō’s assistance, Japanese police units bombarded Indigenous villages into submission, with little concern or civilian casualties. The armed conict at the heart o Kondō’s chronicle was directly connected to the extension and advance o the inamous Japanese “guardline” (aiyūsen) in the lands inhabited by Atayal, Seediq, Taroko, and Amis peoples. The guardline was a chain o ortresses, paths, ences, and scorched earth that was staed by armed policemen. Its origins stretched back to the era o ing rule, when camphor merchants hired guards to protect their lumber operations rom highlanders who sought to slow down Han encroachment. Highlander raids on lowlanders were also conducted or ritually sanctioned headhunting. Under Japanese colonial rule, the guardline was mechanized and expanded by a state bent on increasing its revenue stream rom the export o camphor. From 1903 to 1915, several guardlines were lengthened, ortied, and moved inland to orce Indigenous Peoples to accept the conditions imposed by Japanese district ocials. As historian Kojima Reiitsu describes it, The rst [installations that comprised the guardline] were roads opened in the mountain areas…. The second installations were the guard stations…. These were sentry boxes with gun holes, protected rom bullets and shells by impenetrable sandbags, earth, and stone. Where necessary, electric wire ences were hung and land mines buried. An electric current was
9
Kondo the BarBarian
passed through the wires; many uplanders and their domesticated animals died rom electrocution. At this time, eld and mountain artillery, as well as mortars were set up…. The land mines were installed by the police inspectors and their assistants; the construction was le to police ocers, who were all Japanese. To maintain secrecy, the assistant patrolmen, who were o Chinese descent, were not allowed to install them.… The electric switch was controlled by a headquarters police inspector. Since there was only one o these [inspector] stations per guardline, even the guards were electrocuted rom time to time. As Kojima explains, the guardline had large stang requirements. It also le a heavy ecological ootprint on the landscape. He writes: The width o the guardline’s path was 1.8 meters, and the oliage or 100 meters on either side o the path was cut down or the sake o visibility. The Chinese guards protected the guard stations, and were equipped with ries, which allowed them to be mobile. Two to our guards manned each guard post. A branch superintendent station was placed every our to ve guard stations; ocers and assistant policemen, as well as guards were stationed here. Superintendent stations were installed between every our to ve branch stations. Police, guards, inspectors and assistant inspectors were stationed there, as well as the intermittent medical personnel or reserve unit … amazingly, one o these posts 10
two legeNdary IgureS
was erected every 220 meters, which testies to the strength o the resistance to Japanese rule.3 During his decade as the colony’s governor-general (1906–1915), Sakuma Samata lobbied successully to increase unding or the guardline as the centerpiece o his war to conquer the Seediq, Atayal, and Taroko peoples o northern central Taiwan. In his memoir, Kondō claims to have been summoned by Sakuma himsel to provide advice regarding the prosecution o this war. Such a claim may have been exaggerated. When the Sakuma administration posted its list o 1,910 awards and bonuses or service on the guardline or the years 1906 through 1911, Kondō Katsusaburō is ound near its very bottom. Kondō received no cash bonus. But Mori Ushinosuke, an acquaintance o Kondō’s and a ellow Japanese adept at Indigenous languages, received a sixty-yen bonus to go with his eighth-class Order o the Rising Sun medal. The higher-ranked Kaku Kurata, who hired Kondō as a guide to Taroko territory, received 250 yen. In the memoir, Kondō proudly mentions the eighth-class Order o the Rising Sun medal that put him on this list. Hundreds o other laborers, staers, interpreters, and guards, including Mori, received the same award, the lowest o the eight classes o that medal. In other words, Kondō’s participation in the guardline movements, ocially labeled the “Punitive Expedition Against the Savage Brigands,” was no secret. He was an acknowledged combatant, along with more than 1,900 other technicians, laborers, policemen, administrators, and, o course, armed policemen and guards. But in light o the paltry reward he received based on the Bureau o Merit Award’s assessment o the reports and recommendations
Q in P D. B, Outcasts of Empire: Japanese Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874–1945, 104–105.
11
Kondo the BarBarian
o those who commanded troops in the war, it is doubtul that Kondō was a key gure in the planning and coordination o these campaigns. In short, rom the perspective o Japanese ocials and the bureaucratic paper trail, Kondō was near the bottom o the colonial pecking order. As a settler-colonist who operated with and without government support, Kondō oen survived on his wits. He usually traveled among Indigenous Peoples unarmed, meaning that he oen ound himsel in a position o relative weakness vis-à-vis the Seediq peoples he wrote about in his memoir. Thereore, Kondō was well positioned to describe the cooperation, coercion, and opportunism that characterized Japanese interpersonal relations with Taiwan Indigenous Peoples on the outer borders o Japan’s empire. Kondō’s recollections bear witness to long-simmering tensions between Seediq people and agents o the Japanese state, which eventually boiled over into an armed uprising that shook the empire to its oundations. Kondō himsel arrived in Taiwan in 1896, the rst year o Japanese colonial rule. He still dwelled there when Mona Rudao rose up in revolt in 1930, and continued to live in Taiwan until his death in the early 1940s. In his lie story, Kondō describes two decades o encounters with the Indigenous Peoples who lived in the og-shrouded valleys o Taiwan’s towering central mountain ranges. Although Kondō’s account was narrated or a newspaper readership as an adventure story, its headline bore a subtitle: “A Key to Understanding the Musha Rebellion.” At the crack o dawn, on October 27, 1930, three hundred rebels led by Mona Rudao ambushed Japanese police outposts and raided weapons closets in the vicinity o Musha, a hill station
12
two legeNdary IgureS
and resort town in central Taiwan (see Map 2).4 That day, a majority o the district’s 227 Japanese residents were attending a sports estival at the Musha Public School. Mona’s conederates inltrated the grounds ahead o time, thus achieving tactical surprise. Although some Japanese police ought back, the insurgents massacred civilians, stole weapons and ammunition, and destroyed government installations with impunity during the rst two days o the y-day war known to history as the Musha Rebellion. On the rst day, Tgdaya assailants killed 134 Japanese ocials, civilians, men, women, and children. The weapons o choice were muskets and ries, many taken rom Japanese police storehouses. Scabbards known as “Aborigine daggers” were also used or decapitations. Other Japanese victims that day were attacked with spears. It was two days beore a police detachment could ght its way into Musha, which the rebels had already abandoned in order to prepare or protracted guerilla war in the countryside. The police ound 47 Japanese survivors who avoided slaughter by hiding under urniture, in oliage, and among the dead. From October 31, 1931, search-and-destroy police squads and regular army units implemented a joint-operations strategy. Aer the rebels abandoned Musha Town on October 28, the war shied to an armed conict between imperial soldiers and policemen and Tgdaya guerilla units. The rebels dug in near Mona Rudao’s village o Mhebu and won some early battleeld victories. But his lightly armed, inadequately provisioned, and greatly outnumbered orces succumbed by late November. In a month’s ghting, some 640 Seediq men, women, and children
, “s” is n s “Ws” nin nniin is ns nm. T m n s is is is n “Rn’i.”
13
Kondo the BarBarian
Mt Hehuan 11,209 ft.
Mt. Xakut
Sakuragamine Sanjiaofeng Sadu
Mt. Dongyan
Tattaka 7273 ft.
Maibaala
6,957 ft. Mt. Shouchengda 7,982 ft.
Meixi Paalan
r
Puli
i Rive Meix Wugonglun
iR
r ive
hu
1450 ft.
YA DA TG
os
u Zh
TRU
KU
Mt. Qilai 11,695 ft.
Habon Hōgō
Musha
Kirigaseki
8019 ft.
TO
DA
Centra l
MAIBAALA Shuizhangliu Kawanakajima
Xakut
Mountains
MALEPA
10,539 ft. XAKUT r ive gR n iga Be
Mhebu Katsukku
Mt. Nenggao WANDA Wa nd aR ive
11,200 ft.
r
Town, Village or Walled City
Approximate Location of Indigenous settlement named in text
Police/Guard Station
ETHNIC GROUPS referred to as “Tribes” on 1911 Police Map
Road in 1911 Guardline ca. 1911
Mountain Peaks w/elevation in feet.
Map 2. Tgdaya, Toda, Truku, and Atayal Settlements in Central Taiwan ca. 1911. perished rom mass suicide, machine-gun and rie re, carpet bombing rom aircra, and ordnance launched by mortars and mountain guns. Mona Rudao, the uprising’s leader, took his own lie beore he could be captured, as imperial orces closed in on surviving rebels. Another three hundred Tgdaya people 14
two legeNdary IgureS
subsequently died in Japanese POW camps or under interrogation. Imperial Japanese Army units disbanded on November 25, less than a month aer the ill-ated school estival, but expeditionary orces o policemen remained intact until December 20, 1930. Kondō Katsusaburō, our storyteller, was not part o the suppression orce, nor was he present in Musha on the ateul day o October 27. News o the uprising, however, brought him out o retirement to investigate the causes o the conagration. On November 10, while heavy ghting was in progress, Kondō appeared at the Hualien police station to le a report regarding the rebellion’s cause. Kondō related an embroidered lengthy version o the deposition to a reporter at the Taiwan Daily News, a Japanese-language newspaper. It took the orm o a memoir titled The Saga o Kondō “the Barbarian” Katsusaburō: A Key to Understanding the Musha Rebellion. Kondō’s story was published in twenty-nine installments between December 20, 1930, and February 15, 1931, while the wounds o Mona’s uprising were still raw. Long beore the 1930 uprising, Kondō had achieved notoriety as an interpreter and mountain guide (see Figure 2). His decades o experience in the “Aborigine goods trade” and acility with Indigenous languages lent his account credibility with Japanese ocials and journalists. To be sure, Kondō was not the only Japanese interpreter o Indigenous languages who communicated directly with participants and eyewitnesses to the rebellion, as we shall see. Nonetheless, Kondō was singular among these “Aborigine hands” or recording his lie story or public consumption and posterity. Kondō’s proximity to the rebellion’s protagonists did not entail sympathy with their cause. Although he was reerred to in print as an “Aborigine hand,” or “Kondō the Barbarian,” Kondō himsel identied as a Japanese 15
Kondo the BarBarian
Figure 2. Kondō “the Barbarian” Katsusaburō, ca. 1910 (back row center). Courtesy o the Rupnow Collection. imperial subject. He ully supported Japan’s colonizing mission in Taiwan. Kondō also shared his ellow colonists’ condescending view o Indigenous Peoples as childlike, superstitious, and overly emotional. Although it is not surprising that a narrator such as Kondō would remember historical details out o sequence, or incorrectly, it is important to note that Kondō’s original publisher had easy access to reerence materials with which to correct the legion o actual errors that riddle this memoir. Despite its many inconsistencies, alsehoods, and implausible claims, rom 1931 onward, Kondō’s writings wedged their way into discourse, by hook or by crook. The indeatigable documentarian o Japanese policy in Indigenous Taiwan, Fujisaki Seinosuke, met Kondō in Taipei on March 14, 1931, a month aer his serialized memoir ended publication. He thereaer altered his own account o the Fukahori mission to reect Kondō’s input. A writer o similar 16
two legeNdary IgureS
stature, Suzuki Sakutarō, recycled much o Kondō’s serialized memoir in a 1932 compendium called Research on Taiwan Indigenous Peoples. Author Yoshikawa Tetsu excerpted large parts o Kondō’s story or his book The Truth about the Musha Incident (1935), while the ocer Tominaga Tōhei showered praise upon Kondō in an article or the newsletter Riban no tomo [Aborigine Administration Companion] in 1936. Writing ve years aer Kondō inserted himsel into the historiography, Tominaga speculated (implausibly) that Kondō might have single-handedly prevented the grisly demise o Captain Fukahori Yasuichirō’s ourteen-person Japanese survey team in 1897, despite an array o orces that converged to make their deaths all but inevitable (as we shall see below). In 1932, thanks to his newly won notoriety, Kondō nally met Captain Fukahori’s widow and his son, to both celebrate the thirty-h anniversary o his “death in battle” and to personally guide them across the Nenggao Trail that the members o the Fukahori’s mission had died or. Kondō was also a guest in a commemorative roundtable discussion at the Taipei Railway Hotel, with Fukahori’s amily (see Figure 3). Kondō continued to make headlines by initiating a subscription drive to ound the Fukahori Shrine in Hualien, which was slated to hold its rst ceremony on January 31, 1933. Using rare woods obtained through his network o Truku associates in Hualien, and with the help o ocial connections, Kondō sold “Aborigine incense” along with other souvenirs at the “Kondō the Barbarian Shop” he opened in Taipei in 1932. By 1937, Kondō’s photograph, that o Iwan Robao, and a shot o Kondō with Fukahori’s widow, Sechiko, all made their way into Ide Kawata’s semi-ocial history o Japanese government in colonial Taiwan. Kondō was able to leverage the media renzy surrounding 17
Kondo the BarBarian
Figure 3. Roundtable at the Taihoku Railway Hotel. Kondō Katsusaburō seated to the viewer’s ar right; Captain Fukahori’s widow, Sechiko, to the ar le. Source: “Yue Fukahori Tai’i tsuisō zadankai,” Tainichi gurau 2, no. 4 (April 15, 1931): 28. Thanks to Kirsten Ziomek. the Musha Rebellion into his own rehabilitation as a trusted i not beloved “king o the Bantsū” because he revived Captain Fukahori as a noble Japanese war god who committed seppuku instead o succumbing to his savage enemies in February 1897. In his account, Kondō puts several speeches in the mouth o Fukahori, making him out to be an orator and patriot. Kondō portrayed himsel as the loyal ollower, a man who dreamed o Captain Fukahori while he lay stricken with malaria in a strange and savage land. Careless o lie, limb, and prot, Kondō pursued Fukahori’s remains, and then crossed the mountains to ulll Fukahori’s mission. Tapping into the purported remorse o his Indigenous associates at having ailed Captain Fukahori, Kondō was able to mobilize a orce against recalcitrant villages 18
two legeNdary IgureS
in 1909. Two decades later, when duty called, Kondō rose to the occasion to investigate the Musha Incident and subsequently pursue posthumous justice or Captain Fukahori. The legend o “Kondō the Barbarian” was primarily sel-generated. In sharp contrast, Mona Rudao is a larger-than-lie historical gure. He has been memorialized in coinage, public statuary, history textbooks, juvenile literature, and, perhaps most notably, as the hero o the lm Warriors o the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (hereaer “Seediq Bale”). Like Mel Gibson’s Sir William Wallace in Braveheart, to whom he has been compared, the Mona Rudao o cinematic ame is physically imposing and courageous. The iconic Wallace o Braveheart led highly motivated, outnumbered, poorly equipped troops against the English king Edward Longshanks to ree his native Scotland rom the yoke o oreign occupation. The movie character Mona, in a similar vein, achieved numerous battleeld victories against a mechanized Imperial Japanese Army thanks to his extraordinary leadership capabilities and the ghting spirit o his comrades in arms. Both charismatic leaders perished in noble but ailed undertakings. There is an important dierence, however, between the Mona Rudao o Seediq Bale and other lionized rebels rom central casting. Mel Gibson’s William Wallace, and Watanabe Ken’s Katsumoto-Saigō character in The Last Samurai (to give another example), are scarcely recognizable to historians. In contrast, Seediq Bale’s screenwriter and director Wei Te-sheng studied the rebellion in Musha beore writing a script, and then revised it substantially in response to advice tendered by Indigenous Taiwanese consultants. Wei’s team included descendants o the people with direct experience o Mona’s uprising. Director Wei also worked on location or a documentary lm about the Musha Rebellion beore shooting his blockbuster lm. Thereore, as 19
Kondo the BarBarian
the scholar o translation studies and Seediq Bale expert Darryl Sterk has argued, the lm is much more than a genre piece. It dramatizes, rather than alsies, the events leading up to and including the uprising. O equal importance, Wei Te-sheng and his Seediq advisors repurposed the rebel-with-a-cause ormula to render the Seediq moral universe in cinematic terms. The central concept that anchors Seediq morality in Wei’s lm is gaya. The term is dicult to translate; it reers to ancestral injunctions and a code o ethics that ideally governs human behavior. Under the umbrella o gaya, Wei dened the Musha Rebellion as Mona’s “blood sacrice” to the Seediq ancestors. Invoking gaya, cinematic Mona rues the act that so many young Seediq men will never earn ace tattoos, and thus entry into the place o the ancestors beyond the rainbow bridge. By 1930, the colonial state had outlawed and suppressed headhunting through strict rearms regulations. Unable to hunt heads, and thereore earn their ace tattoos, Mona encourages the young men to ght in the utile war against Japan in order to attain manhood. In addition, and again in keeping with gaya, Mona’s “blood sacrice” also covers the shame o not deending the ancestral lands rom Japanese occupation. In Wei’s cinematic interpretation o the rebellion, Seediq morality is complex enough to admit diverse interpretations; not everyone ollows Mona in lockstep. As Sterk observes, there are women and other chies in the lm who interpret gaya dierently than Mona. These women are portrayed as dissenters rom Mona’s decision to initiate a “blood sacrice.” Our narrator, Kondō Katsusaburō, was a man o action whose memoir did not probe too deeply into the thought-worlds o his Seediq trading partners, in-laws, and co-combatants. Kondō occasionally romanticizes Seediq peoples by praising their honesty, 20
two legeNdary IgureS
loyalty, and physical heartiness. He even describes head-taking as a noble and religiously inspired practice. But generally, Kondō portrays Seediq people as childlike, credulous, and superstitious. Thereore, Kondō’s observations provide readers with a close-up look at Indigenous-outsider relations as experienced by a man not given to ethnological speculation. Nor were Kondō’s observations leavened by the emergent twentieth-century ethos o cultural relativism. But while Kondō appears to have given scant thought to the notion that Indigenous Peoples were capable o ormulating perspectives worthy o sustained analysis or engagement, his recollections are o interest or their orthright description o the opportunism, vulnerability, and betrayal that came with the territory o brokering relations between Indigenous Taiwanese and Japanese colonists in the early twentieth century. Indeed, Kondō witnessed rsthand many o the events and scenes chronicled in his memoir. He was certainly involved in the Japanese eort to recover the remains o members o Captain Fukahori Yasuichirō’s ill-ated mountain-crossing expedition o 1897. Independent documentation also conirms Kondō’s trading-post activities, his common-law marriage to Tgdaya interpreter Iwan Robao, and his participation in Japanese punitive campaigns against Seediq, Taroko, Pangcah, and Atayal peoples. Kondō was also instrumental in blazing the Nenggao Trail, which connects Musha overland to Taiwan’s east coast. But there are holes in his story as well. Kondō claims to have orged a deep personal bond with explorer Fukahori Yasuichirō, as a member o an 1897 expedition to survey a railroad route across Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range. Kondō’s sense o loyalty to Captain Fukahori — who was killed en route with all thirteen o his subordinates — is a rerain in the memoir, unctioning almost the way gaya does 21
Kondo the BarBarian
in Wei’s lm Seediq Bale. Kondō’s desire to repay a debt o gratitude to the allen Fukahori is a central theme o his serialized memoir. It is unlikely, however, that Kondō participated in the Fukahori expedition. He claimed to be a hired interpreter who was replaced at the last minute due to a case o malaria. But Kondō’s connection to the expedition cannot be conrmed in the documentary record, which is quite robust. While other accounts o the journey identiy the ocial Japanese interpreter Takano Gennosuke (who was killed with the rest o the men), and the Taiwanese auxiliary interpreters Pan Laolong and Iwan Robao (who both survived), by name, place o residence, and age, Kondō’s name is conspicuous by its absence. The scattered reerences to Kondō Katsusaburō in pre-1930 documents never mention his connection to the expedition. Although a personal relationship to Fukahori cannot be denitively ruled out, the evidence suggests that Kondō’s close association with Fukahori was as much a plot device or Kondō’s memoir as it was a historical act. Kondō’s detailed knowledge o Fukahori’s travails were probably obtained second- or third-hand. Perhaps they were related to him by his common-law wie Iwan Robao, who really did accompany the mission (see Figure 4). Iwan even makes a brie appearance in Seediq Bale (even though Kondō does not). Kondō was also a member o search teams that hunted or Fukahori’s remains in 1898 and 1900, where he interviewed Seediq men with intimate knowledge o the expedition’s ate. Beginning in 1905, Kondō initiated a series o lease and purchase applications to reclaim land on the ringes o Indigenous territory, making himsel known in local bureaucratic circles. He was commissioned by the government to urther the extension o Japan’s security apparatus into mountain 22
two legeNdary IgureS
Figure 4. Iwan Robao, circa 1898 (Identity inerred by author based on external evidence). Source: “The Inō Kanori Manuscript Collection,” photograph album, volume 6. Inset: close-up rom illustration “Taiwan Banzoku shōzō 1898 Taihoku Banjō kenkyūkai seiritsu taikei.” Images courtesy o Taiwan National University Library. Thanks to Chen Wei-chi. territories, among Seediq peoples, rom 1906 through 1910. Thereore, Kondō had access to not only journalistic accounts based on military and police investigations, but also a broad range o acquaintances who were amiliar with the story. In short, while Kondō possessed many unique insights into the demise o the 23
Kondo the BarBarian
Fukahori mission, it is doubtul that he himsel was personally under the captain’s command.
24
2 A Bi His Musha Rebellion
M
uSha Town and its environs were noted or cherry-blossom viewing, hot-spring spas, and the orestry industry. Because it was located in the heart o the Seediq culture area, with its reputation or cultural isolation and resistance to outsiders, Musha was the showcase or the colonial administration’s “Aborigine policy.” From its modest beginnings in 1908 as a stockade or orward units o Japan’s “punitive campaign” orces, by 1930 Musha Town eatured a post oce, hot-spring resort, two schools, ocial oces and residences, tourist sites, a lumber company branch oce, and a couple o storeronts. Compared to the teeming metropolises o Keelung, Taipei, and Kaohsiung, or even regional centers such as Tainan or Hualien, Musha Town was little more than a rudely built hill station. It boasted a single main thoroughare about two hundred meters long; on either side, wooden buildings were arrayed — some with thatched roos, others tiled. Slightly larger public structures with walled courtyards — a police command center and a public school — bookended Musha Town’s main street. Despite 25
Kondo the BarBarian
its modest scale, heading to Musha meant “going to town” or hundreds o orestry workers, clerks, policemen, and teachers who labored in the wooded mountainous interior to the east o Puli (see Figure 5).
Figure 5. Musha-town, circa 1920. Source: “The Whole View o Musha Village,” record # n0034, East Asia Image Collection, (Easton, PA: Laayette College Libraries, 2008—2022). By the late 1920s, in act, Japanese tourists could purchase Indigenous-themed souvenirs at the Musha trading post. Seediq children attended Japanese schools; some o them obtained salaried posts with the government upon graduation. For Japanese near and ar rom the site o the rebellion, Musha Town seemed an unlikely place or discontent with colonial rule to rear its head so spectacularly.
26
a brIe hIStory o the MuSha rebellIoN
At the time o the uprising on October 27, 1930, Musha Town was home to a mixed population o 157 Japanese and 111 Taiwanese o Chinese descent, or 268 non-Indigenous people. Many interpreted the presence o a high concentration o non-Indigenous residents in Taiwan’s sparsely populated interior as a sign o Musha’s tranquility. The heavy labor demands that attended the building o Musha Town and related inrastructure, however, alienated Tgdaya men, even i the attendant construction boom made Japanese residents and tourists more comortable. Seediq men were paid survival wages to haul timber down narrow, slippery, and steep paths to processing stations or the construction projects. Japanese overseers were ussy about gouges and cuts on the elled timber, and insisted that the logs not be slid down mountains, or dragged, but rather carried. Government inquests, local testimonials, and even Wei Te-sheng’s lm all highlight Tgdaya discontent with labor conditions as a primary irritant in Japanese–Indigenous relations on the eve o the revolt. On October 27, 1930, three attack groups o Tgdaya warriors surprised Japanese police units guarding the hill station known as Musha. Their main target that day was the annual Sports Day estival held at the Musha Public School. At about 4:30 a.m., the rst Tgdaya squad ambushed the Mhebu police station near Musha, killed its patrolmen, and ran o with their weapons and ammunition. Between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., two other squads ollowed suit, robbing and torching another seven Japanese police stations, while killing more patrolmen i they could be ound. These early morning surprise attacks cleared the way or the inamous massacre o Japanese participants and spectators at the Sports Day estival.
27
Kondo the BarBarian
At 8:00 a.m., as Japanese dignitaries, parents, and students sang the Japanese national anthem “Kimi ga yo,” two musket shots rang out within earshot o the Musha Public School grounds. This was the signal or Tgdaya attack groups to enter the eld and begin killing Japanese colonists. The Japanese policemen in attendance were caught completely o guard. Help did not arrive, in part because Tgdaya rebels had severed the telegraph and telephone lines that connected Musha Town to the outside world. During the carnage, Tgdaya assailants spared the lives o Han Taiwanese attendees and shopkeepers, ocusing their ury on Japanese nationals. Their victims included not only armed patrolmen but also unarmed Japanese students, teachers, and amilies. The attackers beheaded many Japanese with scabbards known as “savage daggers,” as policemen and ocials scrambled to nd their weapons and mount a deense, which was largely ineective. Although some Japanese ocials initially wrote these attacks o as aberrant, as the work o a ew misguided or culturally backward malcontents, it quickly became apparent to contemporary observers, and subsequent analysts, that the Musha Rebellion had been planned careully in advance. Moreover, it exposed the nature o lie in the Aborigine District or those taxed with heavy labor burdens, discrimination, and rule by police orces unchecked by judicial constraints. Thereore, government investigators who sought to understand the causes o the rebellion amassed detailed historical inormation on the economy, social organization, and administration o the Seediq areas o Taiwan in their reports. In other words, rom the time o the uprising itsel, this event was viewed as one o great historical signiicance not only or its dramatic political allout, but or what it revealed about the operations o a colony at a geographic 28
a brIe hIStory o the MuSha rebellIoN
extremity rom Japan’s urban centers o governmental, economic, and cultural power.5 All told, 134 Japanese, along with 2 Taiwanese who were mistaken or Japanese because o their clothing, lost their lives on the morning o October 27, 1930. Only 93 o the 227 Japanese residents o the jurisdiction o Musha survived the massacre — and three o these died later rom related injuries and illness. Thus, Tgdaya orces inicted a total o 139 atalities on day one o the uprising. Among these deaths, 32 were aged ve or less, and another 30 were no older than 15, or a total o 62 children killed. O those slaughtered, 53 were women and 86 were men. In the chaos, Nenggao preect Osagawara Keitarō and school superintendent Kikukawa Takayuki led the schoolground bloodbath to sound the alarm. Osagawara was caught by Tgdaya men and killed on a ootbridge, but Kikukawa reached the Meixi police outpost between Musha and the nearest walled town, Puli. He telephoned the Nenggao Preectural Oce or help. From the Nenggao oce, bulletins were rapidly disseminated among the civilian and military administrators o the colony, reaching all the way to Army Headquarters in Tokyo. The total number o rebel combatants was about three hundred, out o a total Tgdaya population o 2,136 people. The term “Tgdaya” reers to speakers o a Seediq dialect o the same name. Tgdaya people inhabited eleven villages clustered around the administrative center o Musha. O these, six villages participated in the rebellion en masse, while ve did not join Mona Rudao’s uprising (although some residents o the “riendly villages” did join Mona). The Japanese reerred to
Rs n n m n n kn in nsin mis is in “F Rin n s n s” n k.
29
Kondo the BarBarian
the Tgdaya people as the “Musha tribes” to distinguish them rom the nearby Truku and Toda “tribes.” All three groups — the Tgdaya (Musha), Toda, and Truku — speak the Seediq language, and are currently classied under the ethnonym “Seediq.” The word seediq in Tgdaya (or sediq in Toda, or seejic in Truku) is also the word or “person.” In Kondō’s memoir, and in other colonial-era documentation, the Toda, Truku, and Tgdaya groups requently engage in lethal altercations; they appear to have been mutually hostile beore the Japanese colonists arrived. But whatever the state o relations might have been beore 1895, hostilities were intensied by competition or Japanese patronage and access to trade goods. Moreover, Japanese police ocers did not hesitate to arm some groups against others, which raised the stakes o local rivalries considerably. In other words, it is tempting to view Indigenous Taiwan as preternaturally at war with itsel, even beore colonialism. But it was not the case that inter-ethnic violence during Japanese rule was a mere continuation o the status quo. Because the colonial state introduced new incentive structures, more lethal weaponry, and radically altered the political economy o the region, the requent intra-Seediq violence described by Kondō should not be considered atavistic but rather as part o a complex response to the newly imposed dispensation. During the colonial period, Japanese ocials and writers lumped the Seediq peoples together with Atayal peoples, reerring to all o them as the “northern tribes.” In this larger culture-complex, which extended to all Indigenous settlements in northern Taiwan (see Map 1 and Figure 1), males were amous or ritually sanctioned head-taking, while emales were lauded or skill in producing boldly patterned cloths on the back-strap
30
a brIe hIStory o the MuSha rebellIoN
loom. Seediq and Atayal men and women wore acial tattoos as emblems o adulthood. In 1930, the year o the rebellion, Seediq peoples resided in the so-called Aborigine District, which covered roughly hal o Taiwan’s surace. The Aborigine District was separated rom the “regularly governed areas” o Taiwan by special laws and restrictions on travel. Most notably, Taiwanese who were classied as “Aborigines” were ruled directly by police ocers and patrolmen, and existed outside o the more unctionally dierentiated machinery o governance in the lowlands and cities (see Map 1). In response to the coordinated Tgdaya attacks on Musha on October 27, 1930, the Japanese state leveraged the dense network o shipping lines, harbors, railways, roads, airelds, and telecommunication wires that it had built over the thirty-ve years o rule over Taiwan to that date. Within three days o the October 27 massacre, imperial army and Taiwan Government-General police orces set up a joint command in Musha. A landing strip was hastily built near the nearest walled town, Puli, to accommodate air support rom the Eighth Airborne Regiment in Pingdong. By the end o the rebellion’s suppression in early December 1930, a orce o more than our thousand soldiers, constables, engineers, medics, and laborers had been dispatched to the Musha area to hunt down the Tgdaya rebels, with the backing o nearly seven thousand Indigenous auxiliaries. The most intense ghting occurred between October 31 and November 5, in the campaign to locate and destroy Mona Rudao’s stronghold in caves near Mhebu, his village o residence. Japanese police and military orces were turned back several times, and een Japanese soldiers were killed in a battle on November 5. This staunch deense took the commander o the
31
Kondo the BarBarian
combined army and police orces, Lieutenant General Kamada Yahiko, by surprise. Four military aircra were thrown into the ghting on November 7. Bombardiers dropped canisters o weaponized gas on Tgdaya villages and strongholds. The contents o these canisters have been the subject o controversy. In response to accusations launched in the Diet (Japan’s parliament) that Japanese soldiers used chemicals banned by international agreement to gas Tgdaya rebels, General Ugaki Kazushige denied the allegation. Ugaki claimed that tear gas had been used. Oral histories and interviews suggest the gas warare produced lethal eects on Seediq combatants and civilians, and that the chemicals were not tear gas but something more caustic and nearious. From the second day o the counterinsurgency campaign, the Japanese police enlisted support rom a local dragoon o Indigenous ghters, porters, and builders. Aer their military deeat on November 5, they armed and deployed Toda and Truku men (co-ethnics o the Seediq group), and Atayal men rom Wanda and Xakut,6 to spot locations or mountain-gun and mortar bombardment, to repair trails and bridges, to haul ood, and kill Tgdaya men, women, and children with impunity (see Maps 1 and 2). These several joint operations by police, inantry, bomber planes, and the local dragoon killed nearly 350 Seediq men, women, and children in the ensuing ve weeks, while another 290 Tgdaya men, women, and children hung themselves to avoid capture — including Mona Rudao himsel.
T sni sins “Wn” n “Xk” s iis ini Wn n Xk , ss A ni . T n is n k ss i ; ini s s s “” n “k.” Fi n s & .
32
a brIe hIStory o the MuSha rebellIoN
While bombing seems to have been an eective i crude tactic, the deeat o Mona’s orces was largely achieved by the same tactics used rom the 1900s through the 1910s to disarm the northern tribes and compel them to accept Japanese sovereignty. From the early 1900s, the Japanese accelerated a policy o giing and easting to local leaders, which paved the way or a state-licensed trading-post system that encouraged trade dependency or necessities such as iron goods, salt, and matches (see Figure 6). The trading posts were then ortied, and at times
Figure 6: Aborigine Goods Trading Post. Source: Riban Gaiyō (Taipei: Taiwan sōtokuu minseibu banmu honsho, 1913), n.p. blockaded, so that trade could be withheld rom villages that did not comply with orders to submit to police surveillance and the conscations o weapons. Having established a toehold in the mountainous interior by this method, the Taiwan government then spent millions o 33
Kondo the BarBarian
yen encircling the territory beyond the reach o the outposts with electried wire, trenches, orts, and soldiers. Villages that would not submit to avoid trade sanctions were bombed with mountain guns and mortars until they sued or peace. As we shall see, men like Kondō were pivotal or the enterprise o reducing Indigenous sovereignty; they were the brokers who exploited trade dependency to enlist Indigenous Peoples in the cause to extend Japanese rule — at the expense o all Indigenous Peoples. In late 1930, on a compressed timescale, Imperial orces reprised the encircle-embargo-rebomb strategy to bring Mona’s rebels to heel. Imperial Japanese Army troops occupied ridgelines between Tgdaya villages to cut o communications and resupply lines, while they burned the insurgents’ elds, homes, and stores to immiserate rebel orces. By isolating and choking a populace that was also subject to bombardment, the Japanese were able to lure roughly 560 Seediq women, children, and elderly people to surrender in order to avoid starvation or death rom exposure. To acilitate this process, Japanese aviators dropped some six thousand leaets that urged compliance with Japanese orders. From the imprisoned Seediq reugees, more intelligence was gathered, and ewer and ewer adult males were le to ght. Major military operations ended in early December 1930, but the woes o the Tgdaya people were ar rom over. On April 25, 1931, Toda and Truku men killed some 216 surviving members o the six rebelling villages, who were under Japanese guard at the time in two prisoner-o-war camps. This massacre occurred with the complicity o the colonial state. It is known as the “Second Musha Incident.” The assailants were rewarded with 101 heads o their erstwhile rivals in the bargain.
34
a brIe hIStory o the MuSha rebellIoN
Aer this slaughter, the surviving Tgdaya captives were removed to the valley settlement o Kawanakajima on May 6, under strict conditions o surveillance. The connement o the Tgdaya people in Kawanakajima (today’s ingliu Township) was ollowed by ocial reconciliation ceremonies between the peoples who had ought or and against the Japanese government during the Musha Rebellion, on May 16, 1931. Nonetheless, Japanese police continued to interrogate local men and women, and to hunt down suspects, into the spring o 1932. During the interval between capture and transport o surrendered prisoners o war in late 1930, and the dissolution o the camps in mid-1932, more than thirty suspected Tgdaya rebels perished in detainment, either rom judicial execution, police brutality, medical neglect, or suicide. At the end o this series o grisly events, only 298 residents o the six rebelling hamlets remained. Their combined population on the eve o the rebellion was 1,236 souls. All told, about 1,000 Tgdaya men, women, and children, or about 80 percent o the population, lost their lives to the rebellion. According to Deng Xiangyang’s calculations, 153 male and 145 emale Tgdaya remained to carry on. On August 19, 1932, the homelands o the relocated Tgdaya people were distributed among their erstwhile enemies. Under trying conditions, Tgdaya survivors rebuilt the rudiments o community lie as residents o Kawanakajima Village, which resembled a concentration camp. In the aermath o the 1930 uprising, the government increased the intensity o its orced-relocation program or all highland Indigenous Peoples, and moved tens o thousands o them to lower altitudes. The consolidated and more densely populated villages acilitated surveillance. The removal policy enabled the state to ramp up its eorts to transition the Atayal and Seediq peoples to lives
35
Kondo the BarBarian
o sedentary agriculture and wage labor, to the exclusion o hunting and shiing agriculture. While losses or the rebelling Tgdaya hamlets came to a whopping 80 percent o men, women, and children, Japanese atalities were comparatively light. Against roughly 300 Tgdaya rebels, the Japanese state deployed, altogether, some 1,729 men under the army’s command, 1,306 policemen, 1,563 civilian laborers, and 6,822 Indigenous auxiliaries. As we will see in Kondō’s memoir, Indigenous auxiliaries routinely perormed dangerous ront-line labor in punitive campaigns. These operations were premised on the government-general’s ability to utilize local rivalries to execute a divide-and-conquer strategy. Kondō himsel appears to have contracted over 650 Tgdaya men in a decisive 1909 campaign against the Truku branch o the Seediq, in a preview o the tactics adopted in 1930. The disproportionate number o combatants required to quell the Musha Rebellion indicates the diculty o the terrain, which precluded the use o pack animals, railway transport, armored vehicles, and other mainstays o set-piece warare. While Taiwan’s existing inrastructure o roads, push-cart light rails, and military air bases were crucial or conducting maneuvers, much o the actual ghting occurred beyond the reach o ground transport. Thanks to its overwhelming advantage in troop numbers and weaponry, the Imperial Japanese Army lost only twenty-two men; and twenty-ve men were wounded. Fieen o the twenty-two atalities occurred in a single battle on November 5. The Taiwan Government-General police lost only six in combat plus our wounded. Another twenty-nine Taiwanese auxiliaries perished in the ghting, plus twenty-two wounded. Because the ghting was against ellow Japanese subjects, 36
a brIe hIStory o the MuSha rebellIoN
participation in the so-called Musha Incident7 did not coner much in the way o prestige or honor on government orces. Whereas Gold Kite medals were awarded to 27 o the rst 56 Japanese combat deaths in the 1928 Jinan Incident (ought against Chinese orces in China’s Shandong Province), not a single Gold Kite was issued to the 28 soldiers and policemen who died suppressing Mona Rudao’s revolt — nor were any surviving combatants so recognized. O the over 1,700 men deployed under Imperial Japanese Army command to suppress the Tgdaya rebels, the central government’s Bureau o Merit and Award distributed only 326 battle commendations — most o them at the lowest possible grade. To put these gures into perspective, the bureau issued 5,043 commendations to combatants under Imperial Japanese Army command or the campaigns ought against Taiwan Indigenous Peoples between 1911 and 1914, and a total o 6,242 commendations including police orces, technicians, and laborers. Awards or the 1930 Musha Rebellion, by contrast, were restricted to Japanese nationals under military or police command. Japanese civil ocials, and Taiwanese o all descriptions, were excluded rom imperial largesse in this latter war. For the 1910s campaigns, ranking Taiwan Government-General ocials received prestigious
T s “s nin” is i nsin “s jikn” ns Ws ijin nin, s s isin, is mii sssin, n ssn iss n ins imi s i insns. “s nin” is s n f s ns mii s s isiin, in, n ms kin. imi s, s s “inn nin” n “nin nin,” i m n s mii ins simi ss.
37
Kondo the BarBarian
medals and generous bonuses, including a rst-class Order o the Paulownia and Rising Sun (plus a 1,500-yen annual annuity) or Governor-General Sakuma Samata, and a second-class Order o the Rising Sun (plus a 2,000-yen bonus) or Civil Minister Uchida Kakichi. Again, in contrast, ministers with the Taiwan Government-General received no emoluments or the suppression o Mona Rudao’s 1930 uprising. Instead, several were orced to resign to take responsibility or the debacle (see below). But even the Imperial Japanese Army’s military command, which was unconnected to the misgovernment and unpreparedness that was blamed or the rebellion’s severity, was slighted. The commander o joint orces, Lieutenant General Kamada Yahiko received only a ceremonial gold cup or his eorts, instead o the customary Order o the Rising Sun medal awarded to commanders in other Japanese wars. A third-class Order o the Rising Sun was awarded to Colonel Hattori Heijirō, the coordinator o the military and police campaigns against Mona’s orces. But overall, the small number o decorations issued to combatants or the Musha Rebellion suggest that the conict was more o an embarrassment than occasion or lionizing brave Japanese soldiers. The medals, cups, and Yasukuni enshrinements conerred upon Japanese soldiers and policemen or service in Taiwan in late 1930 were commonly employed orms o recognition or military service throughout the world in the 1920s and 1930s. Indigenous auxiliaries, on the other hand, were rewarded in a manner that harkened back to Japan’s eudal past: cash paid on the spot or severed heads. From the beginning o the campaign against the rebels, units o Truku and Toda irregulars (5,311 Seediq men), as well as Wanda and Xakut irregulars (1,511 Atayal men), were
38
a brIe hIStory o the MuSha rebellIoN
mustered into three dierent battalions, under the leadership o captains Kawanishi, Takai, and Kaminokado. They were sent aer scattered Tgdaya orces who ed into dense orests in the area o Mhebu, Mona’s stronghold. They were ordered not only to burn residences and grain stores, trample agricultural elds, and cut o rebel supply lines, but also to behead Tgdaya men, women, and children, which they did with impunity. These Indigenous irregulars were paid y sen (hal a yen) per day to porter, and rom sixty to eighty sen per day to scout. These rates compared avorably to rank-and-le inantry soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army. But in their capacity as killers, they were paid two hundred yen or the heads o rebel chies (or men o inuence), one hundred yen or heads o ghting-aged men, thirty yen or heads o Tgdaya women, and twenty yen to decapitate Tgdaya children. As it turned out, o the eighty-six heads redeemed or cash, only two “men o inuence” were turned in or prizes, while another nineteen heads o warriors were redeemed. The twenty-one Indigenous men who collected these bounties were thereore paid more bonus money than the majority o Japanese police and soldiers. This exception to the rule that Japanese always out-earned Taiwanese or similar tasks in the colony shows how highly the irregular orces were valued by the military. For example, the police ocer Kojima Genji, who was instrumental in mobilizing Toda warriors against Mona’s rebels, earned an eighth-class Sacred Treasure or ghting in the y-day war, while interpreter-police ocer Ishikawa Genroku, the right hand o chie o Aborigine Police Morita, was awarded a seventh-class Order o the Rising Sun. These awards were the least prestigious medals in the Japanese array o military decorations. Although
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the amounts or cash bonuses that attended these distributions were not published, it is unlikely that they exceeded the hundred-yen bounty paid to Seediq or Atayal men or a Tgdaya warrior’s head. Mirroring the disproportionate slaughter o non-combatant Japanese nationals on October 27 in Musha Town, the reprisals against Tgdaya people also included numerous killings that should also be classied as murders. For example, the majority o redeemed Tgdaya heads taken by irregular Indigenous orces were those o women (28) and children (36). The removal o these sixty-six heads, much like the 101 Tgdaya heads severed rom disarmed prisoners o war in the Second Musha Incident o April 25, 1931, served no military purpose. One could argue that the bounty policy was justiable, as payback or the many Japanese children, women, and non-combatants killed by Tgdaya assailants on October 27, 1930. But the hypocritical policy o rewarding Indigenous Taiwanese head-taking, a practice explicitly orbidden by the Taiwan Government-General, was not implemented in the heat o the moment or in the og o war. Rather, it was an established government policy dating back to the early 1900s, i not earlier. On October 5, 1903, with Japanese police acquiescence, Bunun warriors o the Kantaban group murdered more than one hundred Tgdaya men and brought their heads and weapons to a guard station. This inamous Shimaigahara Incident occurred while Japanese police orces were laboring to advance their ortied line o deense into the no-man’s land between Puli and the Tgdaya heartland. This operation was part o the strategy to encircle, interdict, and eventually occupy Seediq lands. The Tgdaya delegation’s desire to get around the trade embargo on salt and guns impelled men rom Paalan and Hōgō to expose 40
a brIe hIStory o the MuSha rebellIoN
themselves to the Bunun double-cross. Historian Kitamura Kae maintains that the people o Paalan were especially devastated by this incident. To compensate or the sudden loss o most marriage-aged men, women in Paalan married outside o their age-cohorts and violated numerous taboos to secure Paalan’s patrimony. In addition, the severe reduction in laborpower led to Paalan women becoming expert rat-trappers. In the post-Shimaigahara setting, rodents became an important ood source or Paalan’s residents. Seventeen years later, Japanese police mobilized Tgdaya and Atayal auxiliaries to track and kill Malepa-group Atayals. In the Slamao Incident o 1920, several Japanese and Taiwanese policemen were slain by warriors o Slamao Village, who were trying to end o police occupation. As was the case in Shimaigahara in 1903, and in the Musha Rebellion o 1930, Tgdaya and Atayal irregulars brought severed heads to Japanese police stations, presumably or redemption. Mona Rudao was the headman o Mhebu at the time; his men were part o the punitive expeditions against Slamao. Commemorative photographs exist o all three cases — Indigenous men posing or the camera with Japanese policemen. These pictures all clearly display the severed heads o Indigenous Peoples. These horrid scenes remind us that throughout the colonial world, especially in cases o counterinsurgency, the laws o war did not apply. While The Hague treaties o 1899 and 1907 had produced agreements among nation-states to humanize the conduct o war, their guidelines did not apply to colonial wars. Because Indigenous and many other non-Christian peoples were thought to lack the capacity to ght according to civilized norms, measures such as putting bounties on the heads o women and children did not raise too many eyebrows, even rom pacists 41
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and humanitarians in the global peace movement.8 O course there was dissent among the citizenries o colonizing nationstates, including Japan, about the harsh treatment meted out to colonial subjects. But during the heyday o Japan’s aggressive policies toward Taiwan Indigenous Peoples in the early twentieth century, sporadic dissent was not translated into legal or statutory prohibitions on such behavior.
m n, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), 91–97.
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or Japanese citizens, the attacks o October 27, 1930, came as a shock. The slaughter o 134 Japanese colonists in Musha on October 27, 1930, and the ensuing campaigns to annihilate or imprison rebels, dominated newspaper headlines in Japan in November 1930. Heavily censored journalistic accounts were partly trained on the rebels themselves, and their grievances with the colonial government. But the coverage, as one might expect, tilted toward narratives o martyrdom or bravery on the part o Japanese colonists and soldiers. In such accounts, Tgdaya peoples are aceless savages who act as mere oils to the tragic or heroic colonists, who take center stage. But not all Japanese mass media sided with the colonists. Partisan politics, and a tradition o anti-colonial Marxist dissidence, added depth to the journalism surrounding the rebellion. In many highbrow magazines, and even in newspapers, dissenting reporters and commentators goaded Japanese citizens to reect upon the nature o empire building.
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Much o the criticism directed at the government was opportunistic. The debacle in Musha was odder or heated debate in the y-ninth meeting o the national Diet (Japanese parliament). To discredit the sitting Minseitō Party, the opposition Seiyūkai Party capitalized on the Taiwan Government-General’s unpreparedness. Fact-nding missions were dispatched, while journalists ocked to Taiwan to rake the muck and lambast the colonial administration. To counter the bad press, Taiwan Government-General Aborigine Pacication Section chie Morita Shunsuke held a press conerence at the governor-general’s residence on November 18, 1930. Morita denied press allegations that unair pay and cruel treatment by the timber industry and public-works directors had omented the rebellion. To Morita, Tgdaya peoples were accustomed to corvée, so labor conditions were a moot point. Morita added that, by denition, Indigenous Peoples were careless o matters regarding monetary calculation. His report was largely dedicated to a long, detailed, and lurid tale o blood lust sparked by an isolated head-taking incident. Morita’s investigators, police ocers Kabazawa Jūjirō and Ishikawa Genroku, coaxed testimony rom Paalan headman Walis Bunay at the Sakura Inn in the center o Musha Town on November 2, 1930. Walis had reused to join the rebellion, even though Paalan’s residents were also Tgdaya people. According to Morita, Walis Bunay testied that he and his men received their payments without complaint or draed labor on public works. Kondō’s memoir was an indirect rebuttal o Morita’s exculpatory proclamations. On the same day that Morita met Walis Bunay (November 2), Kondō conducted interviews with intimates o Mona Rudao. Kondō had been a common-law spouse o two Tgdaya women in previous decades. He “wed” Iwan Robao o Paalan in the late 1890s and then Obing Nokan o Hōgō in 1909 44
the rebellIoN’S IMpact aNd receptIoN IN JapaN
(aer divorcing Iwan). Thus, Kondō was a “political in-law” to men o inuence in two major Tgdaya subgroups. Kondō Katsusaburō’s younger brother Gisaburō married Mona Rudao’s sister Diwas in 1909, which provided Kondō with a kinship tie to Mona Rudao’s village o Mhebu as well. Whereas Aborigine Pacication chie Morita made light o corvée-induced Indigenous hardship in his ocial statement on the uprising’s causes, Kondō dwelt upon the injury to Tgdaya crops and agriculture caused by pressed labor; he considered it a major cause o Tgdaya animus against the colonial state. The rst installment o Kondō’s memoir appeared on December 20, 1930, the same day that the police search-and-destroy squadrons held their dissolution ceremonies. Governor-General Ishizuka’s grilling in Tokyo was still weeks away. Thereore, Kondō’s opinions, rst registered with the Hualien police chie on November 10, 1930, and then amplied in print a month later, were aired in time to make a contribution to the public debate over the Taiwan Government-General’s culpability or the rebellion. In the December 20 installment, Kondō quotes at length an Indigenous woman who relayed Mona Rudao’s complaints about unair, dishonest, and underhanded treatment by the colonial government. Reports o internal site-inspections o the rebellion by high-ranking cabinet ocials were led in Tokyo rom November 28 onward. The Taiwan Government-General’s ocial account, which ound no ault with colonial policy or its implementation, was issued on January 6, 1931. Governor-General Ishizuka Eizō departed Taiwan or Tokyo on January 7, 1931, to deend the Taiwan Government-General’s position. Ishizuka did not have an easy task. The internal reports and some press coverage had been very critical. To protect members o the sitting cabinet 45
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rom a ruinous scandal, the ruling Minseitō party accepted Ishizuka Eizō’s resignation on January 16, 1931. Ishizuka’s secretary general, Hitomi Jirō; Police Bureau chie Ishii Tamotsu; and Taichung preect Mizukoshi Kōichi ollowed suit, all to take responsibility or the rebellion. Kondō’s serialized memoir reached its crescendo on February 5, in the twenty-third installment. Here, Kondō expressed direct assertions o government mismanagement o Indigenous Taiwanese. These accusations saw the light just as news o the investigations o Musha in the upper house o Japan’s bicameral legislature grabbed page-one headlines in Tokyo dailies.
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ter its eruption into Japanese public consciousness during the attacks, suppression, and political scandal rom October 27, 1930, through February 1931, the Musha Rebellion as a topic o public concern was overtaken by sensational headlines about political assassinations and imperial Japan’s increasingly prolonged military engagements on the Asian continent. Due to the subsequent course o events in the 1930s, the Musha Rebellion has been relegated to a minor ootnote in the history o Japanese imperialism. Compared to the other sel-described “have-not nations,” such as Italy and Germany, Japan came out o the rst World War relatively unscathed. It gained territory instead o losing it, while Japan’s industrial prots rom international trade soared during the war. The trends associated with the 1920s — political liberalization, mass consumption, international cooperation, and social mobility — are summarized by the phrase “Taishō Democracy” (or the Taishō emperor, r. 1912–1926). In sharp 47
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contrast to ination-racked Weimar-era Germany, and Black Shirt-inested Italy, 1920s Japan on its surace did not portend a turn to ascism and sel-immolation. The so-called Roaring Twenties were a time o everish political, artistic, and literary experimentation in the rapidly growing and interconnected metropolises o the industrialized world. Liestyle revolutions upended traditional social norms, celebrating the autonomy o individuals to make decisions about residence, occupation, and marriage arrangements. For urbanites, anything seemed possible. The uorescence o Japanese democracy in the 1920s has been viewed as part o a worldwide “Wilsonian moment,” named or the U.S. president who presided at the Versailles Peace Conerence that immediately ollowed World War I. Beore setting o or Paris in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson articulated a vision or a post-imperial world. In it, diplomacy would replace orce, sel-determination would trump divine right, and multilateral diplomacy would dissolve secretive alliances based on balanceo-power considerations. For Wilson, however, the principle o sel-determination was not applicable to the colonized peoples o Arica, Asia, and Oceania. The men in Wilson’s circle believed that the rights and responsibilities o sovereignty should not devolve to peoples who lacked the civilizational capacity to govern themselves. Thereore, imperialism per se was not discredited in the new order. In line with the other major powers, Japan, as a member o the imperialist’s club, did not extend the ranchise to colonized Taiwanese, Koreans, Chinese, and South Seas Islanders in the 1920s. Nonetheless, a critical mass o Koreans and Taiwanese took Wilson’s declarations about sel-determination to heart (as did Irish subjects o the British Empire, and Native American subjects o U.S. rule). On March 1, 1919, tens o thousands o Koreans took to the 48
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streets to demand independence rom Japan. The Taiwan Culture Association was born soon aer in 1921, to mobilize Taiwanese to ght or access to public goods, channels o social mobility, and protections rom arbitrary government. These reorm movements were initially met with sti opposition. In Korea, the Japanese colonial state suppressed the March 1 protests with swi vengeance, killing thousands o Koreans. In Taiwan, petitions or home rule were all rejected. Over the course o the 1920s, however, press restrictions were loosened, while draconian policing laws were reormed in each colony. In step with the liberal currents o the era, a small but articulate sector o public opinion in Japan voiced support or autonomy and eventual independence or the colonies. But in the countryside beyond the bright lights o Japan’s booming metropolises, discontent with the new order simmered at a low boil. Because Japan’s economy was rmly yoked to international trade, trends in Japan mirrored global developments: 1930 was a year zero o sorts. The stock market crash o 1929 and the resultant world depression ushered in a decade o isolationism, populism, civil wars, conservative cultural backlash, and the rise o ascism. For scholars o the Japanese empire, the year 1930 does not commemorate the Musha Rebellion. Rather, it divides the democratic 1920s rom the ascist 1930s. During that watershed year, the Naval Arms Limitation Conerence exposed cracks in the edice o Taishō democracy. The Japanese delegation to London signed an agreement with Britain, the United States, and France to mutually curb battleship production to orestall an arms race. Japan’s diplomats accepted battleship tonnage limits below the navy’s highly publicized minimum acceptable gure. The perceived injury to Japan’s strategic interests and national dignity became a cause célèbre 49
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in Japan during the negotiations. The agreement’s nal terms were ratied over the objections o the navy minister. For his alleged overstep into the province o military aairs, and purportedly craven behavior, Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi was shot and seriously wounded by a right-wing activist named Sagōya Tomeo in plain sight at Tokyo Station on November 14, 1930 — a little over two weeks aer Mona Rudao’s bold attack on Japanese authority in Taiwan. On November 15, Shidehara Kijurō stepped in as interim prime minister or the incapacitated Hamaguchi. In Tokyo, Japan’s top politicians jockeyed or power, and shuttled messages between Hamaguchi’s hospital bed and Shidehara’s oce. In Taiwan, Japanese orces located, apprehended, killed, and bombed individuals and villages associated (rightly or wrongly) with Mona Rudao’s rebellion. In Tokyo, the convalescent Hamaguchi managed to earn another term as prime minister in the March 1931 elections. But due to Hamaguchi’s ailing health, ellow Minseitō Party member Wakatsuki Reijirō was sworn in to replace him on April 14, 1931. Back on Taiwan, on April 25, the second Musha Incident took the lives o 216 Tgdaya prisoners o war. This massive loss o lie exceeded by ar the 134 Japanese killed on October 27, 1930, and thrust the Musha Rebellion back into the national news cycle or about a week. Three months aer this shameul episode, on July 25, 1931, the Bureau o Merit and Award conerred 303 military decorations to Japanese soldiers or service in the counterinsurgency campaign. These decorations were announced by the Tokyo Asahi News in a terse paragraph pushed to the margin o page, without the usual list o names or top awardees. By July, both the Musha Rebellion and the subsequent Second Musha Incident had ceased to be issues o concern or the Japanese public. A month aer the mufed coda o the military awards, 50
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ormer prime minister Hamaguchi nally succumbed to his gunshot wounds on August 26, 1931. As measured by body counts, numbers o participants, and duration, Mona’s rebellion in Taiwan dwared the lone assassin Sagōya’s shooting o Hamaguchi at Tokyo Station. But this obvious dierence in scales o carnage notwithstanding, Hamaguchi’s death has eclipsed the Musha Rebellion in Japanese historical memory. In hindsight, the Musha Rebellion was a terminus. It was the last major armed revolt against the empire in Taiwan or Korea. Conversely, Hamaguchi’s assassination was a harbinger, as the rst in a long line o incidents in Japan and China that are associated with the empire’s march to international isolation, the Tripartite Axis Alliance, and the bombing o Pearl Harbor. On September 18, 1931, three weeks aer Hamaguchi’s death, radical Japanese sta ocers in northeast China detonated a bomb on Japan’s South Manchuria Railway as a pretext to militarily occupy the three northeastern provinces o China. This act o military subordination embroiled Japan in a hotly contested occupation, an expensive nation-building project, and a series o counterinsurgency campaigns that would last into the mid-1930s. Other violent expressions o anti-imperial and anti-Japanese sentiment ollowed on the heels o the Musha Rebellion, and continued to overshadow it as an item o media interest. On January 9, 1932, Korean independence activist Lee Bong-chang almost succeeded in killing the Japanese emperor Hirohito near the imperial palace in Tokyo, not ar rom where Sagōya shot Hamaguchi. Lee lobbed a hand grenade toward the imperial procession, but missed his target, killing two carriage horses instead. Less than three weeks later, Japanese Naval Forces dropped bombs on civilian neighborhoods and went ashore 51
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to ght Chinese Nationalist orces in the inamous Shanghai Incident, which started on January 28, 1932. To the surprise o Japanese commanders, Chinese troops and volunteers put up a spirited deense. While skirmishes between Japanese and Chinese units in Shanghai grabbed the headlines, on January 29, 1932, the Japanese Bureau o Merit and Award belatedly announced 480 medals and bonuses to Taiwan Government-General police orces or service in the war against Mona Rudao’s Tgdaya warriors. On April 25, 1932, while the Shanghai Incident raged on, the twenty-eight Japanese casualties o the Musha revolt were enshrined at Yasukuni on the same day as 503 allen soldiers rom the Manchurian (1931) and Shanghai incidents (1932). The 1932 Yasukuni Grand Spring Rite concluded on April 28; the next day, Korean patriot Yun Bong-gil killed the minister o Japanese residents in Shanghai, Kawabata Sadaji, and the commander o the Shanghai expeditionary orces, General Shirakawa Yoshinori. Yun’s hand grenade also maimed several other Japanese dignitaries, including uture oreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu. Under oreign diplomatic pressure, Japan signed an armistice with China and began withdrawing troops rom Shanghai on May 5, 1932. Only ten days later, the assassination o Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi on May 15, 1932, by right-wing nationalists put the nal nails in the con o Taishō democracy. Inukai’s early departure ushered in an era o “national unity” governments headed by military ocers and aristocrats that lasted until the end o World War II.
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apaN lost its colonial empire by ormally surrendering to the Allied Powers on September 2, 1945. Within two months, Taiwan ell under the political rule o the Chinese Nationalist government, which asserted that it was the legitimate government o not only Taiwan but also mainland China (the latter o which was actually governed by the Chinese Communist Party beginning in 1949). Prior to the late 1980s, the government-enorced monopoly on political power, state censorship, education, and media by the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) eectively suppressed historical studies o Taiwan in avor o mainland Chinese history. Thereore, the Musha Rebellion remained submerged in public discourse and school curricula down through the decades. But with the liing o martial law and the growth o the democracy movement in the 1980s, Taiwanese cultural nationalism became a powerul orce. As one o many sources o Taiwan’s distinctiveness rom mainland China, Taiwan Indigenous Peoples started to make an appearance in nationalist 53
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histories in the early 1980s. Indigenous Peoples, however, were invoked mostly as distant ancestors and minor contributors o genetic and cultural material to the Taiwanese nation, so their histories remained obscure to outsiders into the 1990s. Wu Chuo-liu’s canonical Orphan o Asia is symptomatic o Han-centric Taiwanese nationalist sentiment. Completed in the nal year o the Pacic War, the novel is set variously in rural lowland Taiwan, Tokyo, and Shanghai. Through the lie o protagonist Hu Taiming, author Wu poignantly explores the dilemma o ambitious yet lial Taiwanese men who were torn between a Chinese heritage diluted by Taiwan’s political separation rom the mainland, and a Japanese identity that was thwarted by anti-Chinese colonial racism. Hu’s grandather sees to his instruction in Chinese classical learning; but the staterun educational system, conducted in Japanese, is the route to success under colonial regime. In the end, Hu Taiming can identiy with neither the Chinese nor the Japanese nation and nds himsel somewhere in between. In this novel, one nds the amiliar nationalist literary tropes o longing or homeland with its special local tastes and smells. The Taiwanese homeland depicted in Wu’s novel, however, ends at the “Aborigine Border,” in the oothills abutting Taiwan’s central mountain chains. Written long aer the Japanese government had segregated the “Aborigine territory” rom the most densely populated areas o Taiwan, Orphan o Asia consigns the Indigenous Peoples to the background as emblems o the savagery that lurked in the orests. Only aer the Democratic Progressive Party began its political rise in the late 1990s, did a Seediq-centered version o the Musha Rebellion become visible in pop culture, in drama, television, graphic novels, literature, and music, according to Michael Berry. O particular importance is Chiu Ruo-lung’s comic-book 54
Kondō in contemporary historiography and culture
history o the Musha Rebellion, published in 1990. Chiu’s comic was a major source o inspiration or Wei Te-sheng’s lm Seediq Bale (discussed above). Its literally black-and-white treatment o the rebellion depicts Mona Rudao as twice the size o Japanese adults, and suggests that Mona was a paragon o virtue. In stark contrast, Japanese ocials appear in Chiu’s book as mendacious buoons. Nonetheless, Chiu’s book is a serious work o non-ction. In addition to giving the bloody uprising o October 27, 1930, a complex socioeconomic backstory, Chiu reproduces battle-maps, provides explanatory notes, and quotes historical documents as insets to the comic’s illustrated rames. Importantly, Chiu’s book is appended with a detailed chronology o the rebellion’s vicissitudes and antecedents, written by Deng Xiangyang. Deng himsel had been researching the local history o the Musha area and his hometown o Puli (Japan’s ormer administrative center in central Taiwan) long beore Chiu’s 1990 book was published. Chiu acknowledges Deng as a primary scholarly inspiration. Deng’s chronology, in turn, relies heavily upon Haruyama Meitetsu’s detailed blow-by-blow account published as an appendix to Tai Kuo-hui’s magisterial Musha Rebellion: Research and Documents (1981). Kondō Katsusaburō’s exploits do not appear in the oundational chronology established by Haruyama. It was Deng Xiangyang who inserted Kondō and his younger brother Kondō Gisaburō into the Musha Rebellion’s narrative. In Chiu’s comic, Kondō Gisaburō appears as the uniormed Japanese policeman who married Mona Rudao’s sister Diwas Rudao in 1909. His transer to Hualien away rom Musha in 1916 results in Diwas’ abandonment, urther angering Mona Rudao against the Japanese. Other Japanese men, notably Sazuka Aisuke (who perished in the rebellion) are depicted in Chiu’s comic as victimizers o Seediq women. As Darryl Sterk points out, Wei 55
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Te-sheng le this aspect o Chiu’s story line out o Seediq Bale to avoid an overly complex narrative. Thereore, neither o the brothers Kondō make an appearance in the amous lm, although the Japanese policemen (and actual historical gures) Sazuka Aisuke, Kabazawa Jūjirō, Kojima Genji, Yoshimura Katsumi, Egawa Hiromichi, and Sugiura Kōichi have signicant speaking roles. Both Kabazawa Jūjirō and Kojima Genji are sympathetic gures in Wei’s lm. These Japanese characters add a level o complexity that is lacking in Chiu’s graphic novel. Kabazawa and Kojima understand Seediq languages. They are visibly repulsed by the crude racism exhibited by their less enlightened colleagues Sugiura, Yoshimura, Sazuka, and General Kamada. In the lm, Hanaoka Jirō (Dakis Nawi), a Tgdaya graduate o a Japanese public school in Puli, muses that the mounting riction between the Japanese and the Indigenous Peoples near Musha could have been avoided i only more patrolmen were like Kojima Genji. In parts o his memoir, Kondō echoes this sentiment by suggesting that a greater understanding o “savage mentality” by his higher-ups might have averted disaster. But it would be incorrect to read Kondō’s memoir as the testimony o a sympathetic Japanese colonist resembling the movie characters Kojima and Kabazawa. The ragmentary portrait o Kondō that emerges rom the postwar testimonials o Awi Heppaha and Pihu Walis, Tgdaya men whose amilies participated in the rebellion, is rather unattering. Both men recall him as an exploiter o Seediq labor and serial consort o Indigenous women. He stands accused, in local memory, o double-crossing the Tgdaya men in the inamous Shimaigahara Incident o 1903. A decade aer Awi’s and Pihu’s testimonies emerged, Deng Xiangyang elevated Kondō to the 56
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role o pioneering Japanese colonist, because he married Iwan Robao, the daughter o a Tgdaya headman, in 1902 (according to Deng). His example was ollowed by policemen Shimoyama Jihei, Sazuka Aisuke, and Shimomatsu Senjirō. In Deng’s account, like in those o Awi and Pihu, Kondō and his colleagues appear as agents o Tgdaya discontent. Thereore, we should not consider Kondō as a “riend o the Indigenous Peoples” but rather as a man who was useul in particular circumstances to many Seediq people. Fundamentally, Kondō was an outsider. The Seediq–Japanese relationships described and implied in the memoir were by and large transactional. In Seediq Bale, the trading-post operator Wu Jindun is portrayed as a cunning man who is tolerated by the Tgdaya but also despised. In contrast to the movie’s villains, patrolmen Sugiura and Yoshimura, Mr. Wu can speak the Tgdaya dialect and knows many individuals by name. On the other hand, Tgdaya workers who purchase alcohol rom Wu’s store with their low wages call him a “beautiul serpent.” Wu Jindun takes advantage o their immiseration by plying them with drink sold on easy credit. In real lie, it seems that Kondō Katsusaburō himsel played the role o the “beautiul serpent.”
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oNdō “the Barbarian” Katsusaburō was born on December 10, 1873, ve years aer the collapse o Japan’s venerable Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1868). In the shogunate’s place, a coalition o ambitious samurai rom outlying provinces built a centralized nation-state headquartered in Tokyo. This new state, the Great Empire o Japan, got o to a rocky start — its Imperial Guard was still putting down major regional revolts the year o Kondō’s birth. Amid the tumult, Katsusaburō, the eldest son o Kondō Mankichi and Chiyo (née Kawahara), was born in a small town in Tokushima Preecture on the island o Shikoku. Fortuitously, 1873 was also the rst year o national conscription in Japan. As Kondō Katsusaburō came o age, so did Japan’s conscript army. Aer overcoming the hurdles o limited budgets, local resistance, and the growing pains o organizational experimentation, the Imperial Japanese Army was a national organization with a unied command structure by the early 1890s, staed by soldiers rom every region and social class.
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In 1894 it embarked on its rst major oreign war, against the mighty ing dynasty — China’s last imperial government. To the surprise o many, upstart Japan deeated Chinese orces at land and on the high seas. One ruit o Japan’s victory was the agriculturally rich but politically volatile province o Taiwan. The tropical island was ceded to Japan on April 17, 1895. During the two decades that intervened between the conscription act o 1873 and Japan’s great victory over the ing, the world o possibilities or Japanese provincial youth like Kondō Katsusaburō had greatly enlarged. Once restricted rom travel abroad by the shogunate’s edicts, by 1894 Japanese men and women were emigrating to China, Korea, Okinawa, Hawai‘i, Mexico, and Caliornia with the government’s permission i not outright sponsorship. Kondō Katsusaburō joined their ranks as a restless youth who resisted the role o heir thrust upon rst-born sons o the era. According to one account, the teenaged Kondō was sent to Ōsaka to procure raw materials or his amily’s indigo business, but instead proceeded to blow 130 yen in the warehouse and entertainment district. Araid to return home, the penniless Kondō made his way to another port city, Kobe, and built up capital as a jobber and peddler. Within a ew years, Kondō opened his own shop and earned enough money to repay his amily. Lie in the bustling port cities o Ōsaka and Kobe apparently gave Kondō a taste or travel and adventure. Aer war broke out with China in 1894, Kondō ound employment with the Ōkura holding company in a military commissariat. As a contract-worker, Kondō sailed rom the western port city o Shimonoseki to Incheon, Korea. At war’s end in 1895, he returned to Japan with the army’s Nagoya Division. Kondō next set his sights on America, to learn the milling business. But he could not raise enough money or the Pacic passage. The wandering 60
KoNdō KatSuSaburō aNd MoNa rudao IN hIStorIcal coNtext
Kondō then traveled to Shanghai and ended up in Hong Kong. It was there that Kondō’s interest in Taiwan was piqued by stories o “headhunters” in the newly acquired Japanese colony. A ragmentary memoir asserts that Kondō actually swam shirtless to shore in Taiwan’s Keelung Harbor aer being thrown overboard rom an American ship or scufing with crew members. Kondō’s rst known destination in Taiwan, Puli, resembled his ormer ports-o-call in Ōsaka, Kobe, Incheon, Shanghai, and Hong Kong or being a center o migration and commerce. But Puli was landlocked. Its migrants had arrived rom various locales within Taiwan. And the commercial networks Puli anchored connected the Han-Chinese dominated ports and plains o western Taiwan to the rugged interior highlands inhabited by a multitude o Austronesian peoples. Kondō arrived in Puli around 1896, while the Japanese colonial state was tully establishing its presence in Taiwan’s heavily orested and highly elevated interior. It was at this cultural, political, and commercial crossroads that Kondō earned the nickname “Seiban Kondō,” or Kondō the Barbarian, as a trading-post operator, interpreter, mountain guide, and soldier o ortune. The early sections o Kondō’s memoir recount this period in detail, with numerous embellishments. The rst installment o Kondō’s memoir, The Saga o Kondō “the Barbarian” Katsusaburō: A Key to Understanding the Musha Rebellion, recounts events rom the perspective o 1930. To open the curtain on his lie story, Kondō recreates a dramatic scene o tearul reunion, bitter recrimination, and the suicide o a young woman named Piro Pihu. The setting is the immediate aermath o the Musha Rebellion, which was still very much in progress at the time Kondō reportedly grilled his “stepdaughter” Pira Pihu or inormation about the origins o the rebellion. 61
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Aer enticing readers with Pira’s tragic death, Kondō’s memoir backtracks over three decades to his early days in Taiwan as a young man. The narrative’s main arc relates how Kondō himsel, and the empire o Japan, embedded themselves in the lives o Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples through a combination o brute orce, commercial enticement, and political skullduggery. But in Kondō’s telling, how imperial Japan advanced into the highlands o Taiwan was tragically mismanaged. Because ocials above Kondō’s pay grade neglected the advice o more knowledgeable men such as he, relations with Indigenous Peoples up the river rom Puli soured beyond the point o no return, creating tensions that would eventually explode into bloody rebellion. Kondō did not make his rst appearance in the pages o the newspaper that carried his memoir in 1930, but back in October 1898, as a tracker, explorer, and interpreter who blazed a trail across the northern mountain country. Kondō’s name also appeared in the ocial organ o a government investigative committee, Taiwan Customs Bulletin (1905), and beore that, in the amous anthropologist Torii Ryūzō’s travelogue o a journey to Puli (1900). His name can also be ound buried in manuscript documents o rural administration, and among the lists o commissioners who assisted Japanese expeditionary orces into the mountains in the 1900s and 1910s. These reerences, however, are scattered, brie, and nearly meaningless without the hindsight provided by the memoir. Kondō was not a salaried ocial; neither was he a military man. Rather, he is an example o the countless opportunists and adventurers who anned out across the colonized world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, migrating rom a domestic periphery, Tokushima Preecture on the island o Shikoku in Japan, to a colonial sub-periphery, the Central Mountain Range o Taiwan, 62
KoNdō KatSuSaburō aNd MoNa rudao IN hIStorIcal coNtext
which was literally a blank space on Japanese maps at the time. Kondō beneted at times rom government patronage, although he was clearly at the bottom o the bureaucratic hierarchy. To earn the occasional reward and access to land, resources, and commercial opportunities, Kondō mediated negotiations with Indigenous leaders, accompanied expeditions as a tracker, and supplied intelligence to Japanese police ocers about conditions in the lands o Indigenous habitation. Kondō began as a merchant in the established “Aborigine goods” market, whereby licensed Japanese and Chinese merchants brought salt, matches, distilled liquor, seed, and hardware to ocially regulated outposts to barter or skins, horns, meat, hand-woven hemp blankets, and medicinal plants traded by Indigenous Taiwanese. Kondō sought more than trading privileges rom the government; he also applied or and received land grants to arm and lumber near the Puli–Musha corridor. Kondō’s disputes with higher-ups over titles to land, and his resentment at the treatment o his Seediq kin/clients by the government-general, give his narrative a decidedly ambivalent quality. On the one hand, Kondō’s recollections attempted to establish his credentials as a loyal subject o the emperor, good Buddhist, dependable comrade, and lial son. On the other hand, there is a palpable sense in Kondō’s account that men such as himsel were treated shabbily by the government-general aer they had served their purpose. In addition, Kondō expresses, on several occasions, his admiration or Seediq honesty, orthrightness, manliness, and simplicity, which contrast sharply to the double-dealing o upper echelon Japanese ocials who ailed to honor their agreements. At the same time, he oen overstates his own mastery o conditions by portraying his 63
Kondo the BarBarian
Tgdaya in-laws, co-residents, and ellow trackers as childlike, superstitious, and indolent. Kondō was not unique in blaming the rebellion on long-standing policies and attitudes o the government-general. But his analysis was singular or its attention to the vexed relationship between higher ocials in the Taiwan Government-General and Japanese settlers like himsel. Kondō suggests that Mona Rudao was in a similar boat. As stated in the rst installment, Kondō’s Mona is essentially a broker or transactions between local society and the Taiwan Government-General. Wei Te-sheng’s Mona Rudao is cut rom the cloth o heroic Indigenous rebels like Tenskwatawa (the “Shawnee Prophet”) or Wovoka (o “Ghost Dance” ame). These Native American visionaries imagined a return to pre-invasion times. They called or Indigenous cultural revival and preached the expulsion o the white man as they mobilized victims o settler colonists to rise up. Kondō’s Mona, on the other hand, appears much closer to the historical gure Taoyateduta (“Little Crow”), the Dakota chie who led orces against the U.S. Army in 1862. As his biographer Gary Clayton Anderson put it, Taoyateduta was “an important, intelligent, and tragic gure in history whose political career … vividly illustrates the compromises, dilemmas, and oen impossible situations that evolved in dealing with whites in the nineteenth century.” As Anderson explains, the amous Dakota chie’s “role as a leader was increasingly marred by the basic dilemma that most Indian leaders would ultimately ace in the nineteenth century; economic dependency and the political implications o it benetted chies who were willing to accommodate themselves to whites, but it damaged their credibility with their own people.” In other words, Kondō’s account suggests that the rebellion was the inevitable result o Mona Rudao’s untenable position 64
KoNdō KatSuSaburō aNd MoNa rudao IN hIStorIcal coNtext
as a headman orced to mediate the irreconcilable demands o the Japanese state, and his own ollowers, under conditions o aggressive state-building in interior Taiwan. Since Mona himsel did not leave written maniestos or lengthy depositions, it is dicult or historians to athom his intentions regarding the rebellion, or to evaluate him as a political leader o Mhebu and the wider circle o Tgdaya villages, in which he held some measure o inuence. Thereore, it cannot be determined with condence whether Mona envisioned himsel, and was viewed by his ollowers, as a charismatic ethnic revivalist along the lines o a Tenskwatawa, or as a pragmatic leader who played the cards he was dealt to the best o his ability, in the vein o Taoyateduta. Kondō’s memoir, in the voice o a man who was personally acquainted with Mona and many other Seediq leaders, will hopeully contribute to the ongoing debates about the nature o Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan. Moreover, Kondō’s story also sheds some light on the severe conditions under which Indigenous Peoples carved out an existence in the colonial world o the early twentieth century.
65
Translation of Te Saga of Kondō “the Barbarian” Katsusaburō: A Key to Understanding the Musha Rebellion
67
1 T Dmi i nō’s nsiins1
T
here are many opinions regarding the true causes o the Musha Rebellion. Reliable, veriable evidence, however, is scant. It seems that the search or answers has come to an impasse. Perhaps the story o Kondō Katsusaburō, who has spent his adult lie in Taiwan, can provide us with a key to solving this mystery. When the recent incident broke out [on October 27, 1930], Kondō threw caution aside to seek out Mhebu’s chie, Mona Rudao. He wanted to apprehend Rudao alive. Unortunately, the misguided intererence o an ocial, who must remain nameless, thwarted his plans to enter the mountains. Kondō sadly returned to Hualien. An[other] ocial did, however, secretly order Kondō to Puli to investigate. Kondō resided in Puli rom 1896 to 1918, and was thereore intimate with the area’s Truku,
Fm n nō’s nnin mmi: Wn i, “s sōjō n sinsō k is n ki! ‘in nō’ si n nsi mn ii,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, December 20, 1930, p. 5.
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Kondo the BarBarian
Toda, Tgdaya [Musha], and Wanda tribes. Beginning on October 31, Kondō gathered inormation rom the Indigenous Peoples o Truku, Toda, Wanda, and Paalan. Kondō is conversant in all o their languages. Kondō tried to learn which tribes had participated in the recent savagery; he conrmed that [the our tribes mentioned above] lacked rebellious sentiment. On the morning o November 2, Kondō heard that his adopted daughter Pira Pihu, the birth daughter o Mhebu Village’s Pihu Ryū, had been detained in connection with the uprising. Kondō embarked or the subpreectural oce in order to arrange a meeting. Pira Pihu had wed a Japanese man named Nakata Yasutarō. Pira later gave birth to Nakata Yasuko, who is now a sixteen-year-old senior at Taichung Women’s Higher School. Pira Pihu had survived as a widow and single mother or the past several years, working at a sugar manuacturing company in Puli. Upon meeting her adoptive ather, whom she had not seen in thirteen years, Pira Pihu could not suppress her tears, sobbing in a mixture o happiness and sadness. Despite the tears, Kondō impatiently cross-examined Pira, [who replied,] “I well understand the reason [or the rebellion]. I met Mhebu Village’s chie, Mona Rudao, at the beginning o last month, when he came to Puli to buy an ox. Mona Rudao told me that i a disturbance broke out, Kondō would come without ail; he asked me to relay the ollowing message.” Since the time the brothers Kondō were [in Puli], the police have not honored … their agreement to lend us the guns promised as part o our settlement. Thereore, I have been in trouble or a long time. Because [Hanaoka] Ichirō and Jirō worked or the [colonial] police, every village knew that the Japanese police 70
the draMatIc SIte o KoNdō’S INveStIgatIoNS
were being unair. The Tgdaya people were not allowed to borrow rearms, as per the agreement, and could get only a bullet or two or ammunition, even though other tribes were given many rearms. When this happened, everyone blamed me; once I was even beaten. The police always played us alsely. Even aer the Tattaka guardline campaign, there wasn’t a single word o gratitude, which made it very dicult or me to conciliate the members o our tribe. Moreover, because the corvée labor demands [connected with this campaign] were so onerous, the elds became overgrown, and the armers’ livelihoods were put at risk. Under these conditions, one could not make a good living. Pira Pihu continued: “Because I wanted to pass this story along to you, I have waited and stayed alive until this day. My lie has no other purpose.” A brooding Kondō tried to comort his daughter and they parted ways. Within thirty minutes, Kondō received the word that Pira had hanged hersel.
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2 nō Ais in Pi2
K
oNdō Katsusaburō was born in Tokushima Preecture and served in the Sino-Japanese War [o 1894–1895]. Aer returning home rom the war, he went to Hong Kong to learn the our-manuacturing business. While in Hong Kong, Kondō happened to hear about the bandits and headhunting savages o Japan’s new colonial territory, Taiwan. He even heard rumors o cannibalism among them. Kondō could not help but be interested in the mentality o such people, so he suddenly abandoned his job and crossed the strait. Kondō Katsusaburō toiled to extend three dierent guardlines, [in operations] that were without casualties. He was known as “Kondō the Barbarian,” and the Indigenous Peoples regarded him as a god. [Governor] General Sakuma [Samata] and [Police Chie] Ōtsu Rinpei requently utilized Kondō’s services, largely to entice the Indigenous Peoples to surrender their weapons or to invite them on sightseeing tours [o Taipei or Tokyo].
Fm nō’s mmi. Fis is Dm , .
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Kondo the BarBarian
[Upon arriving in Taiwan,] Kondō decided right-o, “Since Taichung3 is Taiwan’s very center, that is where I’ll study the Indigenous Peoples.” At that time, there were no Japanese living near Puli.4 Because o bandit activity, even the army and police had temporarily retreated. Only jukuban (acculturated “savages”), the samuwan, lived near the old walled town o Puli. On May 19, 1896, Hiyama Tetsusaburō, head o the Pacication-Reclamation Oce, returned to Puli accompanied by Kondō. At rst, Kondō ran errands and did jobs or the army and military police guard units. Thereupon, he endeavored to learn an Indigenous language. For this purpose, he wed Iwan Robao, the daughter o a Paalan village headman. Because he could understand an Indigenous language aer a ew months, Kondō received a permit to engage in the “Aborigine Trade.” At the time, Kondō was nearly unique in being a Japanese who understood an Indigenous language.
T i mnin nm in is “n in.” Psn in’s iisins in m n ns. Pi is n n Cn.
74
T Fki issin5
hortly aer [Kondō’s return to Puli], in December [1896], Kondō met the ourteen-man squadron under Captain Fukahori’s command. The government had ordered them to conduct a eld survey across the Central Mountains or a Taiwan trunk railway. Kondō volunteered to be a translator, and joined the unit, which departed rom Puli on December 24. About one ri6 outside o Puli, Captain Fukahori gave his men a short rest and rallied them with the ollowing words: At the outset, I must tell you that we are traversing mountains in uncharted territory among savages whom we cannot trust; this will be very dangerous. Thereore, we een men must band together and think o ourselves as one body, dedicating our lives to our sovereign and to the nation. I any o us should
Fm nō’s mmi. Fis is Dm , . A kims.
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Kondo the BarBarian
survive to cross the mountains and reach Hualien Harbor, promise me right here that you will, without ail, enshrine those who ell to protect the sovereign and the nation. Please, in accordance with this hope, stake your lives on the completion o this mission.
Mt Hehuan 11,209 ft.
Ta k
kiri
Rive r TAROKO
A TOD
U
Cent ral
K TRU
Mou ntain s
Sakuragamine
Xincheng Mt. Qilai 11,695 ft.
11,200 ft. Mug
Mt. Nenggao
Beipu
BATORAN Batoran ua R
NANSHI iver Qijiachuan Yoshino
Hatsune
Mailun Hualien City
Shuilianwei
Pacic O
r Hayashida
MUG
UA
r
a
Xikou
Riv e
To yo d
kan
n Rive
iya
Hualie
Ch
cean
Wuquancheng
Map 3. Hualien Harbor, Taroko, and Nanshi ca. 1920.
The entire unit listened to this speech in tears. Fukahori’s exhortations lied their spirits. The men promised each other they would not return to Puli without succeeding in their mission. Then they departed. Kondō was unable to orget Captain Fukahori’s words or the rest o his lie. [The ollowing summarizes the mission’s rst days:] 76
the Ill-ated uKahorI MISSIoN
December 24, evening: stayed in Paalan village. December 25: patrolled the village during the day; at night, Kondō succumbed to malaria, became everish, and his temperature reached 40 degrees.7 December 26: in place o Kondō, the jukuban named Li Along is taken on as translator. The company set out or Wanda Village on the nearest transverse path. But the road was discovered to be unconnected to the village and thereore impossible [to use]. December 27: the party returned to Paalan. That evening Captain Fukahori retted over Kondō’s illness. The next day, on December 28, they le Paalan. Since Kondō was suddenly unable to join the mission, he sent his wie Iwan Robao in his place as an additional translator, to work with Li Along. On wobbly legs, he staggered outside to send the party o on their trek into uncivilized lands. The prospect o being alone among Tgdaya people saddened Kondō and brought orth tears. In act, this would be the last time Kondō would see these men alive. Had Kondō not been ill, his lie would also have been sacriced to the Aborigine District. As the expedition went rom village to village, the locals repeatedly sent them o, saying, “We hope the men heading or Hualien under Japanese government orders will arrive without incident.” On December 29, they arrived in Toda territory and le on December 30. It was later learned that the expedition reached Truku country soon aer. At this point, however, the translators Li Along and Iwan Robao snuck away and returned home or
T in s Fni.
77
Kondo the BarBarian
ear o entering unknown territory. Suddenly, [Fukahori’s men] were completely cut o, their whereabouts unknown.
78
4 nō Eins i ni8
K
oNdō recuperated [rom malaria] at the home o Sazo Chiwakku, the son o Paalan’s headman. The two translators [Iwan and Pan] crept home about the time o the new year, January 1, 1897. “Damn!” thought Kondō, but what could he do? He was still on the verge o a high ever and could not even stand up. At the time, many local Tgdaya people were concerned over his illness, so they visited Kondō at Sazo Chiwakku’s home day and night. Aer a ew days, however, the visits stopped. Kondō was puzzled by this and asked his wie [Iwan] about it. She replied, “They were araid o the ‘Japanese people who tick-tock,’ and so everybody le.” Kondō thought it strange to hear that “Japanese people tick-tocked.” You see, Tgdaya people tend to ear things not immediately apparent to the senses, thinking them to be [haunted] by ghosts or spirits. Kondō was still groggy rom his illness. He cocked his head
Fm nō’s mmi. Fis is Dm , .
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Kondo the BarBarian
in concentration. ‘What was this “something that tick-tocked”?’ he wondered. “Aha!” It was his “model 18” pocket watch. Kondō pulled it out rom his jacket with a hearty laugh. “That watch certainly tick-tocks!” Kondō immediately called Sazo Chiwakku to show him the watch. Sazo Chiwakku, however, was rightened by the tick-tock sound when he put the watch to his ear. He yelled and hurled the watch. They pushed the watch outside with a bamboo stick, struck it with a mallet, and then pounded it with rocks because it wouldn’t stop ticking. Since they had never seen a watch, it was dicult to make them understand. Furthermore, they began to ear Kondō himsel, orcing him to return to Puli. Thanks to the watch, Kondō, still not recovered, was carried piggy-back to Puli, with Tgdaya men chasing him along the way. It was January 3.
80
5 Cmm in Pi Dis9
F
roM January through April 1897, Kondō was completely bedridden. During this period, he dreamed about Captain Fukahori and his men every day. Even though ate had brought them together or less than a week here on earth, they had once pledged their lives to their nation. He elt miserable as the surviving member. [He recalled] Captain Fukahori’s vow that night in the Tgdaya village, while [Kondō] received the captain’s ministrations! Kondō missed and longed or them ervently. He said, “This is a strange story, but [here it is]. Desperately hoping to get well, I treated mysel by purchasing seventy-ve grams o a powder/ash extracted rom boiled human bones or our yen. Perhaps it was due to [this concoction], but in any event, I had recuperated completely by the end o April.” At that time, the Plains Aborigines (rikuban) also practiced head-taking. This was dierent rom the way Mountain Aborigines (kōzanban) took heads; Plains Aborigines took heads only or prot. When they took a Mountain Aborigine head, eighteen
Fm nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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Kondo the BarBarian
liters o unhusked rice were distributed to each household among the our Plains Aborigine villages o Puli, as a gratuity. The price o a human skeleton, with all o its bones, a liver, penis, and knees, was about eighty yen outside o Taiwan. Thus, this was a very protable business. As April rolled around, Captain Fukahori’s whereabouts were still unknown, even at the Puli battalion, which caused concern. Thereore, Lieutenant Hoshikawa le Musha or Truku country to investigate, but he returned without nding anything out. He concluded that there was no other way but to have the Tgdaya people investigate, so he summoned them and gave them a scolding: “Captain Fukahori’s expedition relied on you; they sent you into the mountains [to scout], but since then there has been no news whatsoever. What in the hell happened? Ignorance is no excuse here. You, too, are responsible [or the disappearance], so go and bring back inormation on their whereabouts!” It is a terrible act that we do not understand Indigenous mentalities very well. As a result o this triing negotiation, various portentous, though unintended, chains o events were set into motion. One day in early May, the Tgdaya men brought two heads to the Puli battalion. The heads belonged to Truku and Toda tribesmen. “It seems that you have doubted us on the matter o Captain Fukahori’s expedition. We, however, are not in the least disloyal. As evidence o this, we have brought you two heads rom Truku and Toda. So please orgive us and do not attack us.” Here, the Tgdaya men revealed their true sincerity, their innermost hearts. The Toda and Truku men were attacked on the way back home rom the trading post. Their heads were taken at Shizitou. The worst possible case scenario had occurred. 82
coMMerce IN pulI dISrupted
Musha made enemies o both Truku and Toda, both o whom also stopped coming to the trading post. Consequently, [the Japanese] were now cut o rom inormation [about the Fukahori mission’s ate]. Then, on June 19, an incident occurred that marked the rst Musha-area loss o a Japanese head. Prior to this incident, the Musha tribes had not harmed Japanese at all. A Tgdaya man named Chiri Wadai, o Katsukku Village, took the head o a Japanese man, mistaking him or a Taiwanese. The victim was harvesting timber on Shouchengen Mountain or construction on the Puli garrison. Greatly alarmed, the Tgdaya men ran to Kondō to nd out how to apologize or the crime. The head o the Pacication-Reclamation Oce at the time, Lieutenant Nagano, responded angrily, ordering the men to bring him Chiri Wadai’s head to atone or the crime. The Tgdaya men [now] eared the anger o the Japanese, though they did not punish the wrongdoer. They also stopped coming to the trading post. Kondō was the one most troubled [by these events]. Since nobody rom Toda, Truku, or Musha came to trade anymore, there was no point in operating a trading post. What is more, Kondō suered because his means o learning about Fukahori’s nal ate had been closed o. “It seems like a good time to shut down the trading post. More than this, I should go into the Aborigine District, to Truku, and investigate this mysel.” Now, all three o the tribes [Tgdaya, Toda, and Truku] were dangerous. So how would Kondō enter their territory and go among them?
83
6 nō is A Bs Bōn10
K
oNdō’S employee at the trading post, Nagakura Kichiji, was ortunately married to a woman rom Truku. Kondō asked Nagakura or help, thinking it would be less dangerous i she were his guide. On August 20, 1897, all preparations were set, and Kondō le Puli. Kondō, another employee named Itō Shūkichi, Nagakura Kichiji and his wie Tappa Kuras constituted a group o our. They had to leave secretly, so they chose the backroads because they could not go through Musha. Furthermore, Kondō could not even tell his wie Iwan Robao, because she was rom Musha. The next morning, a severe storm commenced. They lost their way among unknown mountains. Their provisions and trade gis were soaked, and they had to throw them away. It rained three days in a row, so they became tired and hungry. On the morning o the twenty-third, they nally reached the path that led rom Xakut to Truku. This was near Sanjiaoeng. They were unable to walk any longer but had to crawl. Leaving
Fm nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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Kondo the BarBarian
his two employees on the path, Kondō screwed up his courage and prodded Tappa Kuras to [accompany him]. They descended Sanjiaoeng or ten chō11 toward Truku. Suddenly, something quite unexpected appeared. Kondō saw about thirty men on a small hill poised to attack and behead him. They were awaiting the signal o the chie who stood behind them. When he saw them, he looked or his guide, Tappa Kuras; but she was no longer behind him. What a horrible moment! Kondō composed himsel and planted his legs rmly. He raised his hand to beckon them. Fortunately, there was a man there who used to come to the trading post who knew Kondō well. “Aren’t you Mr. Kondō? That was close!” Kondō was relieved to hear these kind words. It was a Truku headman named Baso Bōran, who would have a thirty-year relationship with Kondō, one that had just begun. “What did you come here or?” “I gured you have had diculty trading because o your dispute with Musha, that is why I came to reconnoiter land to build a new exchange post.” “Is that so? You are welcome here.” Kondō has always said that one need not carry weapons to enter Indigenous country. True to his own advice, Kondō has since always traveled among his Indigenous associates unarmed. Kondō says that going among them hal-cocked can even lead to suspicion. The Indigenous Peoples have something akin to the “Japanese spirit.” I one proceeds in the proper manner, without ulterior motives, and the situation is well understood, then an unarmed person would certainly not be in harm’s way among them. Kondō became a guest at the home o Baso Bōran. He woke up each morning and toiled [with his hosts]. He drew water, cut 11 A i kim.
86
KoNdō IS adopted by baSo bōraN
rewood, tilled land, and did other chores to gain their trust. At night he taught them how to make straw sandals, to produce moxa, and to use the moxa to cure and treat ailments. At length, he secured the trust o the headman, who came to regard him as loyal. Thereore, when the Xakut tribe, which was powerul at the time, sent seven men over to threaten Truku to hand over the Japanese man among them, Baso Bōran answered that they could not turn over the Japanese, even i this meant they would have to ght. [Baso] treated the seven [Xakut] emissaries quite badly and sent them packing. Thanks to this incident, Truku and Xakut were now enemies. Kondō was moved by the headman’s sentiments and asked to be his son. Thereaer, Kondō and Baso vowed to be as ather and son. This relationship, not without the elements o a romance, came to play an important role in Kondō’s lie. Countless times the headman supported and helped Kondō. Even now, Baso Bōran still loves and cherishes Kondō as a son. He has reportedly expressed the ollowing hope: “I want to see Kondō again. I am old now and do not know when I will die. By all means, please come to see me one last time!” Kondō was concealing his true purpose, though pursuing it all along. That is, he still wanted to nd the heads o Captain Fukahori’s company, and explore a route rom Truku country to Hualien. He waited or the annual headhunting expedition and its attendant estivities, which occur around October. In order to accomplish his aims, Kondō would have to go headhunting himsel and participate in various martial exploits. “With eet like those, you cannot come with us,” they said to Kondō. What they meant was that Kondō had to temper his eet so that he could run upon rocks and mountainsides. It was part
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Kondo the BarBarian
o his training to burn his eet daily with a bellows to toughen them up — he did this or almost a hal-month.
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7 “nō Bin” Goes Headhunting12
T
he reason Seediq people can climb slate-like sheets o rock that stand vertically, or step down jagged stones, is that they burn the bottoms o their eet to prepare or it. In a word, they train by stepping on hot iron rods. O course, they begin at a temperature that will not damage their eet, and they gradually raise the heat o the rods they walk upon. While he underwent this training, Kondō awaited the October headhunting season. Kondō, however, was a believer in the Shingon sect o Buddhism and did not want to do any killing. But Kondō wanted to nd out whether or not the Fukahori Company’s heads were around, so he would go along with the headhunters. They even called him their weak little “Japanese savage”; he served them as a lowly inantry conscript might have. The time had come. October 1897! The men set out in high spirits. Aer a ew days o sleeping in elds and running around as i on a battleeld, they obtained their quarry, a head. They returned to the village’s border singing their triumphs.
12 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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Here, like something straight out o an ancient Japanese military saga, they cleaned the head and set it up or display and viewing. They washed the neck, pulled the teeth out completely, shaved the hair, and then removed the lth rom what remained o the ace. Then they wrapped a white sash around the neck. They careully wrapped the hair to bring home to use as medicine; the teeth were saved or jewelry. The aficted will exchange a whole chicken and a melon or two or three o these hairs. The beautiul, unadorned heads were hoisted up. Now it was time to enter the village. The populace welcomed them, wearing estival nery. From here, the undertaking known as the “head estival” would commence. Underneath a triangular white piece o paper, they tied a tassel made o brous paper ringes, which they hung rom the top o the tallest tree in the village; this was a landmark or the descending ancestor’s spirits. Under this they placed the skull shel. They put the new head in the center, among all o the previously acquired skulls. An old woman known as the “guardian o heads” walked up to the resh one and opened its eyes. Then she uttered a prayer to the departed soul: “You are welcome here. I have been awaiting your arrival. This village is a good place, please stay here orever....”13 Then she placed a slice o sweet potato into its mouth. From a pig killed or the estival, she skewered a little bit o meat, bone, and innards, putting them into the mouth, attaching it to the potato. This is not such a hard scene to picture; it looked something like a Taiwan estival pig with incense stuck in its mouth. Aer all o the preparations were completed, everybody gathered in ront o the tree and called the ancestors’ spirits Tis isis, n s in ns mmi, kn m iin .
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“KoNdō the barbarIaN” goeS headhuNtINg
toward the triangular paper in the tree. They oered saké to the head. The headhunting dance began. For a number o days, the people o Musha danced and drank crazily. Kondō himsel had been drawn to the Aborigine District by a grotesque question: “Why do the Indigenous Taiwanese hunt heads?” Now, according to Kondō, or the rst time he was able to grasp the reality o headhunting. He says, “Indigenous men and women, it doesn’t matter which, have a passion or heads, and a way o conceptualizing heads, which Japanese people would never understand.” Kondō laughed and continued, “Maybe it would be better to have one’s head taken by Indigenous people in Taiwan rather than just dying and being cremated in the normal way.” It might have been around October 10, the day o the headhunting estival, that Kondō discovered eight distinctive skulls among the older skulls on the shel — these had hair on them. Since all Japanese have the “hal-inch haircut (gobu gari),” the Truku people presumably did not shave them. The aces o these skulls were not identiable, but [Kondō was] certain they belonged to Captain Fukahori and his men. Kondō had imagined it might turn out this way, but when he actually saw [the heads], irrepressible tears welled up rom the bottom o his heart. Kondō had tried so hard, up until that day, to nd them; but he was not pleased to see such deormed gures, even though his eorts were now crowned with success. He elt the urge to at least cradle one o the heads and weep. But this was no time to just break down and let go; he had many things le to accomplish. In order to conceal his tears, he danced and drank with the crowd, pretending that nothing had happened. Now Kondō sought to ascertain whether this was an opportune moment to extract the details about the distinctive heads rom the chie and the other men o ghting age. “Oh, those skulls!” 91
8 T i s His Cin’s H14
T • • • • • • • • • • • •
he names o the members o the Central Mountain Crossing Expedition: inantry captain, Fukahori Yasuichirō. Rank: 7 shō 6 tō engineer, Bureau o Civil Aairs, doctor o orestry, Hara Otokichi inantry, sergeant second-class, Ōtsuka Yasutarō same as above, Kawami Mankichi oce clerk, Bureau o Military Aairs (Gunmukyoku), Itakura Kamegorō translator, Takano Gennosuke employee, Bureau o Civil Aairs (Minseikyoku), Mori Isaburō inantry private, Yubata Toichirō hireling (yatoin), Nishimuta Tomizō same as above, Miyamoto Katsuma same as above, Tachikawa Daikichi same as above, Kiyouji Kōji
14 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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• same as above, Maeda Shinokichi • same as above, Yamada Harukichi and Kondō Katsusaburō, which makes iteen altogether. They completely lost contact aer leaving Toda or Truku on December 26, 1896, but reappeared beore Kondō as eight heads on October 10 o the ollowing year. “There are our more Japanese skulls near Xakut!” said some local men. But i that were the case, then what about the remaining two? They claimed that Captain Fukahori’s company was not killed by Indigenous people. During the time they stayed in Truku, the company surveyed the topography to make a map. “The Japanese do strange things; they do work that has no concrete shape to it. This is the work o either gods or demons,” said these Seediq, who were rightened o the Japanese. This [ear] indicates that the Japanese were at least sae when they le Truku country, [because the locals regarded them with such dread]. Next, they climbed Mount Kashuan, in the interior o the mountain range. Unortunately, the weather turned that night, and it began to snow heavily. This continued or days. Most likely, they were advancing with the goal o reaching Hehuan Shan. From there they could ollow the Takkiri ravine downstream and emerge at Hualien. It seems that they roze to death one by one in the accumulating snow, becoming separated, scattered, and lost. Under these conditions, Captain Fukahori battled the cold and discomort to nd a way out, until he was the last man standing. He appears to have wandered about looking or a road home. He was surrounded by only sublime nature itsel; there were mountains o white everywhere he looked. He called out, but none o his men replied. He wanted to proceed, but there was 94
the Sole SurvIvor SearcheS or hIS captaIN’S head
nowhere to go. There, he must have been driven into his last ditch. Aer some o the snow melted, Seediq men discovered Japanese here and there. They used dogs to locate and secure the eight heads. Those who got lost on the road to Xakut were ound by the Xakut villagers, among whom the our other skulls still remained. “Well then, what happened to the Captain?” Serious doubts [about this question] circulated among the Indigenous Peoples, and they pursued the search or Fukahori. Finally, in Truku country, ve chō15 beyond Burayau Village, at the bottom o a cascade, they discovered a [corpse with a] masterully ripped-open abdomen. Presumably, Fukahori leapt rom an overhanging cli to commit suicide. They were alarmed at the sight o such a boldly perormed ritual disembowelment, the rst they had ever seen. In awe, no Seediq person would even approach the corpse to claim the head. And yet, they could not leave the body this way. Thus, the previously mentioned “guardian o heads” respectully cleansed the corpse, washed the neck, and tenderly perormed the ceremony. “Then where is the head?” Kondō demanded, despite himsel. “It is in the headman’s storage hut.” Kondō gured that there must be other le items in that storehouse, perhaps mementos o the expedition and its captain. He thought that he must absolutely see these items. Moreover, with the erce determination betting a sole survivor, Kondō elt a powerul sense o obligation to console the spirits o the ourteen men who died with such ortitude. “So, I must ollow through on their intention o traversing the Central Mountains, even i I must do this alone.” In this manner, the connection between himsel and Captain 15 A kim.
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Fukahori’s company, with whom he spent less than ten days, began to dominate the rest o Kondō’s lie. What adversity he would conront thereaer!
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nō Cms His Wk in k Cn16
K
oNdō continued to lodge, take meals and work in the home o Truku headman Baso Bōran. When the chance came, he looked in the storage hut. As anticipated, various things turned up — like the skull o Captain Fukahori, stashed or saekeeping! It was as i the skull had received divine protection there, and that Kondō had been destined [to nd it]. There was a orlorn amulet o Fudōson, a Buddhist guardian deity, rom Narita Temple. Kondō knew not to whom it belonged. Now that he was compelled to nish crossing the Central Mountains, he wanted this amulet to at least protect himsel. So Kondō made a point o asking the headman or the Fudōson. In addition, the ollowing ve items were le behind: orty-nine business cards printed “Takano Gennosuke, translator,” a pair o glasses, one change o shirt and long johns, a pair o shoes, and a set o clothes. (This happened much later, but in January 1901, Kondō accompanied Subpreect Ōkuma on patrol in Truku. He asked the Truku
16 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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Kondo the BarBarian
headman to return Fukahori’s skull and the mementos, which were all duly restored to the Third Battalion in Puli.) Returning to our story. Ater [Kondō located Fukahori’s remains], 1897 passed and 1898 began. Beginning in May, the Truku men commenced their hunting season. Kondō joined them each time they went out. His purpose was to explore routes across the mountains. Until he returned to Puli, he looked at the roads around Hehuan Shan, Chilaizhu Shan, and the Nenggao Shan area while out on the hunt. As ar as Kondō could see, it was impossible to reach Hualien via the Takkiri River. This was a very precipitous mountain trail; Kondō discerned that it could not be traversed at that time. So, he decided it would be best to ascend Wanda Ravine, emerge at Nenggao Shan, and then descend alongside the Mugua River (see Map 3).
98
nō’s Rn Pi17
K
oNdō’S stay in Truku lasted one year and eight months, rom August 1897 until March 1899, a long stretch. On his return to Puli, he traveled with his two employees, his associate’s wie [Tappa Kuras], and twenty-one guards supplied by the headman [Bassao Bōran]. From Tattaka, they returned via Hiyama, emerging rom the mountains behind Puli. It was March 20. O course, since Iwan Robao and Kondō’s other acquaintances thought he had died, the depth o their joy at his return “back to lie” can scarcely be imagined. During his nearly two-year absence, the [colonial] administrative organization o Puli had changed completely. The Pacication-Reclamation Oce (Bukonsho), [ormerly in charge o all government dealings with Taiwan Indigenous Peoples,] became the District Commissioner’s Oce (Benmusho). The District Commissioner’s Oce was divided into three sections: nance, police, and Aborigine pacication. Mr. Inada [Tsunayoshi] was head o the Puli District Commissioner’s Oce, while one Sakamoto Noboru, the
17 Fm Ps n nō’s mmi. Fis is n , , n n , , si.
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current manager o the Taiwan Daily News, was put in charge o the third section, Aborigine Pacication. The Tgdaya tribes were especially happy about Kondō’s return. They had experienced hardships due to the trade embargo against them brought about by the beheading o the Japanese lumberjack. Thereore, they asked Kondō to use his good oces to eect a reconciliation. The Japanese assembled all o the headmen and again sternly ordered them to bring back the head o the perpetrator. The Tgdaya men seemed to think, this time, that everybody’s collective hardship was not worth protecting the lie o this one man. They duly beheaded Chiri Wadai, the perpetrator. Nonetheless, they appeared to be greatly irritated and sent Kondō a notice to etch the head personally. Since the Tgdaya people asked Kondō to come etch the head o Chiri Wadai, the District Commissioner’s Oce was worried and tried to stop Kondō rom entering their territory on the o chance that something might go wrong. Kondō, however, said he was going. Both Sakamoto Noboru and Yoshikawa Tan o the Aborigine Pacication Section would go with Kondō, [it was decided]. The three men headed or Tgdaya country. The men handed over the head without diculty. But they angrily asked Kondō, “Why did you go to Truku?” “Aah, so that is why you doubted [me].” Kondō now realized why he had been summoned to retrieve the head. He thought he must explain the situation very clearly: “I went there to search or Captain Fukahori’s whereabouts. I nobody could nd him, I thought that you would also be in trouble, because you were under suspicion by the Japanese authorities. That’s why I went to search.” The Indigenous Peoples are easily moved to doubt. On the other hand, they are very quickly persuaded [to understand 100
KoNdō’S returN to pulI
otherwise], and all suspicions were allayed. Their [good] temper was completely restored. They went so ar as to say that soon they would make a “stone-burying” pledge.
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11 T Hnin Pm18
T
he “stone-burying” pledge is a ceremony that promises a cessation to head-taking, eective when the stone is buried in the ground. The ceremony displays the unshakeable and eternal nature o the pledge, symbolizing that even though the stone itsel might decay, the pledge would continue to be honored. When the day or the ceremony arrived, however, they begged to stipulate a three-year expiration date, just as they were about to take the pledge. “I you stop us rom headhunting orever, we cannot ete our ancestors,” they insisted, to avoid making the pledge eternally binding. So, reluctantly and seeing no other way, their request was granted. There were other complications as well. Just as the ceremony was completed, it became known that a Wanda man had gone headhunting that day, killing a Japanese man at Wentougang on his return home. For this violation o the pledge, Wanda was prohibited rom trade. That is to say, the Tgdaya group’s rather equivocal three-year [pact] was obtained with some diculty. This all occurred on May 4, 1899.
18 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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Kondo the BarBarian
From this time until around January 1901, Kondō reopened his trading post. While operating his business, he also doggedly looked or a trail to Nenggao upstream along the Wanda Ravine, rom Katsukku Village in the Musha area. Here there appeared men who wanted to take Kondō’s head due to a misunderstanding. The trading post in Wanda Village had been closed since 1897. And they were again reused permission to trade because o the [incident during the May 4, 1899] stone-burying ceremony in Tgdaya territory. Thus, Wanda Village elt unairly treated. In January 1901, they held a general council. I we take Kondō’s head, they reasoned, another Japanese man will arrive and open a trading post. So Kondō’s head became a target. The men o Wanda tried to get the Tgdaya people to participate; but they had permission to trade, so rom the beginning they disagreed with the plan. The [Wanda] emissary was sent o, and the [Tgdaya] headman sent a notice to Kondō immediately. Kondō then reported to the subpreect, to consult on how to remedy the situation. The subpreect decided to permit trade again, but with conditions attached. The trading post would send a bolt o red Chinese cloth, known as pikke to Wanda. In exchange, Wanda would send y pieces o “Aborigine cloth” to the bereaved amily o the Taiwanese victim o the head-taking incident, as an apology. Once these requirements were ullled, the [Wanda] people would be granted permission to trade. The y pieces o cloth were at last ready on April 20 [1901]; the Wanda village headman brought them himsel. He also reported that he had brought some camphor wood, which was still behind him, in the mountains. He asked to trade the lumber, and Kondō replied that he would have a look. That evening they climbed the mountain behind Puli. As soon as they arrived at the spot where the headman pointed out the waiting lumber, our 104
the headhuNtINg probleM
spears suddenly appeared, coming rom all directions. Kondō met his ate as the spears went through him with no care or a particular target. He received wounds on his chest, stomach, and le side; he was hurt badly. Fresh blood gushed out o him in the darkness o these savage hills. Nonetheless, being a son o Japan, Kondō thought he had to strike at least one blow. With desperate eort, he swiped a spear, and the battle between Kondō and our or ve Wanda men commenced.
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12 nō s Ams Enmis19
A
S Kondō reconciled himsel to die there, he ought or his lie with desperation. As his hand responded to the grip o the bamboo spear, he even thought, “This is every man’s dream!” And yet, during the skirmish, he heard the chie energetically scolding his excited men to stop. As he was being struck by the [rst] multidirectional thrusts, Kondō believed he had been lured out and trapped by the headman. It did seem, however, as i the headman had been restraining his men rom the beginning. Besides, a second attack, strangely enough, never came. Kondō could not understand what was happening. Meanwhile, his opponents, who had emerged rom the darkness, ed back into darkness. “It was because young, hot-blooded [men] got excited ... please orgive me.” The chie apologized as he assisted Kondō. [The headman] carried Kondō into the house o Takada Gigorō, the manager o the trading post, and then ed or ear o the consequences. It was 8:30 in the evening, in a place called Wugonglun. Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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Kondo the BarBarian
The trading post was located some thirty chō20 rom Puli. Mr. Takada immediately administered rst aid and then carried Kondō back to his own home. At the time, Sappo [or Sazo] Chitsukku, Kondō’s wie’s elder brother (the man who, rightened by the pocket watch, smashed it), and two or three Tgdaya men had come over [to Kondō’s place]. They were incensed at the Wanda villagers, and immediately hunted them down and exacted revenge. The Wanda men included Awi Baan and seven others. They had been lying in wait or Kondō the whole time when he happened to emerge behind the mountain. It seems as i, seizing the opportunity, they meant to take his head. The ollowing day, April 21, 1901, Kondō was carried by means o a wooden door to a detached building in Puli. Aer hearing about Kondō’s travails, his acquaintances became quite concerned. Fortunately, the ollowing day, a new man known as a “public physician” arrived at his post in Puli. They requested that Kondō be examined at once. In addition, Doctor Satō o the Puli battalion came to help Kondō. There were many wounds on Kondō’s body: one around a le rib by the chest, one that scratched his intestine near the stomach, a sideways gash on his thigh, and. the biggest o all, a wound in the side o his belly. There were numerous others as well. The hemorrhage rom the chest wound would not stop, no matter how many times Dr. Satō stitched it up, so he sewed the wound to a bone to stop the bleeding. And yet, the internal bleeding could not be stopped as quickly, and there was nothing that could be done. Kondō’s stomach gradually swelled up and the pain became unendurable. Kondō and the men around him considered the situation hopeless. Hence, Kondō le his last testament to his younger brother, Gisaburō. A kims.
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KoNdō IS aMbuShed by eNeMIeS
(The younger Kondō had crossed over to Taiwan that year, as a mere boy o sixteen; much later, he would be declared missing.) Soon aer, Kondō ell prostrate and sank into a comatose state. It was nine a.m.! Things remained the same until three in the aernoon. It was said that people had started preparations or the uneral. Aer he regained consciousness, Kondō elt all better. His wounds entirely healed within hal a month. Though Kondō recovered, the men o Musha did not so easily overcome their rage. They elt that at least they should attack Wanda Village or revenge; they requested a little over a kilogram (three hundred monme) o gunpowder and matchlock uses rom the subpreect. Kondō became alarmed and stopped them. “Please do not exact any revenge in addition to that exacted by my ull recovery. On another occasion, I may have the chance to avenge mysel,” said Kondō, calming them down. In act, his words were prescient. At the time, Kondō did not know that he would play a great part in the Japanese government’s extension o the guardline.
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nō Ls Pi Hn i21
T
he stone-burying pledge, in which the Musha tribe promised to stop hunting heads or a period o three years, was eected in [May o] 1899. Since the coming May constituted the third May since the pledge, the Tgdaya men said they would begin headhunting in the middle o the month; they urged Kondō to pick up his trading post and go back. No matter how many times it was argued that the agreement was or a ull three-year cessation [according to Japanese time reckoning], they did not understand. Nonetheless, as a courtesy, they divulged the signal that companions used to prevent headhunting attacks [rom ellow tribesmen]. During the day, they cut a tree-branch three shaku in length22, walking with the stick in an upright position. At night, one exclaimed, “Shoo!” upon encountering another. Then, in the middle o August, headhunting really did commence. The Plains Aborigines o Shouchengenzhu were araid to go outside. One day, thinking it would be sae [to venture out] i 21 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , . 22 A n m.
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Kondo the BarBarian
accompanied by the woman Abai Kura, who hailed rom Tgdaya territory, these Plains Aborigines were beheaded when they went out to draw water. Thereore, the people in Puli became very skittish. Kondō was le with no choice but to once again close his trading post. Now that there would be no [reconnoitering or a] road to traverse the mountains, there was nothing Kondō could hope to accomplish in Puli, at least or a while, until things calmed down. [Kondō thought,] “What am I doing in Puli?” He was only twenty-seven years old. The longer Kondō dwelt in proximity to the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples and became involved in the aairs along the “savage border,” his sense o himsel as a Japanese national became more extraordinarily acute. At some point during his sojourn, Kondō made up his mind that Japanese must exert themselves to develop the new territory o Taiwan, which had been obtained at such cost. He did not eel like remaining calmly and quietly in Puli. First o, Kondō xed upon the idea o opening a road rom Puli to Taichung [City]. Kondō proposed a Nangang River route. The Taichung governor23 accepted the idea. Kondō accompanied the civil engineer Mr. Shibahara as a guide until September o that same year [1901]. Within a year’s time, the road was completed….
insi.
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14 nō n Gin24
tartINg June 15, 1903, the government-general’s policy toward Indigenous Peoples changed completely, rom conciliation to conquest. Thus, guardlines (aiyu-sen) were rapidly constructed in various places. In Tgdaya country, a short line was rst built rom Puli to Niuken Shan that year. The ollowing year, the time had come to stretch a line through the Tgdaya people’s stronghold, namely, a guardline originating in Niuken Shan, continuing past Shoucheng Dashan and Hiyama, and nally winding through Meixi to terminate at Kirigaseki. Due to the new policy o conquest and guardline construction, the Aborigine District was thrown into conusion. Now Kondō could harbor only one hope regarding this situation: that in the case o Musha at least, not one drop o blood would be shed, right up until the completion o the guardline. Thereore, as the line was about to commence construction, Kondō negotiated with the Tgdaya people o Musha. To allay any suspicions, he concocted the pretext that Japan needed to build a road to transport cypress logs down rom Hiyama Mountain. Consent was thus obtained 24 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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and the line extended without diculty. From July 1905, the second guardline was built starting in Kirigaseki, through the mountain where the stone-burying pledge had been sworn, and onward to Paalan Village. This guardline came closest to a [Tgdaya] population center. Since this line would cause severe problems, Kondō wracked his brains. As luck would have it, Kondō had been wounded by the Wanda men, providing him with a good pretext [to enlist allies]. Kondō then parleyed with Tgdaya representatives, explaining to them that he would be exacting revenge. The Tgdaya men consented without incident. Thereupon, Kondō positioned six cannons near Wanda Village rom July through August. The line was also extended during this period. On August 25, 1905, Kondō started to re salvos toward Wanda Village to display the power o the ordinance. At that time, Wanda was still extremely savage; they did not comply with ocial directives and were deant in demeanor. Thus, this was a good opportunity to cow them. At the rst shot, they were abbergasted. The [roar o the] cannons! Big demon! Horrible monster! They ed in chaos, looking or places to hide, with only the ground to conceal them. By early morning o August 28, the chie emerged to apologize. He pledged never to rebel against Japan thereaer. Wanda also promised to rerain rom headhunting through a stone-burying pledge. Finally, calm was restored in Wanda. When this guardline was built, Kondō pledged [to assist] Ōtsu Rinpei in Puli. As emissary or the head o the punitive expedition, Ōtsu had come to reconnoiter the area. He heard about Kondō and requested a meeting. On January 28 [1906], Kondō conveyed to Ōtsu his knowledge o conditions among the Indigenous Peoples based on his ten years o experience. It was a long discussion, lasting rom ve p.m. until seven a.m. 114
KoNdō aNd the guardlINe
the next day. Ōtsu listened to Kondō intently, with the eeling that Kondō was already a riend. Ōtsu expressed himsel quite openly. At the end o the discussion, Ōtsu asked, “How can the Indigenous Peoples be instructed and given guidance?” Kondō immediately responded, “The rst step would be to take them sightseeing.” Thus, the meeting ended. As Kondō became more intimate with the Indigenous Peoples, he could not help but eel pity or their lack o guile. They requently asked, “Compared to our village, how many more times larger is the village o Japan?” Kondō was always at a loss or words when this question arose. They irritated Kondō because they did not seem to comprehend, even when he did try to explain. The Indigenous Peoples did not ollow government directives. Incidents would occur because they were ignorant — the situation was chaotic. Masters o the exalted mountain! Lords who dwell thousands o eet in the air, to whom civilization is unknown! Kondō wondered i they could be saved, these people who were in turn urious beasts or sensitive, kind human beings. This concern had made Kondō anxious or some ten years. “We must show them the wider world!” “They must be taught what kind o thing Japan really is!” Kondō knew, however, that he could not accomplish this task alone. He explained all o this at the end o his meeting with Ōtsu Rinpei. Kondō reportedly elt that years o pent-up anxiety had been lied o his chest.
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15 Governor-General km His nō25
K
oNdō met Ōtsu [again] on August 20, 1906. He was soon aer called up to the Taiwan Government-General in Taipei on September 5. He gave a detailed deposition about the situation in Tgdaya territory beore Governor-General Sakuma [Samata] and other high-ranking ocials. There, Kondō put orth his sightseeing scheme or Indigenous people. He also mentioned his desire to ulll Captain Fukahori’s mission to reach Hualien by traversing the central mountain chain. Around this time, the government-general also had been planning to implement an Indigenous-person sightseeing plan. They intended to gather Indigenous people rom all over Taiwan in Taipei or a big estival at the Taiwan jinja [shrine] on October 28 [1907]. The government-general requested that Kondō lead the Tgdaya delegates [to Taipei]. Since the ijiachuan tribes would also be in Taipei that day, it was suggested that Kondō consult with them about the crossing. Kondō grateully accepted and returned to Tgdaya country. The Indigenous Peoples, however, did not read25 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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Kondo the BarBarian
ily consent to the sightseeing scheme because they had never done it beore. To be sure, to a certain extent they wanted to go; but there was also much anxiety, and in the end they would not accept. Thus, it required great eort to persuade and recruit thirty people [to make the journey to Taipei]. Mona Rudao, the leader o the recent Musha Rebellion, joined the sightseeing company. He was a youth o thirty, two years Kondō’s junior at the time. Even considering that there were headmen among them, none o the people in the group knew anything o the world beyond Puli. Thereore, one can imagine the shock and alarm they must have experienced being on a train or the rst time. They screamed and were orced by the train’s speed to keep their eyes shut, the locomotive ast enough to make them dizzy. How mysterious that trees which appeared to dance along the tracks would suddenly disappear; or the wide expanse o the plains, which reappeared magically in reverse orm! In the pitch-black tunnels, they were seized by extreme dread, calling out the names o their riends. The Indigenous delegates, who came rom all over the island, saw many unusual sites during their week-long stay in Taipei. There were no days or rest. O special interest was Keelung, rom where one could see the sea, and steamships! When they tried to carry the cannon balls at the shore battlements, the supernatural size and weight astonished them. On November 3, [1907,] they witnessed a military review parade at the drilling grounds. The visitors were overawed and rendered completely silent, unable to utter a single word. At the time, een ijiachuan villagers rom Hualien were also in Taipei. Kondō had them meet with the Tgdaya men to discuss a mountain crossing. The ijiachuan men agreed to help Kondō as soon as he emerged in Hualien aer the crossing. General Sakuma instructed Mona Rudao, 118
goverNor-geNeral SaKuMa hIreS KoNdō
chie o Mhebu, and Awi Nokan, chie o Hōgō, to help Kondō succeed in his mission to cross the mountains and reach Hualien. Hence, Kondō now had very good support or his mission. Upon returning to Puli, Kondō concentrated on preparations or the crossing, eeling that he must not waste this opportunity. Though he did visit Nenggao our times in 1906, his accompanying Tgdaya men would not go urther. Either the sound o the rooster was inauspicious, or the shape o clouds [was not right], or other such superstitions prevented progress. Thereore, he returned every time. While these disagreements and dierences continued, 1906 ended and 1907 began. General Sakuma summoned Kondō to Taipei and invited him on an inspection trip to Hualien to survey conditions along the east coast. Since Kondō had wanted such work rom the start, he immediately went to Taipei. It was January 13, 1907. The squadron consisted o orty people, including General Sakuma. They arrived at Hualien Harbor on January 16. From January 17 to 19, Sakuma perormed his inspection. Kondō, however, borrowed two hundred ijiachuan and Mugua tribesmen and separated o rom Sakuma’s party to explore higher up in Chiyakan Ravine with Inspector Kaku Kurata (see Map 3). At the time, there were many barren elds, even in today’s Hualien city center. As ar as Japanese buildings went, there was nothing but the subpreectural installations and a ew houses. In those days, the area around Chiyakan Ravine was very dangerous. They ascended higher and higher, or about ve ri26 to a place called Muragaha. Suddenly the path was cut o. Steep rocks emerged and they could neither ascend nor descend. Kondō imagined that the way rom Musha must meet this stream, but the rocks closed o this route like a gate; they were unable to proceed 26 A n kims.
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arther. They were presented with a very high mountain with no ootholds and very sharp rocks — there was nothing to do but return. Kondō despaired once he realized this, but the spirit o Captain Fukahori was with him! He recalled this and did not lose hope entirely. Since he had come all this way, he secretly buried some canned provisions and a small quantity o saké in the right side o a cave as a landmark and memorial. Why did he do such a thing? When did he think he would return?
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hat evening, they returned to Wuquancheng, today known as Hetian, and stayed overnight. The next day they ascended the coastal mountain chain and aced the distant central mountain spine. When Kondō recognized the peaks and valleys around Nenggao, he concealed his thoughts. Aer ascertaining the road or his central mountain crossing, he rejoined the squadron. They also went to Beinan, Huoshaoduo and Hongtouyu and returned to Taipei on February 2, 1907. As the group broke up, General Sakuma told Kondō that he should cross the Central Mountain Range as soon as possible. Kondō earnestly desired to complete the mission, so he gave an account o his investigations along the east coast during a visit to Mr. Nosé [Yasuichi], the Nantou subpreect, on his way back. Kondō went directly to Musha to gather the headmen to set a date or crossing the mountains. Because the eighth month (in the traditional calendar) had little rain and air weather generally, it was decided to depart then. Kondō thereupon reported to General Sakuma 27 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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and impatiently waited rom February through September. It had been twelve years since Captain Fukahori had attempted to make the crossing in 1896. How steadast and unwilling to orget his dream was Kondō! At last, September 1907 had arrived. Kondō was ordered to appear beore General Sakuma and went up to Taipei on the second o the month. He was exultant to receive an ocial order to cross the mountains on September 5. Now he was prepared to throw away his lie to repay General Sakuma’s trust and Fukahori’s spirit. On the seventh, Kondō went to bid arewell to his ather, whom Kondō had [earlier] sent or rom their hometown [o Tokushima] to spend his old age in Taichung. “I have not adequately ullled the duties o an eldest son, and now, I may commit the unorgivable [oense] o not returning alive. At last, the time has come or me to cross the Central Mountains at the risk o death. Please orgive my impiety and send me o on my departure.” Bowing beore his ather, he could think o no words but these. On the other hand, what could his ather, who knew his son’s heart so well, say on the occasion o Kondō’s wish nally being granted? He could only pray or Kondō’s success. Kondō’s ather urged him not to return alive should the mission ail. Taking leave o this ather, Kondō appeared at the Nantou subpreect, which had jurisdiction over Puli. Mr. Nosé gave Kondō an amulet rom the [inner] shrine o Amaterasu [at Ise]; the police section chie gave Kondō a ag. Kondō immediately put the amulet inside o his jacket. In large characters he wrote, “The Central Mountain Crossing Expedition o Captain Fukahori and his Fourteen Men” (Chūō sanmyaku ōdan tankentai Fukahori taii ika jūyon mei) on the ag. Now Kondō was prepared, with all his heart, to carry out the captain’s last request. 122
KoNdō SetS out to coMplete uKahorI’S MISSIoN
Kondō arrived in Hōgō Village o Musha at the behest o the Puli subpreect, Mr. Nagakura, on September 10. Nagakura summoned Awi Nokan, headman o Hōgō, and Mona Rudao, headman o Mhebu, and instructed them, “Under the orders o General Sakuma, Kondō will explore a way to Hualien Harbor. You will guide him as you have promised.” Nagakura returned to Puli. By now, Kondō had said last goodbyes to his ather, younger brother, the preect, and the subpreect; his contact with Japan was now severed. There was nothing le to do but go onward and orward into the Aborigine District. Kondō would rely on the amulet rom Narita Temple (ound in the shed in Truku [1900]), his Amaterasu amulet rom the Ise Shrine, and the ag! Kondō wanted to know i they would depart that day, or on the next; he searched their expressions or clues as the days went by. Aer ten days had passed, they still showed no indication o readiness to depart. By degrees, Kondō learned that [the Musha men] were araid o the Indigenous Peoples o Hualien. At that time, the ijiachuan tribes’ and the Mugua tribes’ ormidable reputations struck dread ar and wide, all the way to Musha. They decided to bring along a woman named Rapai Watan, a Mugua native who had married into [Musha]. But since she had recently given birth and was nursing a baby, they thought they should wait until the baby grew past breasteeding age to depart. This notion typied the Indigenous Peoples’ relaxed and unhurried approach to things. Hearing o this, Kondō was very troubled. Whatever one might say about the easygoing nature o the Indigenous Peoples, waiting or a baby to grow up was indeed a orm o nonchalance that could not be measured, and Kondō was beyond disgust. There was no turning back, but there was no way to go orward! He was conused and could not gure out how to proceed. 123
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he Tgdaya men were araid o going to Hualien. To allay their anxiety they planned on bringing a banpu [emale Indigenous person], but she had an inant [to take care o]. The [Japanese ocials and Kondō’s kin] had sent Kondō o to the Aborigine territory in such grand style. He had made it this ar. Now he realized that the Tgdaya were completely unreliable. Kondō was between a rock and a hard place; he was becoming exhausted and impatient. And yet, he had hoped to go on this mission or ten whole years. How could he just give up now! Kondō learned or himsel that he had been overreliant on the Indigenous Peoples. Now Kondō was alone. Realizing this situation, he resolved to complete the mission by himsel. A relation o one o Kondō’s guides lived in Katsukku. One day Kondō went there and invited the young men to go headhunting in Taroko. They loved headhunting and so were overjoyed. Kondō gathered together seventeen men rom various villages. This is how Kondō tricked the group. They bravely departed rom Katsukku on September 20, 1907. Heading toward South 28 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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Nenggao, they spent the nights o September 21 and 22 in the mountains. They reached the watershed at Nenggao on September 23. From here, each step would bring him closer to that which he had been longing or, Hualien Harbor. Then he rmly and rankly aced the Tgdaya men and said, “To be honest, I did not come here to hunt heads. As you know, I have been ordered by General Sakuma to nd a way to Hualien Harbor. Nonetheless, I could not get you to leave, no matter how long I waited. I I do not make it to Hualien this time out, I will not be able to return to Puli alive.” Perched on the watershed atop Nenggao! Bright autumn clouds in the mountains! Watching the clouds oat about so reely, Kondō lost all sense o ear. [He addressed the men:] I I am to die, I preer to die by getting even one step closer in the direction o Hualien. Thereore, I am willing to go orward alone. You may go headhunting or do whatever you please and then return home. It is possible that I might all to my death in a valley or be eaten by animals. Should that happen, please tell Mona Rudao and Awi Nokan that they will have to account or themselves beore the General! The men crouched in silence, as i being intimidated by their own headmen, uttering not a single word. As soon as he nished his oration, Kondō picked up his bag and started running. He did not look back, or there was no need to do so. That thing we call singleness o heart and mind is a dread thing to behold. The decision was made, the diculty dissolved. Kondō rushed headlong into lands that looked untraversed by human steps, into the virgin lands o the high-mountain wilderness. As he advanced about two and a hal miles [away rom the Katsukku men,] their 126
KoNdō recruItS a tgdaya crew
roaring voices could be heard echoing. The voices seemed to chase him. “Oi! Oi!” How strongly their voices resounded and reverberated among the mountains. Kondō knew their nature; i they were in a violent temper, he would be killed. Well, Kondō mused, I brought my “Captain Fukahori” banner, not to mention a spear and two amulets rom Narita and Ise. These were or ghting against animals, but now they will be used or sel-deense [against men]. Looking or a place rom which to ace the onslaught, he took up his position. Then he held out his spear as i to say, “I’m ready!” and braced himsel. Aer a time, the Tgdaya men came as expected — there were our o them. The look on Kondō’s ace was terrible; he was prepared to take on this many and he thought he could deeat them. The Tgdaya had grown accustomed to Kondō’s customarily gentle expression. As they approached, they were astonished at what they saw. Kondō had leveled his spear, leaving no unguarded openings [to aim at]. The men were alarmed and le speechless. It was around our p.m. when the sunlight began to dim in the mountains. The valleys were darkening, and so were the peaks. The orlorn silence o the mountains! As night ell on the mountains, covering them in a dappled purple, Kondō elt a sense o poignancy beyond imagination.
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hIS was no movie set. In 1907, this was a erocious battle in the untamed savage highlands. So what happened in the skirmish between a man named Kondō and the our Tgdaya men? Kondō stared at the our o them. They were Sappo Bakkuru, Iyon Bawan, and Watan Assa o Katsukku Village; and Awi Sama o Paalan Village. They were all young men whom Kondō knew well. “Kondō-san, we cannot speak to you i you keep making that terriying expression,” said the one who spoke rst. “Please withdraw that spear. Why are you so angry?” said the second to talk. [Kondō replied,] “So you say, but you did come here to kill me, didn’t you?” “That’s nonsense; we came to accompany you.” Everything had been turned on its head. According to these [our], the seventeen who le Katsukku [with Kondō] discussed matters among themselves. The Katsukku men, who were Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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relatives o Kondō, said that they could not abandon him. I they did, they could not ace their ellow villagers. Thus, it was decided that the aorementioned men would ollow Kondō. The situation had completely transormed itsel to an advantageous one or Kondō, who was grateul or this [turn o events]. “Well, i that is the case, I needn’t have acted as I did.” “We were truly shocked. We’ve never seen such an expression on your ace beore.” They also calmed down. The ve o them sat down on some rocks and became as thick as thieves, like Momotarō, who went to Onigashima with his ollowers to conquer [a monster]. Soon aer, they began to nag Kondō about their compensation or going to Hualien, revealing their rustic lack o sophistication. Wasn’t this something to remind one o Momotarō’s Kibidango? [Momotarō gave each o his ollowers some sweets as a reward]. Three o them requested an ox; the other asked or a gun. At the same time, revealing their careree approach to lie, they had le their supplies back at the watershed. By the time they went to etch them and return, night had allen. So they ended up camping near a pond, most likely the one called Tadotsu. On the ollowing day, September 24, the morning brought heavy ground-hugging og and very low visibility. Expecting it to clear up, they tried to move on. But they were on an unknown road, and they could not tell whether to go right or le. Unortunately, they had orgotten to bring a magnetic compass, so there was nothing they could do. At this point, Kondō could think o nothing but praying to heaven. He stood his banner up in the ground and then ollowed the path in the direction it toppled. The og was malevolent, and would not li or the whole day. They could not proceed arther and had to stay around a pond called Sumegan. On September 25 the og cleared completely. 130
a rocKy Start oN the path to hualIeN harbor
Compared to the previous day, the party elt much better and le the vicinity o the pond early in the morning, maintaining a hurried pace. Although they worried that they had lost their way because o the og, there was nothing le to do but go orward. Even though they aced clis, valleys, rivers, and sharp [suraces] traversed only with dicultly, Kondō could not contemplate any cessation o orward progress on this roadless path. It was as i he were being chased. Kondō said, “There is no other way to walk in such completely wild mountains. O course, I could do this because I was young. But [then again], climbing is all about vigor.” On the aernoon o September 29, the company managed to avoid getting lost and reached their goal. They arrived at the location that Kondō had suspected, while traveling up the Chiyakan River the previous January, was the place above the caves that were on the cli wall.
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INally he arrived! The terminus o the central mountain crossing, the place he had dreamt about, was just a little arther ahead! Just as Kondō had pictured it, they emerged directly above the Chiyakan Ravine. But they were amid sheer rock aces, at the opening o a broad torrential waterall. I one were to descend here, they would be pulled to the bottom o a whirling abyss. The cli walls aced each other, yielding no paths to climb. The gorge they ound themselves in resembled a mountain cleaved in hal by a malicious Creator. The ve o them had arrived in the aernoon, lacking the energy to nd a path. They slept in the gorge that night. On September 26, right aer waking up, they looked or a path. Even though Kondō searched, with eyes well attuned to these kinds o situations, not even a trace o a road was to be ound. Moreover, the provisions, enough or Kondō himsel, were now being shared among ve. Since they were traveling in haste, there had been no time or hunting game. Thus, they Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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nished all o the ood that morning. Even though daylight was slipping away, minute by minute, the ve o them were unable to move in any direction. Countless times, Kondō pictured himsel removing his clothes and diving into the deep abyss below. I he could possibly emerge [rom the depths] and then still be able to swim, thought Kondō, he could reach Hualien, which shone like a silk kimono sash [in the distance]. The men, even though they wanted to return home, were also aware that their ve days’ rations had been exhausted. Despite this knowledge, they still eared crossing the terriying alls and rapids. Hunger was setting in! The sun had climbed directly above them. When they realized it was already noon, they started to cry, eeling orlorn and helpless. Awi Sama rom Paalan Village howled in a big voice that reverberated in all directions throughout the mountains. He [vainly] called out the names o the wie and children he had le in the village. Thus, Kondō aced a rantic situation. He olded his arms across his chest and ervently prayed to Amaterasu o the Ise Shrine, Fudōson o Narita Temple, and the soul o Captain Fukahori. “Please help me, spirits o Ise Shrine! Captain Fukahori!” Suddenly, Kondō noticed that there were some grains o rice in one o his amulets. As a last resort, he opened the amulet in ront o them. He put one grain each into their mouths and said solemnly, “These are grains o rice rom the kami-sama. I you eat them and drink some water, you will eel ull and will not die o starvation. We still have more in the amulet, as you see, so we can survive or another three or our days. Now, go drink some water!” They grateully descended to secure drinking water. Upon returning, they said that they elt rereshed. Such simple minds! They were already so revived that they began to smile! Wasn’t 134
KoNdō’S teaM aNd the bIrd oMeNS
this similar to a scene rom the lie o Jesus? The story o the miracle where Christ lled the stomachs o three thousand ollowers on the plains o Asia Minor, with only a little bit o rice, is still spoken o. Feeling better, they became quiet and ell asleep without a care. Kondō could not sleep and remained motionless at their side. “Chee-chee! Chee-chee!” As Kondō settled down, he noticed the sound o birds. They had just started chirping in earnest. Again, “Chee-chee!” The more he heard, the more he sensed they were telling him that there was a road. He attributed this absurd thought to a momentary lapse. He reused to believe, but it sounded, to him, like there was a road. Slowly and quietly, Kondō stood up and started to move. He wondered where the birds could be and began to look or them. It seemed like the birds were to Kondō’s le side as he walked, or on the right side o the path i one traveled rom Hualien [to this overhang]. Kondō tried to climb upon the sharp, vegetation-matted rocks. There were patches o deep brush scattered about the mountain’s summit. The birds appeared to be alighting rom, and in turn disappearing into, these patches. He stared at these clumps, which ran rom the bottom to the top [o the summit]. Oh! A shining thread appeared to be running through the crags as one looked up at the grass thickets. Strewn about on this path were something resembling discarded shell-casings!
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oNdō climbed up greedily. Yes, these were cartridges! They proved that someone must have passed through these mountains. As one looked rom below, it was dicult to detect this path because o the bushes. But he was able to discover the way because he had been looking or the birds. I this could not be called a miracle, then what else could it be? What lovely birds, who were like messengers rom God. Will I someday orget the graceul sound o your cry? Kondō thanked the birds tearully. Kondō ascended about another hundred meters. On the back o the mountain he saw what looked like a descending path, one that went up again and down again. It made a continuous sawtooth pattern, repeatedly passing behind the mountains so that Kondō could not see [the whole path] rom his vantage point in the valley. Kondō’s eet went orward without hesitation, no matter how dicult the trail. One could call this a path, but it was covered with crags, brambles, and brush along the whole way. Kondō danced or joy as he advanced. Aer another hundred meters, he recognized, Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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just ahead, a man who seemed to be asleep. With a sense o longing and yearning, Kondō practically leapt to his side, but ... what sort o cruelty, what kind o grotesque display should appear? It was a resh corpse laying on the ground, which had already lost its head. The racing heart o the man who thought he had ound a living person [in these orlorn mountains] roze as he recoiled in horror. Kondō elt the coldness o mountain ice and stopped in his tracks. Misortune never strikes just once! With the spent cartridges and the corpse, Kondō knew this was a dangerous place. While staying alert to all our directions at once, he returned to the nearby valley. He told his guides that he had ound a road. They were relieved to hear this and climbed the rocky hill. In Hong Kong, [back in 1895,] Kondō had heard a rumor that Taiwan Indigenous Peoples ate the meat o their headhunting victims. Kondō wondered i this could be true. Without telling the guides, he set out to show them the corpse. Beore long, they saw the headless body. They were, however, accustomed to such sights and were not overly alarmed. At the same time, they did not look like they were about to eat the corpse. Kondō tried to entice them, entreating, “You must be hungry. Why don’t you eat this?” They replied that human esh was unclean and was thereore never eaten. Thus, the question that perplexed Kondō beore he came to Taiwan was easily answered. They ascended and descended along the sawtooth path a ew times when suddenly the road made a bead toward a triangle-shaped mountain. He called this “Needle Mountain.” The sheer, angularly peaked mountain took several hours to climb. The descent, however, was rapid, much like sliding down a hill. About two hours into their ascent o “Needle Mountain,” they
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ound a cave. It was quite spacious inside, large enough to spread ten tatami mats (jō). It was very tidy, as i someone had just le. Kondō was pleased to nd a good place to sleep. It was late in the aernoon. Tonight would be their one chance to sleep under a roo ... but, as he stopped to consider things, this cave seemed miraculously clean. Kondō went in and out and thoroughly surveyed the perimeter. The rst strange thing he noticed was no sign o re. I someone had stayed here to rest, there should be a trace o re somewhere. Perhaps there was no re because this was an animal dwelling. I so, which animal? They checked the cave everywhere. As a group, they came to an agreement that this was probably the dwelling place o a troop o monkeys.
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hey were going to sleep in the monkeys’ lair. Judging rom the size o the cave, they surmised that this was a very large troop. Nevertheless, Kondo’s guides did not care. Once they gured out that this was a shelter [inhabited by] monkeys, they resolved to kill them and eat the meat or lack o other provisions. According to the Tgdaya men, the number o monkeys did not matter, even i it were thousands, so long as the head monkey could be killed. Thus, they loaded their guns and began preparations. At perhaps three p.m., a loud gusting noise came rom the mountain. It was a really big sound, hard to describe, the unleashing o pent-up energy; it gradually approached them with countless numbers o monkeys, returning to their lair! Without realizing they were being watched rom behind, the monkeys playully cavorted about, screaming and crouching in their spacious abode. There was a large monkey who appeared to be the head. A shot was red by one o the Tgdaya guides, who never missed.
Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is n , .
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It knocked him tumbling head over heels. The large monkey crazily ed the cave and stopped just short o the cli, where he ell over dead. The unexpected gunshot coupled with the head monkey’s sudden demise stunned the rest o the monkeys, who stood bolt upright shrieking, and then ed or their lives. It was as i heaven and earth themselves were roaring. Watching careully to be sure the coast was clear, Kondō and the Tgdaya men came out o the cave. They started cooking the meat gleeully, overjoyed to eat at last. Kondō knew not how many more days it would take to reach Hualien, so he ordered the men to save some o the meat. They also caught rainwater in a pot, which they used to boil the bones and intestines or their evening meal. They ate and went to sleep that evening on ull stomachs. On September 27, they nished their ascent o “Needle Mountain.” They still had to make the descent, but this was relatively easy — they practically slid down. The place looked amiliar to Kondō, so he checked the landorms. Guess where he was. Oddly enough, he had emerged just over the cave in which he had stashed those provisions the previous January! He could not resist yelling, “We’ve arrived in Hualien! And we have something to eat!” Kondō was so overcome by joy that he wanted to jump, so lled with gratitude he wanted to melt into tears. It struck him; this had been his goal or over twelve years, since 1896. As he dug up the canned ood, rice, and saké in the cave, he prayed to the Ise inner shrine and Narita Temple. The ve o them raised their cups to the ag, nearly in tears, happily embracing each other. It was about one in the aernoon. Kondō was moved to utter speechlessness. The men could not resist having a celebratory drink. They sang and continued their Tgdaya dances into the night. What a dicult route to nd. This cave was located just to the right 142
MISSIoN accoMplIShed (aNd a eaSt o wIld gaMe)
o Chiyakan Ravine, or the craggy mountain impasse [they had approached the previous January]. Nonetheless, it required two days to make the ascent and climb down again. What Kondō dubbed “Needle Mountain” was downstream rom Xikou, below the mountain known today as “Hiyama.” They were exhausted rom drinking, dancing, and hiking; they slept soundly. The next day, September 28, they happily le this memorable cave to arrive at a police substation located about thirteen miles away, at Xikou. Here they saw [other] human aces or the rst time in a while. Soon aer, it was reported by telephone to the Hualien subpreect that Kondō had successully crossed the Central Mountains. They stayed overnight at the police substation. September 29, 1907. What an unorgettable day! Aer leaving Wawwaku Village, the expedition had at long last entered Hualien on the ninth day [o the trek]. When they reached Wuquancheng on oot, Hualien Inantry Battalion leader Major Kinoshita Ryōkurō and some soldiers came out to greet them. A cart had been prepared or their arrival. The party was given a big welcome and led to the subpreect threadbare, dirty, and covered in sweat rom sleeping out o doors — they were in no condition to pay their respects. The major looked askance at the ag’s [scrawled on] characters. When he heard the story, however, he told Kondō that he was a classmate o Captain Fukahori’s. This connection greatly augmented the major’s elation at the success o the crossing. Moreover, he happened to know Captain Fukahori’s widow’s address. A telegram was quickly sent to her to inorm her o the success o that day’s crossing.
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N September 30, they were eted by the ijiachuan Indigenous people, whom they had met on the sightseeing journey to Taipei. They danced with the our Tgdaya (Katsukku Village) tribesmen, holding hands, singing and enjoying themselves. Unortunately, they were held up until October 6, 1907, or lack o an available vessel. At last, they boarded a ship on the seventh and arrived in Keelung on the eighth. Immediately, they went to Taipei to report on their successul crossing to General [Sakuma]. They spent the whole next day in Taipei. The Tgdaya men, who were attached to Kondō, were welcomed wherever they went. They received many precious items, which caused them to exult.34 The ve-man group was also invited to our newspaper company to take a memorial picture. There was an article with a picture in the newspaper at the time. They Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , . nō is nin, n i sn, is i , n s s mn im ims nsi “is.”
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arrived back in Puli on October 14 via Nantou, Taichung. As he had promised, Kondō gave a water bualo to each o the our as a reward. With great jubilation, they returned to the village. Autumn 1907! Soon the year ended and it was 1908. In January o the new year, the government-general planned to make a denitive record o the crossing. With Kondō as a guide, a een-man company headed by Inspector Kaku Kurata and our border guards were sent to Hualien again. This group also included the amous Mr. Mori (Ushinosuke). Their itinerary looked like this: January 3 January 4 January 5 January 6 January 7 January 8 January 9
January 10 January 11 January 12
Le Puli and stayed in Musha. Stayed at Katsukku Village. Slept outside at Peiroha, between Wanda and Nenggao. Arrived at Nenggao. Slept by a pond called Mumegan in Nenggao. Stayed at the place named Rehegokarari, above Takisse. Kondō had taken a le the last time, so this time they took a right. They spent hal a day searching, but no way was ound. Returned to Rehegokarari. Passed through “Needle Mountain” and stayed at the cave. Stayed in Xikou. Arrived at Hualien subpreecture.
A ship happened to be departing the day aer their arrival, on January 13. The headman o the ijiachuan tribe came to the embarkation landing to meet Inspector Kaku. At that time, there 146
KoNdō JoINS the KaKu Kurata MISSIoN
was a battle over [censored] involving the ijiachuan villagers and some reclaimed land at [censored]. Because conditions among the Indigenous Peoples were unsettled, they were making an appeal. They requested better treatment in the uture. Although we can say that the [censored] incident in Hualien occurred at the end o the year [1908], we can also say that at that time, [censored] was already happening. In any event, they returned to Taipei on January 14. Kondō was completely relieved. He had come to Taiwan in the spring o his twenty-second year, driven by curiosity. He entered Puli and engaged in Aborigine Pacication or some thirteen years. For Kondō’s sake, his ather sold the amily’s ancestral lands and made the crossing to Taiwan. It was true that Kondō planned to use this money as capital to purchase reclamation land (kaikonchi haraisage) in Taiwan. And yet, the act that he had not made time to put his household aairs in order, as the eldest son, constantly ate away at him as the years and months passed by. Until now, Kondō thought, he had been selsh, while orgetting all about his ather. Aer his successul crossing, Kondō ruminated about this matter constantly. His last responsibility concerning Captain Fukahori still remained: to build, according to the captain’s instructions, a memorial shrine in Hualien to console the souls o Fukahori and his men. [Such a task] was a lie’s work and could not be accomplished quickly. He would wait or the right opportunity. Instead, he wondered, with the Fukahori business settled or the time being, perhaps it was time to return to the amily occupation and work toward making his ather’s old age comortable. Kondō thus turned his attention to dierent matters. At this time, Kondō’s younger brother Gisaburō had already become a police ocer. [Like Katsusaburō,] he understood Indigenous languages. Gisaburō was posted in Puli. Now, Katsusaburō 147
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could delegate all his Indigene-related matters to his younger brother, dedicating himsel to arming, the amily vocation and his previous line o work. I Kondō could have continued his lie in this manner ... he would have become a big landowner near Puli. He might have enjoyed an old age blessed with wealth. And perhaps Gisaburō would not have tragically disappeared. But Kondō’s unathomable destiny continued to unold with a matter that called him back into action in Taiwan’s savage mountainous territory.
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Ne day in August 1908, [Police Inspector] Ōtsu Rinpei, Nantou subpreect Mr. Nosé, and police ocer Captain Ikeda came to Puli and summoned Kondō, [telling him,] “Thanks to you, the crossing was a success. As a saeguard against the Toda, Truku, and Xakut, we have decided that it is necessary to stretch a guardline rom Paalan to Sakuragamine. This line will pass through the length o Musha country, which will probably cause quite a ruckus. Thereore, we would like to ask your assistance once again.” Kondō himsel had been thinking o this guardline’s necessity or quite some time, and he said as much. But unless this very dicult task were carried out with delicacy, it would be hard to avoid a disturbance. In order to make the plan work, Kondō would have to put his lie at risk once again. Kondō became visibly ummoxed in the presence o the ocials. He was honored to be called upon, but, as recounted above, he had just resolved to make his lial obligations a priority. Though Kondō elt no Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , .
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compunction about devoting himsel to the nation, he could not vanquish his anxious thoughts concerning the ate o his amily, should something happen to him. So Kondō ervently pleaded to decline this order. He rankly expressed his sentiments to these three men and asked that they send his younger brother instead. They replied that Gisaburō was too young; moreover, he was unsuitable because he held an ocial post. In the nal analysis, only Kondō Katsusaburō was really t or this task. Acknowledging Kondō’s worries about the aermath o a possible mishap, the ocials assuaged Kondō by promising to do all they could to make arrangements [to provide or his amily]. They urged Kondō to change his mind and accept the request. Aer much wrangling, Kondō nally gave up in the ace o such insistence. The three ocials told Kondō that there was a place called Kirigaseki on the way to Musha rom Puli. They said they would sell about thirty kō36 to Kondō or his amily. Still, at that moment, Kondō remained hesitant or some reason. Nevertheless, he could not simply disregard [their requests], because so much had already been negotiated. Aer thinking about it or a while, he gave his reply and parted with the ocials that same day. Kondō consulted with his younger brother and ather. They both said that since they had come this ar [in the exchange o promises], there was no turning back. So Kondō ollowed their advice. Kondō was trapped. Damnable Kirigaseki! From here on in, that place cursed the brothers Kondō. Perhaps Kondō balked at the above-mentioned orders because he had premonition o his ate. On October 1 [1908], Kondō traveled to Musha to look into conditions among the Tgdaya. He gathered the headmen together or a parley. Kondō began laying out his pretext [or A i s.
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KoNdō IS called to duty oNce agaIN
bringing the guardline through Musha] by telling them that the government-general was bent on revenge or Captain Fukahori’s demise. Such revenge would be meted out against Toda and Truku. These two tribes must be subdued, stressed Kondō, as he asked the Tgdaya headmen to build a guardline through Musha to Tattaka to show their support or the government-general. It goes without saying that Toda and Truku were Musha’s enemies. Mona Rudao o Mhebu and Awi Nokan o Hōgō were enthusiastic rom the start. They asked Kondō which side he would take. Kondō atly stated that he was with Musha, as a matter o course. Mona and Awi then apprised Kondō that he would have to enter their villages i he would join with Musha. Kondō replied that he would do so i that were the case. But Kondō stipulated that i Musha were not united behind the plan o exacting revenge, he could not enter their villages. The headmen answered back that they would nd, through consultation, a home and a wie or Kondō [among the villages o Musha]. Kondō expected something like this to occur. He thought it best to enter Musha and arrange or the Tgdaya to construct the guardline themselves. To accomplish this goal, he knew that he would have to marry a local woman in Tgdaya country to gain their complete trust. Besides, his current wie [Iwan Robao] was rom Paalan Village, which was no longer a orce to be reckoned with. Thereore, he had already resigned himsel to becoming a son-in-law o Hōgō or Mhebu in order to control the Tgdaya and manage the construction o a guardline. These were the two most powerul villages in Musha at the time.
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oNdō said, “I do not want to live deep within Musha’s interior, but rather in Kirigaseki, where I would be closer to you all.” Kondō was testing the waters. Even i the preect said that he would sell the land, the Tgdaya people did not even understand the concept o unregistered land and might think that it was their land, under Indigenous ownership. Thereore, Kondō was araid that a misunderstanding could easily arise concerning this very important matter. The Tgdaya replied that Kirigaseki would be suitable. The land was owned by a Paalan villager; they agreed to ask [the owner] to transer the land to Kondō. Aer that, they would build a house or Kondō, once the land was given over. The Tgdaya people took such good care o Kondō because they were happy to have him arrive in their village, which enabled them to make war, an activity they relished. Kondō went to Nantou and met the preect. He reported on the results o his talks with the Tgdaya. Kondō thereupon received ocial orders Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , .
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to build a guardline to Tattaka. In the course o shuttling to and rom the villages, Kondō conrmed that the Kirigaseki land was owned by Pihu Nasui and Walis Nokan o Paalan Village. It was communicated to Kondō that Pihu Nasui wanted an ox and that Walis Nokan wanted seventy items (what kind o items did not matter to him, as long as there were seventy) or the land. However, the problem o Kondō’s wie still remained. His wie at the time, Iwan Robao, was rom Paalan Village, which had lost its inuence. Indigenous women who had once been married in the plains were not allowed back in their villages, so the headmen insisted that Kondō divorce Iwan and then remarry. The issues surrounding Indigenous women (banpu) were intricately bound up with Indigenous aairs in general; whether or not trust and condence could be established oen depended upon this matter. I [a marriage between a oreigner and an Indigenous woman] turned out badly, Indigenous people would, or the sake o appearances, shrug it o and say it was merely a “women’s matter.” However, the concealment o such powerul [resentment] beneath the surace could bring about earul repercussions. Thus, on the matter o his Tgdaya wie, Kondō had to deer to the Tgdaya. That day, Kondō (o course without telling Iwan Robao) went to his wie’s native Paalan Village with the headmen to announce his divorce by killing a pig. He brought the pig’s head and legs to Paalan’s chie and distributed the leovers to relatives. Kondō also made a gi o about ten gallons o saké to each. Kondō justied the divorce by considering himsel, henceorth, an adopted son o a Tgdaya village by order o the government-general. But such a matter could not be kept concealed rom his wie in Puli, Iwan Robao. One o her relatives rushed to
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KoNdō orgaNIzeS a tgdaya war party
her and asked i she knew about the divorce. She emphatically replied that she did not. And so it was. Nonetheless, Iwan Robao knew Kondō’s true intentions. She gured that this was or the sake o the nation and harbored no sense o unair treatment. When Kondō returned home a ew days later, she laughingly told him to go quickly and become a son-in-law, lacing her comments with good humor. It appeared that instead o leaving, Kondō had been chased out o the house. O course, even without Kondō present, Iwan Robao’s livelihood would be provided or [by the Japanese]. Soon aer, Kondō’s wedding plans moved along. It was decided that he would wed a younger sister o Awi Nokan o Hōgō,38 and that his brother, Gisaburō, would wed a younger sister o Mona Rudao.39 Gisaburō and a younger sister o Mona Rudao! This bizarre coupling, which to this day evinces much discussion, was orged at this time. For our months since August, Kondō had been involved in such preparations. During this period, he was summoned to Taipei by the government-general. He explained that there was no other peaceul way to extend the guardline except or Kondō himsel to enter Musha and generally direct its completion. The government-general’s Aborigine Pacication Section asked i they should throw a big celebration or Kondō’s marriage into Musha. Thus, they provided Kondō with six head o oxen and twenty oil cans o saké. Here Kondō very publicly assumed the mantle o a groom-to-be.
T sis s Oin kn. H nm s Dis R.
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25 A WinD Fs niis Military Operations40
O
N January 1, 1909, a calendrically auspicious day,41 Kondō entered Musha as a groom. The guardline to Musha was already under construction. The police inspector’s headquarters was situated a little over twenty chō42 rom Kirigaseki. The preect Mr. Nosé was posted here. This installation was also built to protect Kondō, or no one knew i the Tgdaya would suddenly have a change o heart. On the morning o January 1, the bride’s relatives came to Kondō’s house and received the gis o the six oxen and twenty cans o saké provided by the Aborigine Pacication Section. They ormed a procession. They departed rom Puli and passed beore the [new] headquarters; they took a rest aer they passed Kirigaseki. Then they discovered that one o their cans was leaking. This happenstance was all the more reason to [begin early], so they opened the can to commence the celebration. Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , . 41 Cni siis : kiinii/kisjis. 42 kims.
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The saké ran out aer about twenty o them had become gloriously drunk. They thereore opened another can, which was a mistake. Everyone became completely inebriated; the procession ell apart into disarray. The bride’s brother, Awi Nokan, and his brother, became especially drunk and began to quarrel and wrestle. There wasn’t much Kondō could do, so he just looked on. He became anxious, however, when the tenor o the shouting became threatening. “Brother! Is it necessary or you to assist Japan so? It is inexcusable that you could help Japan without thinking [rst] o the village.” The younger brother repeatedly [leveled the accusation]. Up until this point, Kondō believed that the whole village was on board. It was terrible to learn about dissension among them, especially between these two men o inuence. I he went among them, Kondō could no longer be sure that some member o the anti-Japanese action would not take his head. It was already the evening o January 1. Drunken people slept in the eld, scattered about like the dead. Awi Nokan had ed somewhere, having been orced to retreat rom the strength o his brother’s onslaught. Alone, this younger brother went so ar as to approach Kondō and continue his harangue. Since the groom’s procession was so late, an anxious Mona Rudao came all the way to meet them. When people are rightened, they behave in an odd manner; indeed, Kondō was o no mind to spend the night there, [at the scene o the ghting and anti-Japanese sentiment]. He braved the darkness to ee back to the inspector’s station. Kondō recalled being so rightened that even the sound o his nely woven wedding-day pants brushing together made him eel as i he were being pursued. Subpreect Nosé was very concerned about Kondō. Nevertheless, 158
a weddINg-day eaSt INItIateS MIlItary operatIoNS
Nosé thought it unseemly or Kondō to avoid the village and let matters rest unresolved. Thereore, he urged Kondō to return once again. Eventually, Kondō made up his mind and silently returned at about 4 o’clock in the morning. At daybreak, Kondō told Mona Rudao about the previous evening and what he had heard. Mona Rudao also considered such a dierence o opinion to be a problem. He woke Awi Nokan’s younger brother and questioned him. To his surprise, the younger brother was still besotted rom drunkenness. Not only did he claim to know nothing o the previous evening, he was even contrite rom regret at having roughed up his elder brother. So things concluded here with the Aborigine Pacication Section’s estival liquor making Kondō, or the time being, into a coward. The procession successully entered the village on January 2 [1909]. That same day, Kondō handed over the goods, an ox to Pihu Nasui and seventy trade items to Walis Nokan, or the land in Kirigaseki. This exchange concluded the negotiations. Thereupon, the six oxen were slaughtered and distributed among all o the villagers. The wedding celebration had begun. The celebration continued until January 7. During the estivities, Kondō steadily prepared and planned maneuvers or the extension o the guardline. On January 3, Kondō borrowed y guns and one thousand rounds o ammunition rom the inspector’s station and brought them in. He gathered the men and women together on January 8 to report that the ghting would nally get underway on January 10. He also ordered them to brew liquor or the expedition’s departure. On the ninth, Kondō returned to Puli to make his nal preparations. He also picked up sixty-our ags blazoned with large characters that intoned “Protect us, merciul Buddha!” (namu amida butsu), which Kondō had ordered beorehand. 159
26 nō is n Ensin Gin43
T
he preparations were complete. Ostensibly, this battle would be ought to exact revenge upon the Truku and Toda or the demise o Captain Fukahori. So Kondō became Musha’s paramount chie (sōtōmoku). They set out to extend the guardline to Tattaka. The “Protect us, merciul Buddha!” ags became the emblems o battle. Six pieces o mountain artillery, two eld-artillery guns, and ten mortars were placed at the Kirigaseki inspector’s station. They were set to be moved wherever needed at any point along the guardline. On January 10, 1909, at ve o’clock, the Tgdaya, without a single person missing, mustered quietly and bravely as the sun rose rom the east. Just how many showed up? Small stones were used to measure their numbers. A checkpoint was set up at the pass out o Rodo Village; as the combatants passed through the exit, each le a stone. That day, 647 stones were counted, representing the number o men who marched to battle. This number o auxiliaries was charged to occupy and hold Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , .
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the road rom just in ront o Tattaka to Sanjiaoeng — about six ri.44 This distance was divided into our sections, with a commensurate number o men allocated to a station in each section. The remaining men were assigned to mobile units to guard the area between the our stations. On that day, without incident, they completed their deployments and secured the road. The sixty-our “Protect us, merciul Buddha!” banners dotted the road like a dancing white dragon. It was as i the departed souls o Captain Fukahori and his men had returned to utter in the mountain winds around Musha. When the extension o the Tattaka line was completely eected, Kondō called on the headman o Toda and declared his intention to ght. As he spread the word rom village to village he red one shot to signal his declaration o war. At this time, a Toda man hunting in the mountains toward Habon accidentally appeared on the secured road, ignorant o the declarations o battle. One o the young Musha men, who had been waiting in anticipation, regarded him as an enemy and commenced ghting with his spear. They were evenly matched and the spear ghting continued inconclusively until they broke their weapons. They began to grapple. Fighting patiently or two hours, they exchanged positions; neither wanted to give up. Man against man! This was the way they customarily ought battles. Kondō watched quietly or a long time. Though they were exhausted, it seemed that neither would quit until one o them died — unless Kondō intervened. Thereore, Kondō stepped in to separate them. He helped the Toda man and let him go. At the same time, he took care o his young ally rom Musha. Nevertheless, the youth did not appreciate Kondō’s intervention in the least. 44 A n kims.
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KoNdō NegotIateS aN exteNSIoN o the guardlINe
The youth asked Kondō why he did not take the Toda man’s head. Kondō replied that since there were two o them against one, it would not have been air. And so went Kondō’s eorts to console the young man. Kondō prayed that no blood would be shed during the construction o the guardline. It was the evening o January 10, the day Kondō dispatched his troops. Banners or a war to avenge [Fukahori] uttered above the battle stations. Kondō returned to headquarters in Kirigaseki, leaving the rest to his men. He concluded his report, explaining that the police orces (keisatsutai) could proceed at any time. The next day, the police began to move. The command o Indigenous auxiliaries, the placement o the above-mentioned eighteen artillery pieces, the building o gunnery platorms — all o the procedures necessary to ortiy the savage border along the guardline hereaer — progressed daily. Thanks to Kondō’s zeal and the protection o the character-estooned ags, this dicult work went orward without a hitch. The Tgdaya worked obediently, but the period o calm and inactivity le them chang in expectation; all they could do was massage their steely arms as they waited. They worked aithully until success was achieved, in mid-February. Then they returned to their villages. In the meantime, it had been decided that the Aborigine Pacication Section (tōkyoku) would give the Tgdaya auxiliaries compensation o an undetermined amount or their eorts. Aer consulting with Awi Nokan, headman o Hōgō, to calculate [an appropriate sum], Kondō submitted his report in April. By some uke or mistake, we are now in the Shōwa era45 and the compensation [or the Tgdaya auxiliaries] is still unpaid. This [slight] estered as a cause o subsequent 45 Dm , – n , .
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problems, like the Musha Rebellion; it even remained as part o Mona Rudao’s last will and testament.
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27 nō Bs Bs Bōn46
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ter the guardline to Tattaka had been extended as ar as Sanjiaoeng, the Tgdaya returned to their homes (see Map 2). From here on in, the police battalions would subdue and punish (tōbatsu) the Truku and Toda tribes. On February 23, 1909, the main orce opened artillery barrages against Toda; they continued to re or three days. At rst, the people o Toda were rightened into absolute silence. On February 25, however, someone rom Toda called out, “Mr. Kondō, Mr. Kondō!” Kondō believed they were calling or him because they were in trouble and needed help. Although he was warned o the danger and restrained [by his ellow Japanese], he decided to go [and answer the call]. Kondō was certain that the Toda men would not do anything unreasonable because he had rescued one o their young men earlier instead o killing him. Thereore, he obtained permission and headed or Toda on his own. The Zhuoshui Ravine was on the route to the village. As Kondō arrived, several men appeared in ront o the ravine to meet him. One o them, acting as i he could no longer wait, threw himsel 46 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , .
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into Kondō’s arms. It was the young man whom Kondō had saved! He quickly put Kondō on his back and orded the stream. His amily welcomed Kondō on the other side o the ravine. One by one they cried and thanked him or saving the young man’s lie, embracing him and then showing obeisance, as i in worship. Kondō was startled at the purity o their sentiments. Soon thereaer some headmen arrived. “I you keep ring the cannons every day, we cannot go out into our elds, and everyone will come to trouble. Please come up with a way to get us o the hook,” they implored. Then Kondō began to explain, careully and patiently, that a long time ago they had mistreated Captain Fukahori and his men. They made light o government orders and they still would not stop headhunting. For these reasons, Kondō relayed, the governor-general was upset with them. Thereore, Kondō continued, it had been decided that the Toda and Truku would be chastised and punished. He told the headmen to consult with the Truku to do something to assuage the government. Otherwise, Kondō warned, the ring could not be halted. At this time, a youth came rom Truku to summon Kondō. They decided to go back together or a conerence, so Kondō extended the day’s journey all the way to Truku. And the Truku headman was none other than Baso Bōran! He was the man who had pledged to treat Kondō as a son! By February 1909, ten years had passed since they parted back in March 1899. Perhaps because o his anxiety over aairs in Musha, Baso Bōran warmly and nostalgically greeted Kondō. Upon seeing the aged man’s ace, darkened and wrinkled over concern or his village, Kondō, despite himsel, secretly elt pity and tenderness. Yet this was a private matter! Kondō had to somehow put an end
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to their rebelliousness and peaceully get them to ollow the government’s orders. In such a manner, Kondō had to work both sides o the ence. February 25–27, Kondō lodged in Truku and repeatedly expounded upon the evils o headhunting. Henceorth, the government would emphatically not permit headhunting. Inractions would bring swi reprisals. [To assure compliance,] artillery would be permanently stationed in Sanjiaoeng. Kondō threatened and intimidated, and by turns coaxed and humored, to insist upon the justness o [the government’s position]. Then he said, “In the end, you will have to provide evidence and assurance to us that no more heads will be hunted.” With that, Kondō became silent. “And what sort o evidence would that be?” “The very tools or hunting heads — you will have to surrender your guns.” “This unreasonable [demand] is perplexing. We cannot give up our guns.” “I that is the case, then there is nothing I can do as a negotiator. I think I’ll be going!” “How about i we surrender hal our guns in the village?” “But is that really an assurance against headhunting? Anyhow, they already know how many guns you have.” “Then how many guns do we have?” “Three hundred twenty-seven.” “What! You learned this when you came here beore, didn’t you?” “Yes, that is right. Since I hate to lie, I told them everything.” “It is disturbing that you would spill the beans like that. Mr. Kondō, you are a very bad person!”
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ter some complaining, they decided to bring, or starters, about one hundred ries and apologize. On February 28, Kondō, with the headmen o Truku and Toda, came out to Sanjiaoeng, then onto the dispatch station at Tattaka. To prevent the impression o unairness, Kondō acted as translator or the Seediq, while [his brother] Gisaburō translated or the Japanese. They began to parley and submit the guns. From the start, the police knew about the Indigenous Peoples’ tricks. The police insisted that they would not permit the Seediq to turn over only one hundred guns; they demanded all o the guns and promised to compensate them with trade goods. Because Indigenous Peoples valued guns more than their very lives, it was not easy to accede [to this demand]. Thus, the negotiations dragged on and seemed to last orever. I one headman would assent, another would make his objection; the scene was pitiul. O course, even i all the guns were conscated, the locals could borrow them rom the police whenever they needed them. But 47 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , .
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or ones so deeply attached to their guns, such an arrangement would be unsatisactory. The negotiations went around and around, stopping and stalling. The police became irate; and just as the discussions began to break down, a shot was red. In the end, there was nothing the Seediq people could do when conronting artillery, so they submitted all o their guns and asked or permission [to surrender] on the spot. In act, this was the rst wholesale submission o guns in Taiwan; it created the basis or the [subsequent policy] o lending out guns [on a temporary basis]. In such a manner, Toda and Truku were pacied. On March 1, the guardline was thus extended to Azalea Hill, about two and a hal miles ahead o Sanjiaoeng. His work completed, Kondō went back to Musha around March 15, where he acknowledged the Tgdaya detachment or its service. He returned to Puli in the beginning o April. At the time Kondō was promised his land, a man named Aono Kinzō wrote the letter or him. Now Kondō asked him to survey the land. They then led their land claim. The area came to 38.67 kō!48 Soon aer, August 1909 arrived. It was decided that the guardline would be extended to Xakut. At the time, Xakut Village occupied all the area between Beigangxipu to Bei Hehuan Shan. Xakut also possessed a [martial] strength one could not dismiss out o hand. Thus, as protection against the Xakut, construction on a line beginning in Maibaala [Meiyuan] Village commenced. Around the eighth, the First Nakamoto Company arrived at Shibajiyan, the extension o the Maibaala line. To extend the Tattaka line, the Second Yoda Company was stationed below Sakuragamine. Between these two companies lie Great Xakut
48 A inin s.
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KoNdō aNd baSo bōraN reuNIted
Village, so they could not easily establish communications. Thus, they were in trouble and asked Kondō or assistance. Kondō went to Truku and reported on the situation to Baso Bōran. Kondō rounded up three hundred Seediq men in Truku and Toda, borrowed twenty guns [rom the police station], and went to Xakut to conquer them. First, he directed Baso Bōran and the Xakut headman to meet at Azalea Hill. He declared that, as they had done to the Tgdaya, Toda, and Truku tribes, the government would paciy the Xakut. The combined orces waited one hour or this inormation to make its way through the [Xakut] hamlets; then, they commenced the assault. Kondō took the point, as i there were no enemies in ront o him, ghting and advancing to his target, Ma’anling. Within a day, Kondō brought the two Japanese police companies into contact, a task hitherto very dicult to accomplish. Only old Baso Bōran and his eighteen kinsmen ollowed Kondō at the time. To this day, Kondō still eels grateul. For his service, Kondō was decorated with a commendation o the eighth order, thus salvaging his reputation. [The next event in our story] comes in 1914, when Kondō was called upon to guide Mr. Noro Yasushi’s company o 180 on an exploratory expedition rom Hehuan Shan along the Takkiri ravine. They departed rom Sakuragamine, entering Truku country on April 20. They were heading or Hehuan Shan with Baso Bōran and orty Indigenous people when they encountered a big snowstorm in the middle o the mountains. The company lost between sixty and seventy laborers, who roze to death. Baso Bōran and his amily helped out considerably, taking back the survivors to a hunting shed, located two thousand shaku49 down the mountain. They also collected and retrieved the A ms.
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company’s valuables. The relationship between Baso Bōran and Kondō Katsusaburō was curious indeed! He was a loyal ather who trusted Kondō at all times, adored him, and stuck to him like a shadow in times o peril and in times o war. Now he is in his eighties. Because he is aging, last year50 [1930] he sent a message to Kondō requesting a visit. When Kondō sent money as a token o his aection, it was said that Baso Bōran retorted, “I did not want to see the aces on the money, but only wanted to see the ace o Kondō himsel.”
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T nō the Younger51
T
he oregoing comprises, in the main, Kondō’s activities in the Musha area. Now we shall embark upon the story o his younger brother, [Kondō] Gisaburō. When the Musha Rebellion broke out, a report was submitted to the minister o colonial aairs on the issue o banpu kankei [liaisons with Indigenous women]. In this report, it was written that Gisaburō abandoned his wie, the younger sister o Mona Rudao, creating another cause or the Tgdaya to harbor a grudge against the Japanese. An even more dreadul rumor suraced to the eect that Gisaburō was implicated in the uprising [o October 27, 1930]. Kondō deplored these rumors about his brother and came to this writer with the sole intent to rectiy these mistakes and set the record straight. Even now, it is not known whether Gisaburō is dead or alive. The reason this story is being made public is because o Kondō’s wish to tell the truth. Damnable Kirigaseki! That parcel o land was supposed be sold to Kondō or helping to build the guardline in order to provide 51 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , .
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security or him and his amily in the times ahead! This was the land he chose when he promised the Tgdaya people he would live closer to them orever! This was the land he had already received permission to use by giving an ox and seventy trade good items to the Paalan villagers! This land, however, did not seem like it would be sold to him, no matter how long he waited. He applied in April 1909. Since then, he waited year aer year or his time to come. Nevertheless, the Meiji era became the Taishō era52 without any resolution. Nantou preect Nosé, the man responsible or enorcing the agreement, showed concern, but was transerred to Taitung Preecture and le. Moreover, Ōtsu [Rinpei] had returned to Japan, and the world just kept turning. Kondō was getting on in years; besides, he was the type o person who would move on to the next thing once he thought a situation was beyond repair. Gisaburō, on the other hand, was a youth in his twenties and still not wise to the ways o the world. He was apparently a rank and guileless man who could not let sleeping dogs lie. Subsequently, the preecture head changed a couple o times since Mr. Nosé had transerred. It was 1916. Eight years had passed since the land deal was proposed. At this time, Gisaburō was a supervisor o assistant patrolmen at the Musha branch station. He noted, not without irony, that the land around Kirigaseki was being sold to the brother o the Musha subpreect. Gisaburō was incensed. He submitted a letter o resignation and took his case to Mr. Eguchi [Ryōsaburō] in Taipei, who was head o the Aborigine Pacication Section. Mr. Eguchi explained that the land permit had been issued so there was nothing more he could do about it. To conciliate Gisaburō, Eguchi suggested that he be transerred to a post in Hualien. Thus, Gisaburō was transerred 52 –.
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while maintaining his rank. He then went to Mhebu and received permission rom Mona Rudao to bring Mona’s younger sister, Gisaburō’s wie, Diwas, to Hualien. Thereore, it is certainly not the case that Gisaburō abandoned his wie in Musha. He went to Hualien. However, he did not enjoy it there very much and was overcome by gloom. In December 1916, he was again transerred to Yuli53 to work at the Tatsukai Aborigine Pacication dispatch station. When he and his wie, Diwas, arrived, there was no place or them to lodge. Angered at this cold treatment, Gisaburō decided that this was not the place or him; he returned to Shuiwei54 and spent the night. The ollowing day, he went to an acquaintance in Hualien and tendered his resignation again. Now Gisaburō is missing, so we have no way to know, except based on the testimony o Diwas, why Gisaburō remained in Hualien rom August to December, or why he had such a bad time o it. To this day, even his elder brother Katsusaburō does not know. In any event, the story has come down as ollows. That night [o his second letter o resignation,] Gisaburō took Diwas to the shore o Hualien Harbor. The sea was rough, and the ocean spray crashed over the bank. There, Gisaburō told Diwas he would commit suicide; he asked Diwas to join him. Diwas little knew that this evening would produce the sad memory o their parting or lie. She tried to calm Gisaburō down and get him to return to Puli. Here, on this rugged rocky beach on the eastern seaboard, one can see the Pacic Ocean. To this day the restless white waves pound the shore. Had the [battered beach] become enchanted to provide a setting or these two alone?
n Y n. 54 knn s Risi.
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T
he ollowing day, December 25, 1916, Gisaburō le Diwas at his riend’s house in Hualien and reappeared once more at Yuli. That evening he attended a New Year’s Eve party (bōnenkai) at the police station and then utterly disappeared. His older brother was shocked to receive a telegram in Puli. He went to Hualien immediately. For over a month, based on the sketchy inormation provided by Diwas, Kondō searched or his younger brother. Nevertheless, there was still no clue o Gisaburō’s whereabouts! That year Gisaburō was only thirty-one years old! Gisaburō le a very short will and testament to the Hualien Police section head Mr. Uno, who had always been a supporter and patron. It said, “Since the administration has treated me with such callousness, I henceorth reuse to accept the avors o Japan’s occupation [government].” As luck would have it, Kondō [Katsusaburō] heard o an inhabited house in Taitung Preecture, down the mountain rom Yuli aer entering Xingang. He went there. There was 55 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , .
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talk that someone in a Japanese kimono, who used string in lieu o a sash, lived there. The sash had presumably been lost aer it broke, having been used as a rope to lower someone down the mountain. This sort o sounded like Gisaburō, but then again it did not seem like him. In any event, Kondō ollowed the trail through the mountains to Xingang, but nothing resembling a human being ever appeared. The subject o this rumor had disappeared somewhere along the road. Aer that, Kondō, leading Diwas, could do nothing but make a tearul return to Puli. Gisaburō was due a pension. Diwas, however, as a banpu, was ineligible to receive money, because she was not entered into Gisaburō’s household register. The least Kondō could do was give Diwas Gisaburō’s pension certicate, his accumulated government-administered savings with two hundred yen added, and all o Gisaburō’s clothing. He then sent Diwas back to Puli to live with her older brother. It goes without saying that Mona Rudao grieved upon hearing this story. Thereore, we can say what we will about liaisons with Indigenous women in connection to last year’s tumult,56 but Mona Rudao’s resentment against Japan was not [due to this problem]. Kondō insisted: It is absolutely baseless to say that my brother was involved in the current troubles. Since I do not have any children, I have adopted many Indigenous girls during my residence in Puli. Thereore I have quite a large amily in Musha. It has been a whole een years since my brother disappeared rom sight. I he
56 T s Rin.
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were hiding in Musha, I certainly would have heard about it [by now]! Kondō lamented the act that his brother, who had so tragically disappeared, continued to have his name dragged through the mud, long aer [his alleged misdeeds]. Even without [the rumors], Kondō wistully recalled that Gisaburō would not have met such an end had he himsel not been connected to the Aborigine District. Now the older brother was alone in the world. Soon aer [Gisaburō’s disappearance], Kondō’s ate began to turn or the worse as well. In the beginning, since Kondō had an agreement with the Musha tribes, he was able to build a house and live [among them] without any problems. No matter how long he waited, however, there was no ocial conrmation on the status o his land. Those [ocials] o whom he could make requests had already transerred. Kondō worried that he would become a orgotten man in these parts. To avoid potential problems, Kondō retreated with his second wie, the younger sister o Hōgō headman Awi Nokan, back to Puli. The Tgdaya looked askance at Kondō’s move and continually asked or an explanation. Yet Kondō was never able to tell them a thing. Returning to the problem o recognizing the Tgdaya or assistance in constructing the Tattaka guardline:57 they would have been satised with even one small cup o saké each. But no such commendation was orthcoming. So, the childlike Tgdaya, with no sense o shame, pressed Kondō three, then our times or this acknowledgement. Kondō went to the preect and the section chie to nervously put in the request. As personnel changed over the years, their aces began to show a sour expression, and Kondō’s position gradually became dicult. The Tgdaya, 57 n–F .
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especially Mona Rudao, could not imagine [Kondō’s predicament]. Mona was a man who would not accept anything until he could understand the reason. He vocierously argued. Thus, he harshly assailed Kondō to the point where it became unbearable or Kondō to even enter the village.
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he Seediq are the sort o people with whom one could avoid complications and misunderstandings i, at the outset, they can be made to understand a rationale to their satisaction. Mona Rudao was especially this type o man. Because o this, he could seem immodest and arrogant at rst sight. Moreover, being a man untouched by civilization, Mona could not plumb the signicance o a proverb known to all Japanese; namely, that one does not argue one’s case, no matter how just or reasonable, to crying babies and lordly nobles, because reason is useless in either case. The new circumstances that attended shis and changes in the world o Japanese [colonial] bureaucracy were completely beyond Mona Rudao’s comprehension. Thereore, rom start to nish, Kondō remained silent. Even i he would have explained, he would not have been understood. As a Japanese, these things were painul [or Kondō] to discuss anyway. When he would put in a request with the preect, he would be shown a sour expression. I Kondō was insistent, he was taken to be siding with the Tgdaya. The situation was rie with bit58 Fm P nō’s mmi. Fis is F , .
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terness and misunderstanding. Compared to the old days, Puli had become a very dicult place or Kondō to live. Kondō suspected he had become completely ineectual [around Puli,] and it would be good to just exit quietly. It is not unreasonable that Kondō, who is a normal human being and not a saint, would eel sad! Fortunately, he and his ather had reclaimed a certain amount o land. In 1912, Kondō purchased this as uncultivated land rom a Chinese (Shinajin) named Yu Xiaoqing (Yo Hōsē), to whom the land had been previously titled. They worked to improve this roughly orty kō.59 Then, in June 1916, Kondō made an agreement to sell the parcel to a Taiwanese (Hontōjin) named Xia Lianshi. The land was under the jurisdiction o Puli municipality, in the town o Shuizhangliu in Beigangxipu (see Map 2). Apart rom this land, Kondō owned seven kō. For some reason, a discrepancy arose; Xia Lianshi insisted that he had purchased both parcels, while Kondō argued that he had sold only the orty kō. Kondō elt secure in thinking that the contract was sucient evidence [or his claim]. Xia Lianshi, however, claimed that Kondō had alsied the contract. Yamashita Fujitarō, chie justice o the Puli branch court, caught wind o [the disagreement] and ordered Xia Lianshi to appear. Justice Yamashita had Xia sue Kondō or raud. Kondō was then summoned and jailed at the Puli branch oce or seventeen days. On the eighteenth day, he was sent to the Taichung District Courthouse. While the case was pending, Ms. Kondō Yone, resident o Taichung and Katsusaburō’s niece, heard o the trial, much to her astonishment. She asked Mr. Yoshiaki Yamaguchi to act as Kondō’s deense attorney. The result o Yamaguchi’s appeals to the court and police was
A s n n s.
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a verdict o innocent or Kondō. Instead, it was established that Xia Lianshi was guilty o bringing a alse charge against Kondō. “Gisaburō disappeared during the uss [over the land contract]. However, the experience helped me to deeply appreciate my missing brother’s eelings. Even now I can sympathize with him. O course, a young man might act in this manner. I think that I am the only one who understands the way he elt at the time he le.” There were some who said that Kondō should sue Xia Lianshi. Kondō, however, was a believer in Shingon Buddhism, so he declined and le Puli without a word. He received 20,000 yen or selling the contested land. He gave Iwan Robao 200 yen plus 150 yen in trust;60 he gave 150 yen to [Hōgō headman] Awi Nokan’s younger sister [Kondō’s second wie], and a thousand yen to his many adopted daughters, who used the money to open a tobacco stand. It was January 1918. Kondō went to Hualien alone. In Hualien, it was said o Kondō that he worked and slaved away in a pair o gaiters only to lose twenty thousand yen! So why is Kondō still in Hualien? Now he is y-seven years old. It has been thirty-six years since he met Captain Fukahori. He is still obeying Captain Fukahori’s orders, struggling to build a shrine or the souls o Captain Fukahori and his men. On December 24, 1896, Captain Fukahori gave the order: “I anybody successully arrives in Hualien, please build a shrine to placate the souls o those o us who could not make it!” Kondō would still like to ulll this charge. He says he would die contentedly i he could at least be a gardener who tended [such a] shrine. The wheel o karma has turned strangely indeed. “Because the Captain’s soul is angry, the Musha Rebellion occurred!” Indeed, Captain Fukahori’s sacrice o lie in Musha, P s sins n.
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along with Kondō’s occasional contributions, enabled the governance o these savage mountains without incident and without warare. Fortunately, the captain’s son serves in the Taiwan military. Moreover, his widow has come over to Taiwan. As the author, I have put my brush to paper with prayers that Kondō’s last wish, the construction o a memorial shrine or Captain Fukahori, may be hastened by even one day.
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1. The Dramatic Site of Kondō’s Investigations In the rst installment, editor Watanabe Sei sets the scene or parts two through thirty-one o the serialized memoir. The narrator describes an encounter between Kondō Katsusaburō and his “adopted daughter” Pira Pihu on November 2, 1930, ve days into the Musha Rebellion — just as military units were establishing bases or the Japanese counterattacks. The next installment o the series, part two, ashes back to 1896, to the beginning o Kondō’s time in Taiwan. Subsequent installments move orward in time. Part thirty-one closes the story with details about Kondō’s lie aer he relocated rom the Musha area to Hualien in 1918. This introductory installment attests to Kondō’s credibility as a guide to the rebellion’s causes by emphasizing his close relationship to Mona Rudao, its ringleader, and by touting Kondō’s amiliarity with local languages and political conditions. The original Japanese-language text reers to Indigenous Peoples as banjin, which roughly means “savage.” It is a pejorative term to be sure. This word is also terribly imprecise; it lumps together people o many dierent locales and ethnicities under one label. Thereore, this translation does not reer to “savages” but rather uses ethnic and residential terms that more accurately convey the identities o the people written about in Kondō’s memoir. The term “Indigenous Peoples” is capitalized because indigeneity is a political category as much as it is a descriptive word. In this book, the “Indigenous Peoples” are the Austronesian ethnic groups whose residence in Taiwan preceded that o the majority Han inhabitants, and who are the direct ancestors o the peoples who identiy as, and are recognized as, Taiwan’s Indigenous population. Within this large umbrella group are many sub-identities 187
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and residential markers that apply to the people Kondō directly encountered or had opinions about. The Seediq people are Taiwan Indigenous peoples who are the main characters (besides Kondō himsel) in the book. The Seediq people can be divided into three subgroups: the Tgdaya (reerred to as “Musha tribes” in the original Japanese text), the Truku, and the Toda. In Kondō’s time, these three residentially proximate and culturally related Seediq subgroups oen had antagonistic relations. In many instances, Kondō speaks o cultural or political conditions that pertain to all three groups o Seediq. In such cases, I translate “banjin” as “Seediq people.” At other times, Kondō is clearly reerring specically to Toda, Truku, or Tgdaya people only; I have translated accordingly. These three subgroups are urther divided into residential units: alang, in the Seediq language. For example, Mhebu is Mona Rudao’s alang; it is an Indigenous place, it is a Seediq place, and it is also a Tgdaya place. The same goes or Hōgō, the abode o Kondō’s second wie, and Katsukku, the hometown o Kondō’s partners in the exploration o a transmontane trail. Mhebu, Hōgō, and Katsukku are all Tgdaya places, and thus Seediq places. Baso Bōran was a headman in Sadu, which is a village in Truku territory; it is also a Seediq place but not a Tgdaya place. When Kondō is clearly reerring to the people o a particular village/alang, I translate banjin as “Mhebu people,” “Sadu people,” or “Katsukku people” as appropriate. See Figure 1 or more on ethnic terminology or Indigenous Taiwanese. The term “Musha,” synonymous with the 1930 rebellion, also means “Tgdaya” when it reers to an ethnic group. The placename “Musha” also reers to the administrative town built by Japan in the heart o Tgdaya country in the 1910s, which ironically had ew Tgdaya (Musha) residents. In the original text, Kondō 188
NoteS: 1. the draMatIc SIte o KoNdō’S INveStIgatIoNS
speaks o “Musha” as a place; but it is not clear i Kondō means “Paalan,” “Hōgō,” or “Mhebu.” Thereore, when Kondō mentions the place “Musha,” I have le it as written in the sources. Other Indigenous groups mentioned in the memoir are the Atayal, Taroko, and Pangcah peoples. Like Seediq peoples, these ethnic groups can be subdivided into dialect groups and urther into settlements. Seediq, Atayal, and Taroko people all practiced ace-tattooing and were prominent or their custom o ritual head-taking. Japanese writers called these three groups the “northern tribes.” Pangcah people generally lived in the ri valley and lowlands o eastern Taiwan, and were oen reerred to as “lowland Indigenous people” by the Japanese. As Map 1 indicates, Pangcah people generally lived outside o the “Aborigine District,” although the Pangcah were classied as an Indigenous People in ocial and scholarly publications. In this text, the Xakut, Mugua, and Wanda subgroups o Atayal people are prominent, as are the Batoran subgroup o Taroko people, and the ijiachuang subgroup o Pangcah people. While at rst this terminology may seem daunting or some readers, the action taking place in the narrative reveals how these groups are related. Readers can gure out the ethnic relationships and hierarchies rom context; a command o these terms is not necessary to ollow Kondō’s memoir. I have retained the term “Aborigine” (“savage” in the original) or titles like “Aborigine Pacication” and the “Aborigine District,” which are terms or government-designated entities. Returning to the narrative action. The quasi-ocial investigations initiated by Kondō on November 2, 1930, were among the rst conducted near Musha Town aer the attacks on Japanese police and citizens at the Musha Elementary School. Kondō’s tale begins with a ourish by laying the blame or the Musha 189
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Rebellion on Japanese ocialdom’s treatment o Indigenous Peoples as laborers and auxiliary soldiers. Kondō’s interlocutor in this installment, Pira Pihu, was an actual historical gure, according to the 1980s memoir o Pihu Walis, a youth who resided near Musha at the time o the uprising. Walis recalled that Kondō and rst wie Iwan Robao brokered the marriage between Pira Pihu and Nakata Yasutarō (a sugar exporter), and that Pira Pihu’s mother, Pira Ryū, was a Mhebu native and kin to Mona Rudao.1 Pira Pihu’s and Nakata’s daughter Yasuko, like other children o Japanese athers and Tgdaya mothers, attended public institutions o higher learning along with Japanese students in Puli, the governmental center in the area. Although Mona is the ocus o Pira Pihu’s recollections, she mentioned local policemen “Ichirō” and “Jirō” in passing as the men who inormed other Tgdaya people o goings-on among Japanese policemen. Their Tgdaya names were Dakis Nomin and Dakis Nawi (they were not brothers); they were given the Japanese names Hanaoka Ichirō and Hanaoka Jirō. Each man was academically precocious; Ichirō (Dakis Nomin) graduated rom Taichung Normal School, while Jirō graduated rom the upper course o the Puli grammar school. Ichirō was reportedly rustrated at being posted to teach in a school or Indigenous children, a job or which he was overqualied. Schools or Indigenous children generally taught our years o basic literacy, and they were staed by policemen who happened to be posted to a particular district. Both Hanaokas committed suicide during the conusion that ensued when Seediq warriors cut the telegraph
G Ynin [Pi Wis], Musha hizakura no kuruizaki: gyaku satsu jiken ikinokori no shogen, Katō Minoru, trans. (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1988), 123.
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lines out o Musha, leaving an impassioned note explaining that as Seediq men they would not be captured alive. Aer the Musha Rebellion, Japanese colonial policy-makers theorized, based on the rumors that the Hanaokas were complicit in the rebellion, that overly educated natives posed a threat to public order. Thus, Indigenous Peoples throughout Taiwan were barred rom post-elementary academic education aer the uprising.2 Pira Pihu’s dramatic suicide at the end o this installment, like those o the Hanaokas (Dakis Nomin and Dakis Nawi), was one o the hundreds o suicides that comprised the Tgdaya response to the uprising (see introduction).
2. Kondō Arrives in Puli Kondō, like many Japanese colonists in Taiwan, had also participated in the Sino-Japanese War, which was ought between July 1894 and January 1895 in Korea and northeast China, and in Taiwan rom March 1895 until March 1896. Mori Ushinosuke, another Sino-Japanese War veteran who was known or his Indigenous-language prowess, also recalled shipping out to Taiwan, spurred on by the images o Taiwan’s savagery, in language similar to Kondō’s in part two o the memoir: For some reason, the thought o going to Taiwan really made my eccentric heart race with excitement. I remember well the stories I had heard as a child about the South Seas and the devil-like savages who lived in
s Ysi, “in snjūmin in ōik: Aisn sk snn, sn,” in Seikatsu no naka no shokuminchi shugi, edited by Mizuno Naoki (Kyoto: Jinbunshoin, 2004), 146.
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Taiwan. This ar-o place was now a part o Japanese territory, and I thought i some Japanese were going there rom here, I would like to go, too.3 Kondō’s rst known destination in Taiwan, Puli, was the walled town closest to Tgdaya territory; it was a ing-period (1684–1895) administrative and commercial outpost. As Kondō mentioned, conditions there rapidly deteriorated aer the Japanese declared themselves masters o the island. Puli was captured by Taiwanese rebel orces on July 11, 1896, as the last in a series o towns and cities under the control o the rebel leader Jianyi; it was retaken by the Japanese on July 22.4 The records o Aborigine Administration list the Puli Bukonsho as “open” on July 23, 1896, the day aer Jianyi’s deeat, with Hiyama Tetsusaburō as its rst chie.5 Hiyama Tetsusaburō, whom Kondō claimed to have worked under, was the Puli district head who parleyed with Tgdaya headmen on January 1, 1896, to secure promises to stop headhunting and distribute gis. Hiyama soon aer wed the daughter o Paalan headman Pihu Sapo. There are many manuscript documents o Hiyama’s tenure in Puli; none o them mention Kondō. In Wakumoto Seiichi’s 1928 book Untold Tales o Taiwan, Kondō claims to have been an interpreter or the Taiwan Garrison orces under Army command at the time he wed Iwan Robao in mid-1896. He probably arrived in Puli between May and July o 1896.
i Usinsk, “in nk ni si,” in Taiwan banzoku shi (Taipei: Southern Materials Center, 1996), 2. kksi Ysō, Japanese Rule in Formosa, trans. George Braithwaite (London, New York, Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), 93–94. nō ni . Riban shikō dai ikkan (Taipei: Southern Materials Center, 1995 [1918]), 22.
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3. The Ill-fated Fukahori Mission The Fukahori Yasuichirō mission was one o ve commissioned by the government-general in December 1896 to survey routes across Taiwan’s central mountain chains or uture railways and trunk roads. There is documentary evidence o Kondō’s participation in the search or Fukahori’s remains. His claim to have been the “eenth member” o the Fukahori expedition, however, is doubtul. For the rest o his memoir, Kondō will invoke the name o Fukahori as the locus o his loyalty. As might be expected or a memoir recounted over thirty years aer the events in question, Kondō made numerous actual errors; his chronology o the expedition’s progress is about three weeks ahead o actual events. In actuality, Fukahori was given the order to make his survey on December 28, 1896, and le Taipei by train on January 11, 1897. The company arrived in Puli on January 15 (not on December 24, as stated in the memoir), and set out to the east, toward Hualien, on January 18. According to ocial records, Fukahori and his men disappeared, and ell out o communication with other ocials aer January 28, the date o Fukahori’s last cable to mission headquarters in Puli. The chronology aer this date was pieced together by various investigators (including Kondō) based on interviews with Toda and Truku residents connected with the disappearance, orensic evidence, and inormation in the cabled reports rom Fukahori beore his disappearance. See the timeline at the end o the book or details about chronology. The disappearance o Fukahori signaled the beginning o soured relations between Seediq peoples and the Taiwan Government-General, which maniested themselves in Japanese
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trade blockades.6 Fukahori’s wie was notied o his disappearance in April 1897. The rst ocial version o events was written up by August 4, 1897, or six months aer Fukahori’s disappearance. Lieutenant Tatsumi Naobumi, head o Taiwan’s military garrison, determined that Fukahori and his men were killed in battle, rather than just lost and dead rom exposure and hunger. This conclusion entitled Fukahori to a stately burial and his amily to death benets. Tatsumi’s account states that Fukahori and his men were victims o a “sneak attack” by “savage brigands.” The men ell near a ravine on the western slope o Hehuan Mountain, about orty kilometers (11 ri) east o Puli. The eects obtained by a Japanese search party, mostly clothing, were spattered in blood, riddled with bullet holes, torn at the sleeves, and run through with spear points. It appeared that eleven o the men suered horrible deaths, but the exact time or place o their demise was uncertain.7 Others presented a less condent assessment. The local Indigenous People interviewed by a journalist claimed that rigid weather and snow alone killed the expeditioners.8 In an interview held in April 1931, Kondō attributed the cause o the mission’s demise to a
k , “Cūō snmk ōn ii,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shin pō, January 24, 1908; “Puli-she bankai dan,” Taiwan Minpō, May 8, 1903; Mori Ushinosuke, “Jūgonen mae no bankai: yon,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, May 4, 1912. Uim Bn’ū, “Pi n kii Fki ii ūnn n nms,” Taiwan kanshū kiji 5, no. 11 (1905): 66; Furuno Naoya, Taiwangun shireibu: 1895–1945 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1991), 58–77. “ōkin n ōsinin,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, February 8, 1906, p. 2.
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heavy snowstorm and bad weather, and made no mention o hostile Indigenous People.9 In Kondō’s recollections as related in part two, Fukahori utters a soliloquy to exhort his men, and also nurses a everish Kondō through the night. These details may be apocryphal, because Kondō certainly misremembers the name o one o the two Seediq-language interpreters on the mission, Pan Laolong, who Kondō reers to as “Li Along.” This Mr. Li shows up later in Kondō’s memoir as a goldminer, so he was probably not the person Kondō meant to name as interpreter or Fukahori. According to Kondō’s colleague and ellow interpreter Mori Ushinosuke, Fukahori hired Wugonglun resident Iwan Robao as an auxiliary interpreter, along with an Indigenous-language interpreter named Pan Laolong, a Plains Aborigine resident o Niumianshan.10 Mori’s 1910 report is the rst one to name the auxiliary interpreters — he makes no mention o Kondō; subsequently, Fujisaki Seinosuke put his imprimatur on Mori’s account. In 1899, just aer the Fukahori expedition disappeared, another interpreter rom Niumianshan named Li Laolong was known to the government as the only interpreter uent in the languages and customs o the “our big settlements” (Tgdaya, Toda, Truku, and Wanda) under Puli’s jurisdiction. This could have been the same Laolong who traveled with Fukahori in early 1897. Li Laolong o Niumianshan was a orty-seven-yearold holdover rom ing times who had been an interpreter
“Y Fki i’i sisō nki,” Tainichi gurafu 2, no. 4 (April 15, 1931): 28. i Usinsk, “Fki n ki ni,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, September 24, 1910, p. 5; Fujisaki Seinosuke, Taiwan no Banzoku (Tokyo: Kokushi Kankōkai, 1930), p. 606.
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and trader or decades.11 In either case, it is evident that there were experienced Taiwanese interpreters living in the Pingpuzu settlements around Puli or hire when Fukahori came through in January 1897. Perhaps Kondō did set o rom Puli with Fukahori in January 1896, as stated in the memoir, but there is no documentary support or this claim.
4. Kondō Explains Seediq Mentality Kondō remarked time and again that Seediq people were suspicious o the unseen world, araid that magic might be perormed against them. In this passage, Iwan Robao’s brother demonstrates his dread o Kondō’s pocket watch by running rom it and then destroying it. This vignette resembled a human-interest story concerning Kondō’s patron Hiyama Tetsusaburō. On April 5, 1896, the Hōchi Newspaper reported that Hiyama “rom morning until evening called her his ower, his buttery, showering his Tgdaya bride with aection.” This matrimonial bliss ended abruptly when Hiyama brought a clock into their home. Its ticking noises and moving second-hand scared his young bride, who thought it was haunted and skipped out, leaving Hiyama single and brokenhearted.12 Did Seediq men and women think those clocks were haunted? Perhaps the Japanese writers themselves, like colonists throughout the world, used machines (clocks, Victrolas, cameras) to 11 “njūii nn jūnisū iūkn Bnjin Bni ni kns jim i jōkō ōkk,” R #/, Manuscript Records of the Taiwan Government-General, Dii Eiin, nsi in His, Ami ini. 12 Aki ss, ., Shinbun ga kataru meijishi vol. 2 (Tokyo: Hara shobō, 1979): 79.
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impress colonized peoples that they had supernatural powers. At this time, ticking timepieces were also relatively new in Japan. Kondō and his ellow Sino-Japanese War veterans were likely introduced to mechanical clock-time and acquired their pocket-watches in Hiroshima, where young recruits were mustered into the army, sorted into units, and processed beore being shipped out to China, Korea, and Taiwan. According to Stewart Lone’s research, these watches were readily available on base at Hiroshima.13 It may also be the case that Kondō was projecting insecurities about the degree o civilization present among Japanese troops. Military historian Edward Drea writes that in the 1890s, in the Imperial Japanese Army, “Superstitions abounded, especially among peasant conscripts, who ound themselves in a barracks among strange new things.” 14 A requently cited example was the case o conscripts who worshipped wood-burning stoves as idols, so novel was their appearance. According to a contemporary newspaper article, Kondō, Nagakura, and Itō le Shouchengen-zhuang, near Puli, on September 28, 1898, a year later than Kondō recalls in the memoir. Nagakura’s given name in the newspaper account is Jirōsuke, instead o “Kichiji” as recalled in the memoir; Itō’s given name is the same in both accounts.15 According to unpublished government reports, Kondō and two others returned to Puli on December 16,
Ln, Japan’s First Modern War: Army and Society in the Confict with China, 1894–95 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 58. 14 E . D, Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853– 1945 (Kansas City: University o Kansas Press, 2009), 73. 15 “ōsi ksi nki ni ,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, October 14, 1898, p. 5.
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1898, along with een Seediq people rom Toda and Truku.16 The sources are not clear about the length o time Kondō spent living in or near Sadu, but he does appear to have allen o the radar or at least a ew months. See the timeline or details regarding the chronological discrepancies discussed above.
5. Commerce in Puli Disrupted In the Puli region, rom late ing times, many so-called jukuban (“cooked barbarians”) — who were multilingual and knowledgeable about local topography and politics — hired themselves out as guardsmen to merchant amilies who harvested camphor, or to the government or campaigns against the highland Indigenous Peoples. These men were known as “savage auxiliaries” and by other titles. They certainly killed their share o mountain dwellers, and they did this or money. Kondō’s assertion that they beheaded highlanders or the sole purpose o selling the bodies or medicinal ingredients, whether accurate or not, was part o a larger discourse on Chinese brutality toward the Indigenous Peoples. A rumor had been circulating in Treaty Port circles or decades to the eect that Fujianese on the mainland and in Taiwan purchased Indigenous esh in open markets. It was said to impart the bravery and sturdiness o the mountaineers to the eaters o this rare and expensive game. Since cannibalism was such a ubiquitous charge against despised peoples in the
16 njūichi-nen jūnigatsu chū Taichū-ken Banjin banchi ni kansuru jimu oyobi jōkyō hōkoku,” Record #4595/8, Records of the Taiwan Sōtokuu, Digital Edition, Academia Sinica Institute for Taiwan History, pp. 174–175.
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nineteenth century, it is hard to evaluate these claims.17 In any event, Kondō, who became adept at practicing Chinese herbal medicine (see below), displayed his willingness to try local cures while remaining agnostic as to their ecacy. Kondō’s version o events in this installment is partially correct, although his chronology is conused; some o his account does not jibe with contemporary unpublished documents. He also grossly overstates the Japanese police’s and military’s, and his own, ability to intimidate Tgdaya people and push them around. The documentary record suggests well into 1899 Japanese emissaries to Tgdaya headmen were treated generally with contempt and put in positions o supplication. This would change by 1910 or so, but it is quite unlikely that Kondō bossed his Seediq associates around in the manner recounted in part ve o the memoir. In May 1897, Second Lieutenant Akimoto Genhiro’s men turned up the blood-spattered shirts and bullet-hole-riddled uniorms that ormed the basis o Lieutenant Tatsumi Naobumi’s award o “battle death” status to the allen Japanese explorers. The government-general’s instructions to Akimoto were explicit: his men would be outnumbered, and were to travel only when permitted by local headmen, who were to be consulted in Puli beore the mission set o. I trouble arose, they were to turn back, and not oer battle. As it turned out, Akimoto and company heeded these rules, and did in act turn back because o 17 kksi : “…sm s Cins s s i iims, mk i in s, s i n s; i, , kins n ss in s si in mss n i Cins mnins n n, sm m is miins. mims s is Am [Ximn].” Japanese Rule in Formosa, 228.
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resistance rom the headman Baso Bōran, who did not wish to assist the Japanese, or even talk to them. The one local headman who did return a ew items o clothing to Akimoto did so with the warning, “I you are still angry with us, I will kill you.”18 As the most detailed account o Akimoto’s mission explained it, Akimoto sent Tgdaya guides as emissaries to each village along the route to Hehuan Shan to inquire about the remains. Contrary to Kondō’s assertion, Akimoto did not make long threatening speeches to earul Seediq men, but rather spent days waiting or intermediaries to return rom the hills. The cautious protocol explains why Akimoto’s ourteen-strong company spent a whole month gathering a ew torn shirtsleeves, some busted glasses, and a pair o black lacquered chopsticks. As Colonel Tatsumi put it in his summary report, “The Toda men were ready to do battle, so Akimoto was orced to call o the investigation.”19 Interpreter-ethnologist Mori Ushinosuke recalled that Nagano Yoshitora marched to Paalan (home to Kondō’s wie Iwan) and gathered the headmen together. As they convened the parley, someone ran a spear through one o Nagano’s interpreters, orcing Nagano to return to Puli in haste. Aer this incident, Nagano tried to prevent the mountaineers rom trading in the Puli basin, by ordering jukuban guards to stop their progress.20 Kondō’s assertion that jukuban (whom he calls “rikuban”) indeed hunted heads or money in the Puli basin probably reers to their employment by ing and Japanese rural ocials as guards. According to Kondō’s testimony, Chiri Wadai was a Katsukku Village (Tgdaya) man who head-hunted a Japanese lumber worker, 18 Uim Bn’ū, “Pi n kii,” . “Fki i iii mi sissō ni mn sōsk ik nmi ni kkk sūs,” R #C, n Cn Asin Hisi Rs. i, “ūnn m n nki.”
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mistaking him or a Han Taiwanese. In Kondō’s account, the head-taking occurred on June 19, 1897. The perpetrators, upon learning that the victim was Japanese, ran directly to Kondō to beg orgiveness. Kondō reports that, subsequently, an angry Pacication Oce Chie Nagano Yoshitora demanded the head o Chiri Wadai to expiate the crime. In Kondō’s account, the Tgdaya reused to give up the head, orcing the government to prohibit cross-border trade. District oce manuscript records tell a dierent story, although they corroborate that a man rom Katsukku named Chiri Wadai killed a Japanese man. He is named Nakajima Taikichi in Taiwan Government-General records; he was killed on July 30, 1898. Thereaer, the Puli District Oce (not Pacication Oce, as in Kondō’s report) threatened trade sanctions in retaliation. This was over a month aer Nagano Yoshitora le the Pacication Oce, so Kondō has conused the sequence o events.21 Nakajima Taikichi was killed in the oothills o Mount Wugonglun. When the body was discovered, an Indigenous emale interpreter was sent to several Tgdaya headmen as an emissary o the Puli District Oce. At last, on February 19, 1899, over six months aer the discovery o Nakajima’s body, the district ocer sent a message sanctioning Hōgō headman Pawa Nokan and Katsukku headman Chiri Tomau to bring a retinue o three Tgdaya men and een Tgdaya women to Wugonglun or discussions. On February 20, all twenty arrived; upon questioning, they gave up Chiri Wadai as the killer. The Japanese district ocer demanded Chiri Wadai’s head as the price o maintaining trade relations.
21 T Piin Of s s n n n , , s n’s s s . nō ni, . Riban shikō dai ikkan (1918), 126.
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The two Tgdaya headmen assented aer much back-and-orth.22 On May 21, our Tgdaya chies and eighty-one Tgdaya men and women arrived in Puli. The ollowing day, they brought Chiri Wadai’s head into the large plaza in the district oce. The ranking Japanese ocer engaged in a stone-burying ceremony with the our chies, thereby ritually wiping the slate clean, and reopened trade.23
6. Kondō is Adopted by Baso Bōran Having le Musha rather hurriedly in the racas over the killing o a lumberjack near Puli, Kondō was reunited with a ormer trading partner and powerul Truku headman, Baso Bōran. According to this 1930 memoir, Kondō is pretending to be in Truku or commerce. To gain initial access to the tribes beyond the Tgdaya settlements, Kondō employs a shop hand’s Truku wie, Tappas Kuras. In Kondō’s account, she suddenly disappears when trouble erupts, and he is saved by the ather gure o Baso Bōran, narrowly escaping death. By Kondō’s reckoning, he spent well over a year and a hal in Truku blending into local society, staying alert or signs o Fukahori’s head, and reconnoitering the mountain passes to Hualien. Kondō eventually returned to
22 “njūninn iis ū iūkn Bnjin ni ni kns jim i jōkō ōkk,” R #/9/12, Records of the Tai wan Sōtokuu, Digital Edition, Academia Sinica Institute for Taiwan History. “njūninn nis ū iūkn Bnjin ni ni kns jim i jōkō ōkk,” R #/10/12, Records of the Tai wan Sōtokuu, Digital Edition, Academia Sinica Institute for Taiwan History.
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Puli, in March 1899, along with the shop hands who le with him in 1897, to cheers o jubilation, according to the memoir. Some details o Kondō’s reminiscences rom his Truku days cannot be conrmed independently, but they are interesting or what they tell us about Kondō’s denition o patriotism and loyalty in late 1930. Many o the personages and situations he mentions are independently conrmed in other sources, or are plausible on grounds to be detailed below. There is probably no way to determine whether or not Kondō participated in a headhunting expedition, or i he burned the soles o his eet to become a good rock climber, or i he was adopted by Baso Bōran. Nevertheless, there are a ew names and events rom Kondō’s narrative that can be correlated with contemporary records. It can be conrmed that Kondō was among the trackers who helped Puli Benmusho chie Ōkuma Hirotake locate Fukahori’s remains on March 24, 1900. Kondō, in part eight o this memoir, records the date as January 1901, which is not ar o considering Kondō’s loose standards or chronology. Kondō Katsusaburō’s name is clearly written in Ōkuma’s manuscript report as a “trading-post merchant” (buppin kōkanjin) who, along with a “volunteer” interpreter named Gotō Gorō and the woman “Bira Wari,” set out or Truku with Ōkuma.24 Kondō is also mentioned in his capacity as a “northern tribes interpreter,” resident in Puli, in Torii Ryūzō’s travelogue, published in 1901, reerring to events in August 1900.25 Thus, whatever Kondō did during his absence
24 “Pis sisōō kn jnsi ik Fki i’i iiō sōnn is kkn ōkk,” R #/, Records of the Tai wan Sōtokuu, Digital Edition, Academia Sinica Institute for Taiwan History. 25 ii Rūō, “in ūō snmk n ōn: sōn,” Taiyō 7, 9 (1901): 131–32.
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rom Puli, he did return beore March 1900, and he did resume his activities as an interpreter and trader. Although he was not a household name by any estimation, Baso Bōran was known to Japanese ocials who ollowed the Fukahori investigation closely. An ocial who wrote under the pseudonym “Uchiyama Ban’yu” (Inner-mountain savage warrior), wrote an account o the Akimoto (1897) and Ōkuma (1900) investigations or the government-general’s Taiwan kanshū kiji that appeared in 1905. Uchiyama’s account demonstrates that the author had direct access to ocial reports, as did Fujisaki Seinosuke (see above), who also provides a digest o both missions (published in 1930). As Kondō relates, Baso Bōran was a Truku headman; in act, he was considered the “paramount” Truku headman or the tribe’s eight villages. Baso’s abode was the village o Sadu, where the Akimoto mission was stopped in its tracks in May 1897. According to the ocial accounts o the mission, Baso drove the Japanese out o Sadu, claiming that he could not meet with Akimoto because o a local eud. According to Ōkuma’s drat population census o Truku and Toda, taken on aith rom his interpreters, Baso was the headman o Sadu along with a man named Kuras Tappa. In act, the name cards o Fukahori’s translator were ound in this man’s house, which led to the eventual recovery o the rest o Fukahori’s remains. The terms “chie” and “headman” were imprecise; these were rough Japanese equivalents or positions o inuence in local aairs. It was possible or many “headmen” and “chies” to co-exist in the same village. The interesting point about Kuras Tappa as Sadu headman is that it provides the link to Kondō’s patronage by Baso Bōran. It is possible that Kuras Tappa was ather to Tappas Kuras, the wie o Kondō’s shop hand Nagakura Kichiji (Jirōsuke). Seediq sons and daughters took the 204
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surnames o their parents as given names, on the patronymic system. For example, Mona Rudao’s son was called Tadao Mona, or “Tadao, son o Mona.” I Tappa Kuras was daughter to Sadu headman Kuras Tappa, Kondō’s untroubled entrance into Truku is comprehensible. Through the politics o intermarriage, gi distribution, and trade, Truku had secured an ally in Nagakura, who extended his network to include Kondō. Such a likely scenario explains why Kondō le Iwan in Wugonglun; she was part o a dierent kinship/commerce network. For women in Seediq country, these loyalties were not transerable, but or men like Kondō, as we shall see later, new networks could be orged through remarriage or abandonment. With Tappas and Nagakura in tow, Kondō was given sae passage to Truku and even Sadu, a privilege denied previously to Akimoto Genhiro and his search party. In his version o events, Kondō recongured his dependency on Tappas and Nagakura into a dramatic tale o peril and rescue. As Kondō says in this installment, the Seediq “have something o the Japanese spirit.” For Kondō, this spirit, as this memoir demonstrates over and over again, is one characterized by loyalty. Recasting Kondō’s purported relationship to ather gure Baso as one enabled by multiple ties o marriage and commerce, moreover, explains why Baso would risk battle with Xakut to deend Kondō (and presumably Nagakura). As the conduit or prestige goods obtained rom lowlanders near Musha, Baso’s Japanese guests were valuable assets in the redistributive political economy o Truku country.
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7. “Kondō the Barbarian” Goes Headhunting Government summaries, anthropological reports, and journalistic accounts o Taiwan Indigenous Peoples included, de rigueur, photos o skull shelves and commentary on headhunting, either as a orm o murder or as a cultural enterprise. Kondō opts or the cultural view, lavishing attention upon the ritual treatment o the severed head, which he considered to be a thing o beauty. Kondō adds nothing to the voluminous literature already in print on the topic, except to express envy or the bodiless head, which has been given such a dignied resting spot. Kondō was at a loss or words when it came to explaining the reverence Seediq people elt toward the heads, intimating that modern Japanese “just wouldn’t understand.” Again, Kondō describes in detail local cures or illness, this time human hair as a medicine. At the bacchanal occasioned by the successul taking o the head, Kondō stumbles upon eight skulls that have yet to be shorn o their hair. These are dierent, or they wear the distinctive “gobu gari,” or Japanese military-style crew cut. Exercising prudent restraint, Kondō bided his time or an opportunity to interrogate his hosts about the identity o the skulls and the ate o the mission.
8. The Sole Survivor Searches for His Captain’s Head There are many published and unpublished lists o the ourteen men who perished in the Fukahori expedition; Kondō’s name is never among them. Based on my own exhaustive search or reerences to Kondō in manuscript and printed sources, I think 206
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he probably had little or no direct connection to the expedition, and that he pieced his knowledge together rom his acquaintance with many participants, and his participation in the search or Fukahori’s remains. Be that as it may, Kondō goes so ar as to state that his eeting connection to Fukahori “began to dominate the rest o his lie.” It is in act the case that Kondō met Fukahori’s widow in a publicized meeting well aer the Musha Rebellion, so in a loose sense he did maintain a long-term connection to the ill-ated expedition. The mapmaking component o Fukahori’s mission was central to its charter. Sakakura Kamegorō is listed on the roster in Fujasaki’s account as “military department commissioner (responsible or mapmaking).” Sakakura was one o only our shizoku (ex-high-ranking samurai) members o the team (Fukahori, Kawami, and Mori are the other three). Sakakura hailed rom Nagasaki, like Fukahori. (Twelve o the ourteen were rom Kyūshū: our rom Nagasaki, six rom Kumamoto, and one each rom Kagoshima and Fukuoka. The other two members were rom Hyōgo and Saga in the Kansai.) Kondō, ollowing the ocial account, makes much o the Truku peoples’ consternation over mapmaking. Kondō attributes this discomort to the same ear o the insensate world that drove his brother-in-law to smash Kondō’s “model 18 pocket watch.” Kondō asserted that mapmaking, with its ghostly connotations, cowed the Seediq men o Truku into submission. In a book published in 1928 as Untold Tales o Taiwan, story-collector Wakumoto Seichi quoted Kondō himsel as saying that a member o Fukahori’s team struck a Truku onlooker with his gun.26 As Ōkuma and Fujisaki relate in their reports on the 26 Wkm iii, Taiwan hiwa (Taipei: Nihon oyobi shokumin, 1928), 268.
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investigation, the Truku men were quite curious about the process o mapmaking, and were treated violently and rudely by impatient Japanese soldiers, who elt interered with. The other version o Fukahori’s demise, contained in Ōkuma’s eld report, is translated and reproduced here or comparison: The Fukahori mission stayed in Truku or seventeen days; they posted sentries each night; they were objects o curiosity, and the attentions o the Truku men disturbed their activities, especially mapmaking; they did everything they could to get the locals to stop bothering them, including scolding, which not only provoked deep resentment among their hosts but also instilled ear. On the eighteenth day, with Truku hirelings as guides, the team set o north or Xakut, where they received stout resistance; a heated battle ensued; ve Japanese received atal wounds; seven or eight Truku scouts died. They decided to retreat to Truku. Early the next morning, on the way rom Kashyaan mountain to the Būshū mountain area, the Truku men had a sudden change o heart. It may have been because o the rough treatment explained above; it may have been because the Japanese orced them to guide the team into enemy territory where they themselves took losses; anyway, they began to treat the Japanese as enemies.27
27 “Pis sisōō kn jnsi ik Fki i’i iiō sōnn is kkn ōkk,” R #/, Records of the Tai wan Sōtokuu, Digital Edition, Academia Sinica Institute for Taiwan History, 152–153.
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Fujisaki adds, rom his access to the correspondence between Puli and the expedition beore it was cut o, that the Xakut men attacked the Japanese within the context o memories o recent ing punitive expeditions, which had made the Xakut men wary o outsiders. Fukahori lost his remaining Truku guides, Fujisaki adds, because they thought it oolish to camp in the reezing cold mountain air near Hehuan Shan. In Kondō’s account, then, Fukahori was essentially the victim o bad weather and cowardly Tgdaya guides. His death was heroic because he ought on through the elements and committed seppuku beore he could reeze to death. The Seediq instinctively, it seems, sensed the magnitude o such a well-executed death, and were araid o the spiritually potent corpse. In Kondō’s version, the rozen corpses were located by hunting dogs and decapitated. Thereaer, the heads were properly dressed or ritual attention. In the reports sent orward by Japanese investigators or gathered rom interviews with Seediq and Atayal people at Japanese rural outposts, however, a dierent picture emerges. Fukahori and his men demanded that guides take them beyond the limits o local competence. Iwan Robao and Pan Laolong, as Puli-area residents, avoided Truku lands; the Truku guides on the next leg avoided Taroko territory. The behavior o the guides is ully consistent with a political economy ractured by topography, linguistic diversity, and extreme decentralization; that is why Japanese expeditions hired new interpreters and guides at various junctions along their routes inland. Eventually, Fukahori’s guides abandoned the mission. Adding to the sources o Japanese–Seediq riction, Fukahori and his men ailed to behave as guests and were physically demonstrative in blocking Truku men rom observing their mapmaking conerence. That Truku warriors should be nervous and curious about uniormed 209
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military men mapping their territory is not surprising. It turns out they were correct in their suspicions — these outsiders had come to take their land, autonomy, and resources.
9. Kondō Completes his Work in Truku Country On March 24, 1900, Ōkuma Hirotake, the chie o the civil administration o Puli subpreecture, recovered the remains that Kondō claims to have ound in Baso Bōran’s possession. Since Kondō accompanied Ōkuma, their stories are not inconsistent. Thanks to Kondō’s intercession with a Truku woman in 1898, he was able to have Bureau o Aborigine Pacication chie Ōtsu Rinpei send a Fudōson-imprinted paper amulet to Fukahori’s widow Sechiko in January 1911.28 The amulet was photographed along with a picture o Fukahori himsel. This photo appears next to a picture o Kondō and Fukahori’s widow in Ide Kiwata’s 1937 Taiwan no chisekishi.29 Buddhist amulets rom Narita’s Shinshoji temple were dealt out liberally during the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, which is probably when Fukahori, a veteran, received his. Stewart Lone reports that six thousand mamori uda (paper charms) were distributed to troops in Hiroshima in December 1894.30
28 “inn n ōsn ō,” Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (chōkan), January 12, 1911, p. 5. i, Taiwan chisekishi (Taipei: Nichinichi Shinpōsha, 1937), 278-279. Ln, Japan’s First Modern War, 111.
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10. Kondō’s Return to Puli Kondō leaves the impression that Japanese policy circa 1900 is being conducted by a ew men with personal ties to local tribes, who in turn behaved cautiously not to oend the sensibilities o their “allies.” In this case, Kondō allays the (justied) ear o Tgdaya people that he has switched sides to become Truku’s advocate with the government-general. Aer all, Kondō and his ellow traders marched back to Puli with an armed escort o Truku warriors, undoubtedly provided by Baso Bōran to ensure Kondō’s loyalty. And as we shall see in the next installment, rivalries between Wanda villagers and Tgdaya people were just as erce. For Kondō, the way out o the impasse is to convince Tgdaya men that Kondō was in Truku or the sake o Tgdaya people (and not or Kondō’s personal gain). According to Kondō, all is orgiven and Kondō is reinstated as a Tgdaya patron and intermediary with the government aer his return rom a prolonged absence.
11. The Headhunting Problem Kondō’s account o the stone-burying pledge and the complications that arose with Wanda describes the challenges acing a lightly staed imperial bureaucracy charged with managing populations accustomed to political autonomy. As early as 1897, local ocials were arguing or restrictions on rearm trac and voices grew louder or many other orms o punitive embargo. At the same time, some ocials asserted that Indigenous Taiwanese were basically honest and trustworthy, and the killing was an understandable reaction to Chinese brutality. In this atmosphere 211
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o divided opinion and divided command, operators such as Kondō were probably at their peak o inuence. Under such circumstances, interpreter-merchants probably did implement agreements via stone-burying ceremonies. There is documentary evidence to show that the Wanda tribe’s payment o orty bolts o locally manuactured vegetable-ber weave to a Chinese amily to atone or a killing was consistent with Japanese methods o administering justice beyond the areas o Han Taiwanese inhabitation (“regularly administered territory”). As Hiyama Tetsusaburō pointed out at the rst Bukonsho summit in late 1897, Japan lacked the manpower to impose jail terms or capital punishment or killers in the Aborigine District. It should also be noted that the Japanese had to deliver the pikke or red serge to Wanda to cement this deal beore anything could be accomplished. Wanda, however, still harbored a grudge against Kondō, who appears to have been the ace o Japan’s preerential treatment o Tdaya peoples circa 1900. In the next installment, Kondō’s exposed position as a Tgdaya partisan maniested itsel in a vicious attack that le him almost dead.
12. Kondō is Ambushed by Enemies The details o Kondō desperate hand-to-hand battle with Wanda warriors may or may not have been embellished. Miyatake Shōtarō’s memoir o Kondō, based on his acquaintance with Kondō aer he removed to Hualien in the 1920s, states that Katsusaburō’s body was covered in scars rom wounds inicted
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by Indigenous daggers.31 The larger importance o the story is that it establishes the eagerness o Kondō’s Tgdaya associates to avenge the insult to Kondō. Later, Kondō will claim that such eelings o loyalty to him, and enmity to his oes, was enough to mobilize hundreds o Tgdaya warriors to act against their long-term interests to help Japan advance the guardline against local rivals in Toda and Truku.
13. Kondō Leaves Puli for Han Territory This installment begins with the Tgdaya men advocating a time-reckoning system that will hasten the resumption o legal head-taking. In act, Tgdaya men did run aoul o the government-general at this time or a rash o head-taking, giving the outlines o Kondō’s narrative a high degree o plausibility. Torii Ryūzō reported that a district ocer in Puli stopped him rom traveling to Tgdaya country in August o that year due to a sudden increase in head-taking incidents. But surely the increase in violence was not due to misunderstandings about the terms o stone-burying agreements between headmen and merchant interpreters. Rather, it was the new intensity with which camphor was being harvested or the monopoly bureau, instantiated in 1899, and the large-scale capitalists who processed and shipped the camphor. Indigenous middlemen, brokers, and chies, who had traditionally taken ees or security, or as rent, were being cut out o the business as the camphor industry scaled up and
Ymm Rōii, “iks nō ssō sn sūi,” Gendai Taiwan Kenkyū, 19 (2000): 107.
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the revenues generated by the government monopoly became more critical to the preservation o the colony.32 Suce it to say that this increased tension between Japanese ocials and Indigenous Peoples in northern Taiwan, which must have been ruinous or petty traders, provided the occasion or Kondō to nally give up on his trading-post activities or a while and try his hand as a jack-o-all-trades. The years 1901 through 1904 orm a hiatus or Kondō in this memoir, which he stued with tantalizing allusions to gold mining, rock quarrying, lie among bandits, language study, and an apprenticeship with a Chinese healer. These sections are abridged in this translation o the memoir because they have no connection to the Musha Rebellion or independently veriable events discussed by Kondō.
14. Kondō and the Guardline In this installment, Kondō provides an insider’s view o the movement o the guardline. Kondō emphasizes his own desire to avoid conict, and peaceully resolve the riction entailed by running the guardline through the heart o Tgdaya territory. He describes that extension o the deensive barrier, and string o orts, rom the outskirts o the walled city o Puli to Kirigaseki (see Map 2). In July 1905, the line was extended rom Kirigaseki toward Paalan. The Japanese government certainly shelled villages that reused to cooperate, as described by Kondō in this section, although the extent o Kondō’s participation is not documented. He did, however, earn an energetic, i belated, Anni C. s, “T ns Cni n Dissin L mi Fni Enm in in, –,” Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 2 (2005): 361–85.
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ull-page commendation on April 20, 1906, or his contributions to guardline movements in Musha. Nantō Preect Koyanagi extolled not only Kondō’s interpreting work but also his ability to assuage Tgdaya people while the Japanese police built their installations. For his extraordinary service, Kondō was awarded seventy yen, which was a relatively high bonus or non-military combatants in 1906.33 Kondō ends this installment by claiming to have been the architect o the Indigenous sightseeing program. In act, this policy began much earlier, in 1897, and was not likely Kondō’s innovation. The program’s intentions were accurately captured by Kondō: i the Indigenous Peoples could just understand the size o Japan’s domestic population, the strength o its navy and army, and could witness its industrial might, they would lay down their arms. Hundreds o headmen and uture headmen (including Mona Rudao) were taken to the home islands or extended tours, oen drawing large crowds o Japanese onlookers. Even more visited the capital Taipei at government expense.
15. Governor-General Sakuma Hires Kondō Sakuma Samata was sworn in as governor-general o Taiwan, and successor to Kodama Gentarō, on August 20, 1906, just beore Kondō recalled meeting him in Taipei the ollowing September. Sakuma was Japan’s longest reigning governor-general, holding oce until 1915. Like Taiwan’s rst governor-general, Kabayama Sukenori, and its rst civil administrator, Mizuno Jun, “nōō ki ō Eiō Bnjin ōs ni knsi sō,” R #/, Records o the Taiwan Sōtokuu, Digital Edition, Academia Sinica Institute or Taiwan History, 112; 124.
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Sakuma participated in Japan’s 1874 expedition to Taiwan. In act, Sakuma was known as one o the heroes in the “Battle o Stone Gate,” the only set-piece engagement o the whole expedition. Governor-General Sakuma made his mark on Taiwanese history by presiding over the “Five-Year Plan to Manage the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples,” a well-unded and centrally coordinated military campaign intended to put an end to resistance against Japanese rule in Atayal, Seediq, and Taroko lands. Ōtsu Rinpei, Kondō’s other high-ranking associate in Taipei, obtained a doctorate in public administration (hōgaku) at Tokyo University. Ōtsu specialized in constitutional law, and he held several top posts in the police and rural administration bureaucracy in Taiwan beore his promotion to chie o the Police Bureau and head o Aborigine Pacication when Sakuma arrived in late summer o 1906. According to the previous installment, Ōtsu had spent at least the better part o one whole day hearing Kondō’s views on Aborigine aairs sometime in early 1906. His second meeting with Ōtsu occurred in Taipei, concurrent with Kondō’s audience with Governor-General Sakuma himsel. Thus, the years 1906 through 1909 represented the apex o Kondō’s access to Taiwan’s highest-ranked ocials. In later installments o his memoir, he looked ondly back on these times and rued his precipitous loss o inuence under administrators who orgot the promises made to Kondō (and by extension Mona Rudao) under the Sakuma/Ōtsu regime. According to Kondō, Governor-General Sakuma asked Kondō to bring his in-laws and trading partners rom Musha to the capital to coordinate a central crossing with tribes on the east coast. For Kondō, the central crossing has been recongured as a mission to succor the wandering soul o Captain Fukahori. For Sakuma and Ōtsu, the central crossing had more prosaic 216
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purposes: to push the war with the Taroko tribes in Hualien to a conclusion. In 1914, the Japanese would eventually launch naval assaults rom the east coast o Taiwan and land-based assaults rom the Central Mountain Range. Opening the trail made this latter-day pincer movement possible. Kondō’s perspective gives us a sense o the micropolitics that laid the groundwork or these large-scale endeavors. According to the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, a gathering o tribes such as Kondō described in this installment took place about a year later than Kondō recalled. On October 28, 1907, more than two hundred delegates were scheduled to arrive in Taipei or a estival at Taiwan Shrine. They were to be housed on a military drill ground. Puli ocials sent orty Tgdaya delegates to this event;34 Kondō may have been their interpreter. Aer this estival, Kaku Kurata led an expedition to Hualien, across the Central Mountains (see below). Kaku requently acknowledged that Kondō had been across the mountains on a previous expedition. Kaku’s arrival on the coast on January 19, 1908, was celebrated as an achievement.35 The temporary alliance between Taroko and Tgdaya tribesmen brokered at the October 1907 estival in Taipei likely prevented a repeat o the Fukahori debacle. For it was the enmity between Taroko and Tgdaya people which had caused Fukahori’s guides to abandon him in January 1897. But again, such considerations are absent rom Kondō’s narrative, which delights in yet another thick description o his Seediq partners as country bumpkins who are dumbounded by modern inventions like trains, boats, and ships. “k Bnk n knkō i,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, October 25, 1907, n.p. “Bnki nkni sōsk,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, January 18, 1908, describes Kaku’s crossing and Kondō’s role as trailblazer.
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According to Kaku, looking back rom 1908, the government-general (presumably through the oces o Kondō, but not necessarily), approached Tgdaya leaders about their cooperation on guardline construction in January 1906. Kaku returned in June to discuss Tgdaya participation in a mountain-crossing expedition.36 Kaku’s memory probably reerred to a May 31, 1906, surrender ceremony witnessed by all twelve Tgdaya villages. To regain access to salt and other necessities, the Tgdaya villagers promised to assist in guardline construction, ollow government directives, to leave their weapons at home on trading-post visits, and to desist rom head-taking near the guardlines. Hunters were to request advance permission and carry Japanese ags when approaching the guardline (to avoid being mowed down by Japanese gunnery).37 In December 1906, aer Kondō’s rst conerence with Sakuma in Taipei, Kaku was dispatched to Wanda to explore an eastern route to Hualien, a project which came to naught.38 In January 1907, Kondō’s and Kaku’s stories converge in Hualien, where both men explored an eastward route to Musha with the aid o some two hundred ijiachuan and Mugua residents o the Taroko Gorge region.39 This venture also ailed to connect Musha and Hualien by land, but Kondō, with only our partners, would accomplish this task on their next attempt.
“Cūō snmk ōn ii,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, January 24, 1908, p. 3. nō, ., Riban shikō dai ikkan, 456–57. “Cūō snmk ōn ni,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō January 25, 1908, p. 3. “Cūō snmk ōn ni,” .
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16. Kondō Sets Out to Complete Fukahori’s Mission There is more than a kernel o truth to Kondō’s recollections about his crossing o the Central Mountains in northern Taiwan. This trip was documented in the contemporary press. In the narrative presented here, Kondō adopts the persona o the colonial explorer who is in command o the situation, but it is also apparent rom the details o his accounting that he was dependent upon the Seediq men who led him across the trails and taught him how to survive under trying circumstances. Moreover, the journey recounted here was preceded by two preparatory expeditions under Kaku Kurata’s command — this trek was no solitary pursuit. Nonetheless, in the 1930 memoir, Kondō announced that he would march alone into the heart o darkness at the risk o lie and limb or his nation and the departed Fukahori. In sharp contrast to his own sense o urgency, patriotism, and lial piety, Kondō depicts his Tgdaya allies as cowardly i not slothul. In what is likely an apocryphal scene, Kondō apologizes to his ather or putting the Japanese nation beore amily. Commander Nosé then provides him with an amulet rom Ise Shrine, abode o the Yamato line o Japanese emperors, to cement Kondō’s expedition to the ate o the empire. To add to the patriotic ervor, a Japanese ag is presented. To nish the scene, Kondō’s old Fudōson amulet, recovered rom Baso Bōran’s shed in 1900 as part o Fukahori’s remaining eects, acts as a talisman, upon which Kondō swears to succor the allen hero’s ghost. But Kondō’s sel-presentation in 1930 is in many ways at variance with the documentary record. Looked at through the lens o Taiwan history, it is not hard to understand Tgdaya prevarication or joining Kondō. Mona Rudao and Awi Nokan 219
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invoked the ear o Taroko tribes and the incapacitation o their Indigenous emale intermediary as reasons not to go orward or the same reasons that Iwan Robao and Pan Laolong hesitated to accompany Fukahori to Hualien. More importantly, it is apparent rom the October 1907 accounts in the Taiwan Daily News that Kondō’s supposedly childlike subordinates were in act adult men whose amiliarity with the terrain and other skills were critical to the mission. In short, Kondō’s description o a Japanese operative’s trailblazing mission is o interest in two senses: or the granular portrait it provides o Japanese–Tgdaya interaction among people and with Taiwan’s environment; and, or the insight it provides into the perormance o a patriotic, imperial identity or a Japanese colonialist circa 1930.
17. Kondō Recruits a Tgdaya Crew Tgdaya access to salt and gunpowder, according to the pledge delegates to the Japanese police made on May 31, 1906, included the cessation o head-taking. In eect, Kondō borrowed General Sakuma’s authority to oer his Tgdaya acquaintances a chance to break this law i they would help him cross the mountains. This was not an unusual practice. The Taiwan Government-General did at times encourage headhunting, i it could be harnessed to achieve its own strategic ends. Two o the more amous incidents are the October 5, 1903, slaughter o Paalan warriors, whose heads were redeemed at the Puli District Oce, and the bounty put out or Tgdaya heads aer the uprising o October 27, 1930, recounted in the translator’s preace to this memoir. According to a 1907 newspaper account, Kondō departed Puli or Hōgō via Paalan to nd porters/guides or his journey on 220
NoteS: 18–21. KoNdō’S expedItIoN to hualIeN
September 12, 1907. Hōgō at the time was experiencing a rash o inectious illness (possibly malaria); Kondō spent our ruitless days there. He then sent an emissary rom Paalan to Katsukku to secure guides or the mission. In Katsukku, the headmen bargained with Kondō’s agent to make the journey at the price o our oxen per man. In this earlier account, a routine commercial transaction was conducted through his web o relatives and associates; in the 1930 memoir, Kondō obtains guides by shaming them. In any event, the ve-man expedition departed Katsukku or Hualien on September 18, 1907.40
18–21. Kondō’s Expedition to Hualien Pointedly, Kondō chides his guides or demanding compensation in his recollected version o this important episode in Kondō’s career as a government operative. Presumably, Kondō’s motivations, discharging a debt o obligation to a allen Fukahori, is more elevated than the mercenary impulses o his Tgdaya associates. As it turns out, Kondō was probably a little more mercenary than he lets on in this memoir. According to Kondō’s 1907 account, the team was detained or two days because it had discovered gold dust in one o the ravines and went upriver to investigate, on September 20–21. Elsewhere in his 1930 memoir, Kondō described gold dust as plentiul in certain o Taiwan’s gravel-strewn riverbeds. He even expressed a desire to learn the Taiwanese language (Hoklo) just to get at the gold. Indeed, the 1907 newspaper photograph showing the return o Kondō and his our partners appears to show Kondō holding a gold pan. “Cūō snmk ōn ,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, October 16, 1907, p.5.
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According to the 1907 account, the our Tgdaya men were all rom Katsukku, and were listed as: Headman Watan Bokki, orty-ve years old; Iyon Pawan (age orty), Awi Saman (age twenty) and Sappo Saman (age twenty-three). In 1930 (in the memoir), Kondō asserted that his our guides were youths, inantilizing them at several junctures in the narrative. In contrast, in 1907, he stated clearly that these men were Kondō’s peers, i not elders. The contemporary photo o the team in act depicts them as sel-assured, condent, and armed adult men.41 In the 1907 journalistic version o this journey, published just aer the events transpired, the hungry team resorted to boiling grass or breakast on September 25. This earlier account does not mention miraculous amulets or sacred scriptures.42 Like so many discrepancies between the 1907 version and the 1930 version o Kondō’s rst crossing, the newer version renders the Seediq guides as dependent, superstitious, and incapable children, whereas the older version depicts them as quite capable trackers who could live o the land. At the same time, Kondō also made the most o local olk knowledge to stay alive. In this installment, Kondō ollows the sounds o the birds because he has lost the trail on the road to Hualien. Japanese residents o Taiwan in 1930, i they knew anything about Indigenous Taiwanese olkways, would have been aware that bird omens were a serious matter or Bunun, Atayal, Seediq and Puyuma hunting parties. A bird cry rom the wrong direction at the wrong time was enough to stop a Seediq party cold in its tracks. In this vignette, Kondō pays close attention to which side o the path the bird calls originate rom. Chen Chi-lu has 41 “Cūō snmk ōn ,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, 5. 42 “Cūō snmk ōn si,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, October 17, 1907, n.p.
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described one set o bird-omen divination rules thus, “I one sees a small bird called masasian y rom the le o the mountain trail to the right, it is considered a good omen; but, in the opposite direction, an evil omen.”43 In this context, Kondō (or members o his team) likely interpreted the sounds as a lucky omen, and were heartened to continue. Josiane Cauquelin described the use o the omens arther south in Puyuma country: Beore leaving, the bamboo diviner would consult the bamboo splinters to designate the hunter — usually an elderly man — who, at dawn on the day o the hunt, would go and listen to the omens o the mananagan (a small bird with a long beak) and sirut birds at the edge o the village. I the bird’s song comes rom the le, it is a bad omen, and the hunters do not leave the village; i it comes rom the right, the men take their game bags. But i, on the way, the bird sings again, wherever the song comes rom, the men turn back.44 One o Kondō’s companions on a dierent trek, Mori Ushinosuke, diagramed eight dierent bird-divination scenarios (with prognoses), based on the relative positions (and direction o movement) o the diviner and the bird calls, in his ethnographic portrait o the Atayal.45 In all his years o tracking and interpreting, Kondō must have witnessed literally hundreds o earnest Cn Ci, Material Culture of the Formosan Aborigines (Taipei: Taiwan Museum o Taipei, 1968), 35–36. 44 sin Cin, The Aborigines of Taiwan: The Puyuma: from Headhunting to the Modern World (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 204. 45 i Usinsk, Taiwan banzoku shi dai ikkan (Taipei: Southern Materials Center, 1996 [1917]), 272–73.
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discussions among his companions about the likely meaning o aviary portents. At the end o September 1907, when the expedition nally arrived saely in Hualien, on the east coast o Taiwan, they are met by a subpreect who was acquainted with Captain Fukahori. Kondō relates that the subpreect inormed Fukahori’s widow about the successul crossing. Since this was a small undertaking conducted by a reelancer and men he hired through personal networks, it is dicult to imagine how Kondō’s journey could have been understood as the ulllment o Captain Fukahori’s orders — Kondō did not produce maps on this trip, as is apparent rom the next installment, which describes a mission that was closer in scope and stang to the Fukahori expedition (the Kaku Kurata Expedition). About twenty-ve years later, in 1932, Kondō actually escorted Fukahori’s widow, Sechiko, along the trail that he blazed in 1907.46
22. Kondō Joins the Kaku Kurata Mission Between October 10 and 12, 1907, Kondō and his team visited government oces and the Taiwan Daily News oce in Taipei to celebrate and be lauded or the completion o this pioneering crossing. Then Kondō paid his Tgdaya men the oxen they had contracted or, dissolving the expedition. Soon aer, Kondō would embark again on the same route, but this time as a guide or a team o een men lead by Inspector Kaku Kurata. Kaku was Governor-General Sakuma Samata’s rst chie o the Aborigine Pacication Section under the Police Bureau, in 1906. He remained a police inspector involved with the wars against 46 ki kō, Taiwan no banzoku kenkyū (Taipei: Taiwan shiseki kankōkai, 1932), 537–38.
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the Indigenous Peoples through 1914. The Kaku expedition was accompanied by Mori Ushinosuke (1877–1926), an interpreter, ethnologist, and mountain guide who wrote prolically about Taiwan Indigenous Peoples as a scholar, journalist, and government operative. Mori curated the Indigenous Peoples collections at the Imperial Museum in Taipei, in addition to acting as the government’s appointed guide or Japanese notables, such as the author Satō Haruo, whose short story “Musha” was largely based on his conversations and travels with Mori. Kaku’s expedition more closely resembled the 1897 Fukahori mission than did Kondō’s trek with our hired men rom Kutsukku. Kaku’s was led by a high-ranking ocer. Kaku was advised by the government’s top expert on Indigenous Peoples, and escorted by our armed aiyū (border guards). According to accounts in the Tokyo and Taipei newspapers, Inspector Kaku le Taipei or Puli on January 4, 1908, a little over three months aer Kondō’s small team reached Hualien the previous year. Kaku’s team reached Wanda (near Paalan) on January 9, and nally emerged in Hualien on January 19, 1908. Kondō’s chronology in part twenty-two is not ar o; it is about a week ahead o the one chronicled in contemporary reporting rom 1908. Although Kondō did not dwell on the details o this larger and better publicized crossing, we should pause here to consider the broad signicance o these expeditions, because their aermath or Taiwanese history was transormational. First, these expeditions should be considered the earliest phase o what later came to be known as the “Five-Year Plan to Manage the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples,” which is ocially considered to have taken place between 1910 and 1914 (see below). Governor-General Sakuma, however, started on an aborted veyear plan in 1907, and, as is clear rom Kondō’s memoir, Sakuma 225
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involved himsel directly in “Aborigine Pacication” rom the outset o his administration. The climax o Kondō’s narrative takes place in 1909 in connection with Seediq and Atayal peoples in north-central Taiwan. Kondō was instrumental in the advancement o Japanese sovereignty in upland Taiwan as a liaison between Japanese police commanders and Indigenous leaders. In essence, Kondō secured the cooperation o Indigenous guides, auxiliaries, and laborers in campaigns against neighboring Indigenous Peoples at the behest o Japanese police commanders and ocials. In Kondō’s world, the Tgdaya, Toda, and Truku blocs among Seediq people gure prominently as rivals who compete or territory, trade goods, and government patronage in the environs o Musha Town upriver rom Puli, between the west-owing Zhuoluo, and Beigang rivers. The western terminus o the tramontane trail that Kondō and Kaku blazed in 1907 and 1908 was Puli; the road nally opened in 1917. At the eastern terminus, between the east-owing Mugua and Takkiri rivers that emptied into the Pacic Ocean near Hualien, Japanese police ocers and liaisons such as Mori Ushinosuke liaised with Batoran, Mugua, and ijiachuan leaders to assist Japanese explorers and ocials, with the ultimate goal o eroding the sovereignty o all Indigenous Peoples (see Map 3). It was into this milieu that Kaku and Kondō emerged in January 1908. Upon their arrival near the port o Hualien on January 19 (January 12 in Kondō’s memoir), a headman o the ijiachuan group (o Pangcah ethnicity, also called Amis in older writing), approached Inspector Kaku to remonstrate with him about “reclaimed land.” We met leaders o the ijiachuan in part een as delegates to a multi-ethnic gathering in Taipei. Kondō also took, by his own accounting, about two hundred ijiachuan residents to assist him in exploring a westward trail rom Hualien to Puli 226
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in early 1907. They were rom the Nanshi group o Pangcah (see Figure 1), which incidentally supplied some six hundred ghters to a Japanese expedition to punish Taroko people or the 1896 killing o thirteen Japanese policemen.47 Thereore, it is certain that Kaku and Kondō were well acquainted with the spokesperson (unnamed) who accosted them in Hualien that day. The details o the complaint lodged by the ijiachuan headman were censored in Kondō’s published memoir, but they are not dicult to discern. Government records state that on December 24, 1907, the head o Police Headquarters, Ōshima Kumanji, sent a memorandum to the Taitung County chie, Morio Shigesuke, warning Morio that the Kaku Group (led by Kaku Kinzaburō, no relation to Kaku Kurata) had not taken sucient steps to avoid conict with the resident Indigenous Peoples when operating on its “reclaimed Indigenous land.” In 1898, the Kaku Group acquired rights to operate its sugar, camphor, animal husbandry, and Japanese immigration schemes on twenty thousand hectares o land, which included territories inhabited by Pangcah peoples. 48 The source o riction arose rom the act that the Kaku Group was operating on Pangcah land secured through reclamation permits. These permits allowed Japanese entrepreneurs and individuals to claim title to Indigenous lands that “were more than what was necessary or Indigenous livelihoods,” at least by the state’s reckoning. Since the Taiwan Government-General declared that all non-registered land, i.e., Indigenous territory, was “public land” in 1895, it assumed the right to issue title deeds to lands it considered “uninhabited” or “more than local needs.” The manuscript records o the Taiwan Government-General are 47 nō, ., Riban shikō dai ikkan, 34. 48 Zn min, “i imin n isi i si,” Taiwan xue tongxun 78 (2013): 24–25.
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ull o the hand-drawn maps that mark out areas o Indigenous land or corporate use in timbering, arming, and mining enterprises. Needless to say, this policy was oen hotly contested by Indigenous Peoples. In this particular case, the police chie Ōshima’s report claims that ijiachuan people had encroached on the Kaku Group’s “sold-o reclaimed land” near Wuquancheng, which is in act the location rom which Kondō launched an exploratory mission with ijiachuan men, and also the place where he was greeted at the end o his late 1907 trek (see Map 3). In other words, the Pangcah o ijiachuan were contesting the Kaku Group’s commercial exploitation o its lands, while the Kaku Group countercharged that the Pangcah people were “stepping over the line.” According to Ōshima’s report, the issue was resolved in the spring o 1908 when Kaku Group and ijiachuan delegates marked out boundary lines under Morio Shigeru’s supervision.49 However, Mori Ushinosuke, the interpreter who accompanied Kaku Kurata and Kondō on the January 1908 transmontane trip, blamed the Kaku Group or causing the December 1908 uprising — specically mentioning the “sold-o reclamation land” as the bone o contention. Mori went urther by blaming a dierent Taroko uprising on the same Kaku Group’s non-comital approach to honoring contracts with Indigenous Peoples.50 Thereore, the likely reason that this land dispute between the Kaku Group and the ijiachuan Pangcah was censored in Kondō’s 1930 memoir was that a more explicit statement o the acts would have clearly linked disputes over Indigenous land nō, ., Riban shikō dai ikkan, 571. Yn njn, Maboroshi no jinruigakusha: Mori Ushinosuke, trans. and ed. Kasahara Masaharu, Miyaoka Maoko and Miyazaki Seiko (Tokyo: Fūkyōsha, 2005), 61.
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tenure to the large military conrontation with the Pangcah o ijiachuan later that year. To suggest that Japanese punitive campaigns against Indigenous Peoples were ought to enorce land dispossession was directly contrary to the government’s ocial explanation; namely, that these campaigns were ought in “sel-deense” o Japanese lives and property. The conict ocially known as the ijiachuan Incident began on December 13, 1908, in accounts put out by the government or public consumption. The ocial story line provides a brie summary o the battleeld geography, causes, and consequences o the conict — all versions (I have cited only our, but many more can be ound) are nearly the same. They characterize the complaints o ijiachuan Pangcah soldiers, who had been deployed on the guardline to ght Taroko Indigenous Peoples, as triing. Pangcah resistance is linked to the haughty and arrogant nature o hired soldiers o this locality, who were known to regularly disobey orders.51 According to the press-release version o events, on December 13, 1908, the ijiachuan Pangcah abandoned their posts on the guardline and ed to Taroko country to make common cause with the Mugua and Batoran groups. Thus united, the three-group alliance attacked guardline posts and police stations, causing many casualties. In response, the state called up Hualien garrison orces to suppress the rebels; but this was insucient, so eventually 235 police units and 149 border guards, plus two regular Japanese Imperial Army inantry companies, an artillery company, and an additional squad, 51 Fjiski insk, Taiwan no Banzoku, 685; Taiwan Government Bureau of Aborigine Affairs, ed., Report on the Control of the Aborigines in Formosa (Taipei: Taiwan Government-General, 1911), 40; Riban gaiyō (Taipei: Taiwan sōtokuu minseibu banmu honsho, 1912), 88; Inō, ed., Riban shikō dai ikkan, 636.
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were put under joint police and military command to seek and destroy the wrongdoers. During the campaign, Japanese orces occupied ijiachuan and expelled the remaining residents who had not ed in terror. Aer protracted search missions in the Taroko strongholds near Taroko Gorge, most Pangcah surrendered their weapons because they were starving (the Japanese destroyed crops and storehouses as part o the campaign in addition to clearing the village). To prevent a recurrence o another rebellion, according to the ocial version, the ijiachuan Pangcah were not allowed to return to their homelands aer the disarmament and surrender. They and their amilies, over a thousand people, were instead relocated urther south in Taitung County or inland among Taroko settlements. Such a chronology, which begins with events on December 13, 1908, indicates that Japanese orces were responding to an Indigenous rebellion. Nonetheless, as the coda to the ocial version o the war indicates, Japanese orces also strung miles o electried ence while building ortied guardlines into Taroko and Pangcah territory, well beore Batoran and ijiachuan men rebelled against government ocials. In early 1907, to acilitate the building o the road to connect Puli to Hualien along the route surveyed by Kondō and Kaku, the government-general laid plans to extend its guardline into the Taroko lands east o Nenggao mountain. It singled out the Batoran group o Taroko Indigenous Peoples as allies based on reports that Batoran hamlets were at political loggerheads with their Taroko neighbors. The government exploited this opening, and commenced work on the guardline near Mugua in May 1908, completing a ull leg on June 21, 1908, thanks to the cooperation o Batoran.52 But 52 nō, ., Riban shikō dai ikkan, 605–606.
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by late October, Japanese ocials received reports that Batoran men were about to join Taroko ghters to ally against the Japanese, thus putting the police orces in Hualien on high alert. As the government readied itsel, it deployed dozens o ijiachuan Pangcah to guardline posts throughout the region. These rotations, along with meager pay and perceived unair treatment, aggravated the ijiachuan guards, nineteen o whom abandoned their posts on December 13. Police ocials remonstrated with Pangcah leaders in ijiachuan on December 14. The ollowing day, rank-and-le Pangcah youth, angered at unair treatment on the guardline and at the police presence in ijiachuan, surrounded the Japanese, trapping orty-two guards and eight police ocers, and cutting them o rom outside communications. The rst big troop movements o Japanese in the ijiachuan Incident were sent as a rescue mission to this police station.53 In other words, the ijiachuan Incident was not a spontaneous rebellion started on December 13, 1908, by a ew disgruntled Pangcah men, but was rather a conict rooted in more long-standing labor problems and economic disputes connected to imperial Japan’s long-standing policy to hire Indigenous orces to sta punitive campaigns and xed military installations directed at other Indigenous Peoples. But in one respect, the ijiachuan case was unique. The land that the state conscated rom the so-called rebels o ijiachuan was not given over to lumber magnates, or to reward allied Indigenous orces, as was the case in other instances o dispossession. Instead, the lands inhabited by ijiachuan Pangcah were deeded Lin n, “nin,” in Cn Cnmin . ., ., Qijiao chuan shi jian xie zhen tie (Nantou; Taipei: Xing zheng yuan yuan zhu min zu wei yuan hui; Guo shi guan Taiwan wen xian guan, 2005), 1–10.
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to Japanese settlers, as part o Japan’s rst government-sponsored agricultural colony program in Taiwan. The rst twenty sponsored settlers came rom nine households in Tokushima Preecture, Kondō’s home region. In 1909, the conscated Pangcah land was measured into plots in preparation or the sponsored immigrants rom Japan. By December 1910, some 295 Japanese armers rom Tokushima, Niigata, Chiba, Akita, and Hokkaidō had arrived. In August 1912, the ormer ijiachuan settlement was renamed Yoshino Village,54 aer a river in Tokushima Preecture, the source o the rst wave o sojourners. In 1911, the government invited 350 amilies totaling 1,750 people to emigrate to Hualien at a government cost o 400,000 yen. These unds would cover the educational and medical acilities built or the Japanese arrivals.55 It was said by one memoirist who lived in these colonies that lie was very dicult or the rst generation o migrants — drinking water was scarce, malaria was rie, and sugarcane dicult to plant. But suitable cash crops rom Japan were eventually adapted to the new climate and soils o coastal Taiwan.56 By 1930, about 2,000 Japanese immigrants lived in Yoshino Village, and another 1700 were in nearby Toyoda and Hayashida villages, which were later opened as planned Japanese agricultural communities (see Map 3).57 As Kondō mentions in part twenty-two o this memoir, his ather crossed over rom Tokushima to take up residence to arm in Taiwan, probably in 1907 or 1908. According to a household registration o Kondō’s preserved in the government-general 54 nō, ., Riban shikō dai ikkan, 637–638. 55 Y. kn n . kmi, The Japan Year Book 1912 (Tokyo: The Japan Year Book Ofce, n.d.), 655. 56 Ymm, “iks nō ssō,” . 57 Ymm is, ., Nihon chiri taikei: Taiwan hen (Tokyo: Kaizōsha, 1930), 182.
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archives, his ather died in late August 1909, meaning that he did not live to join his ellow Tokushima emigrants as part o the government-sponsored agricultural colony. But years earlier, Kaku Kinzaburō was already experimenting with privately unded Japanese colonization programs — a likely destination or Kondō’s ather. In any event, this settler intrusion was a source o long-term resentment to the ijiachuan Pangcah who had ought on Japan’s side against Taroko Peoples and also assisted Kondō in his 1907 endeavor to open up trails or Japanese police orces, military men, and immigrants. Although Kondō does not explicitly state as much, one can surmise that the ijiachuan men who ought on the guardline or Japan, like the Tgdaya men mobilized by Kondō, had been coerced and enticed to leverage their detailed knowledge o topography, social networks, ora, and auna to contribute to an enterprise that directly led to the termination o their political autonomy.
23. Kondō is Called to Duty Once Again In August 1908, Kondō is asked to broker the movement o the guardline through Tgdaya territory. Subsequently, he would also be called upon to aid in its extension all the way through Toda and Truku territory, in January 1909. It should be recalled here that the machinations and arrangements described in this installment occurred simultaneously with the guardline movements in Tarokoland urther east, which led to the ijiachuan Incident. In Kondō’s account, the Seediq and Atayal people who assist Japan are motivated by enmity with neighboring rival groups. But it would be an oversimplication to attribute the intra-Indigenous violence and double-dealing that was occasioned by Japanese 233
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rule as a policy o “using barbarians to control barbarians.” Intra-Indigenous armed conict in this era was not a re-enactment o ancient and persisting rivalries. Colonial policy and the changing global political economy put Indigenous Peoples in the position o ghting against one another to gain access to trade goods, wages, and political patronage, as well as to deend themselves against local enemies. When their services or acquiescence were essential to building guardlines, Indigenous groups or individuals could use their leverage to negotiate or reuse Japanese demands. As we have seen in previous sections o this memoir, Japanese emissaries to Seediq communities oen met with hostility, prevarication, and reusals in the rst decade o Kondō’s residence near Puli. Thereore, Kondō acted with great circumspection as he negotiated with Tgdaya headmen to broker labor agreements and access to thruways in the mountains. At the center o these negotiations were discussions o marriage as a means o cementing political alliances. As stated earlier in the memoir, Kondō considered his marriage to Iwan Robao partly as a practical means to language acquisition. During the Sakuma administration, Japanese ocials agreed, and ordered some policemen in Atayal and Seediq areas to take wives, not only to acilitate intelligence gathering but also to consecrate alliances. As we see in Kondō’s case, the problem with this strategy was that Japanese ocials moved around or were promoted — either situation rendering these opportunistic marriages useless, rom a strictly tactical perspective. As Kondō intimates, the requent terminations o such marriages le many Indigenous women out in the cold, with poor marriage prospects locally as the divorced women o Japanese occupiers. In this installment, we learn that Kondō will divorce Iwan out
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o political expediency in order to gain the good graces o the most powerul men among the Tgdaya settlements.
24 & 25. Kondō Organizes Military Operations against Toda and Truku In part twenty-our, Kondō ends his marriage with Iwan so that he can marry Obing Nokan o Hōgō. To avoid the wrath o his hosts, he sacrices a pig to make the divorce public. According to anthropologist Scott Simon, Seediq peoples were still sacricing pigs to expiate the utux (ancestor spirits) upon divorcing, even in the twenty-rst century. As Simon explains it, marriage was ideally monogamous and or lie, so divorces were considered violations o “gaya.”58 Thereore, it would seem that Kondō’s “divorce” o Iwan was carried out within the moral boundaries o Seediq society; he did not casually abandon her. At the same time, Kondō was in a position o strength in some respects. As he stated, his presence in Hōgō and Mhebu allowed Tgdaya men to “make war,” because Kondō as an emissary o the government-general could organize punitive expeditions, but also acilitate commerce in ammunition and guns, as the in-law o a Tgdaya headman. The large easts and gis that attended marriages were also attractive to Indigenous leaders, at times, as we learn in this chapter. At least in the short term, a headman’s ability to bring that kind o wealth to a village could be a boon to his authority. But as we shall see later, when the tables turned, and the immigrant Japanese in-law could no longer bring benets to his wie’s community, goodwill could quickly turn into 58 imn, “Piis n Hnin mn Fmsn ji: Enisi Psis,” Oceania 82, no. 2 (2012): 173.
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contempt. According to Pihu Walis’s memoir, published in 1988, Kondō divorced Obing beore he le the Puli area in 1918; she returned to Hōgō and remarried there, but never had children.59 According to Kondō, two residents o Paalan, Walis Nokan and Pihu Nasui, oered to sell land or the Kondō amily’s use, in exchange or an ox and trade goods. As Kondō himsel notes, such an arrangement was raught at best. Indigenous Peoples did not have ee-simple title deeds to land. Technically, they were on reserve land owned by the state. Thereore, the government was able to “sell reclamation land” by drawing up property lines on a map, accompanied by descriptions o the parcel to be owned by the person receiving the property. Going orward in the memoir, “sold-o land” and “reclaimed land” are requently contested. The process was murky because claimants drew up maps and presented them to government ocials, who approved or rejected the applications. While, and as we saw in the case o ijiachuan, Japanese ocials oen consulted Indigenous people in drawing up boundaries, the system was premised on the aulty notion that all parties understood how title deeds and land leases operated. Kondō’s claim that Indigenous Peoples did not understand the concept o land alienation the same way that Japanese people did shows that he was aware o this aw in the system. Rather than having a contractual relationship with Tgdaya peoples and their land, Kondō’s alliances were based on demonstrations o personal commitment, and even partiality. It seems that Kondō wanted to have it both ways. Manuscript records o Kondō’s applications or reclaimed land are extant in the government-general archives. These claims are clustered around the Beigang River northwest o Puli; they are not proximate G Ynin [Pi Wis], Musha hizakura. 13.
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to Kirigaseki or any Seediq area o inhabitation. These claims successully passed through the colonial bureaucracy, as we will see in a later chapter. It was not the case that Kondō was unable to secure rights to “reclaimed land” rom the government. But his ailure to get ocials to intercede and draw up paperwork giving Kondō exclusive rights to use the land in Kirigaseki specically, on the western margins o Tgdaya country, is another indication that the “Aborigine Territory” was a special administrative zone. Here, Japanese settlers were not allowed to reclaim land, develop it, and then sell it on the market. We also learn rom this chapter that the goodwill Kondō created among Tgdaya headmen by providing access to trade goods, weapons, and political patronage did not necessarily extend to all Tgdaya people. When Mona Rudao makes an appearance at the double wedding o Kondō Katsusaburō and his younger brother, he warned that disunity o opinion regarding the new alliance with Japanese was a bad sign. Nonetheless, immediately aer the alliances with Hōgō and Mhebu were cemented through the wedding east, Kondō began organizing the Tgdaya men or work on the guardline. Kondō armed only a small portion o the 647 men who joined work on the guardline — just 50. The act that he needed to borrow weapons rom the police station attests to the act that the Tgdaya hamlets gave up their weapons in the 1906 surrender that Kondō helped to bring about. This lack o weaponry, which had been a big problem or Tgdaya peoples since the trade embargoes that tightened aer 1897, was one o the key reasons that Mona and Awi were open to negotiations to work with the government-general.
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26. Kondō Negotiates an Extension of the Guardline Although much o Kondō’s memoir portrays the movement o the guardline as the product o his adroit manipulation o Indigenous sensibilities, his enumeration o the heavy weaponry brought to bear on Japan’s opponents in this section remind us that brute orce was always held in reserve when economic incentives or embargoes were not enough to persuade Indigenous leaders to cooperate with the government. At the end o this section, Kondō makes his major contribution to the historiography on the Musha Rebellion: he baldly states that the Japanese government reused to acknowledge Tgdaya labor, or to compensate it, aer 647 men put their lives on the line, and abandoned their crops, to urther the ambitions o the imperial government. This callous treatment in 1909, claims Kondō, ueled resentment that smoldered until it exploded in 1930. As a point o comparison, Mori Ushinosuke, the interpreter who accompanied Kondō and Kaku on the transmontane expedition o 1908, also attributed Indigenous armed resistance to broken agreements with Indigenous Peoples. But or Mori, the problem was that merchants were dishonest; he laid the blame at the eet o the Kaku Group, and others like them, who promised wages and other orms o compensation, but then did not deliver. Mori thought the solution was tighter government regulation o merchants. Kondō was making a more serious charge. In his view, it was the government itsel that ailed to honor agreements with Tgdaya people.
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27. Kondō Betrays Baso Bōran In his negotiations with Baso Bōran o Sadu, Kondō claries the situation aced by any village threatened by the guardline orces. They had to either surrender weapons or ace repeated shelling rom mountain guns. Baso Bōran’s claims about Indigenous attachments to weaponry ring true. From the 1860s orward, Taiwan was ooded with rearms, because the ing and Japanese governments imported them or local deense, policing and conquest, and then distributed them by hiring Taiwanese as soldiers and guards. It is also the case that merchants provisioned hunters and autonomous Indigenous polities with rearms, gunpowder, and ammunition to make a prot. According to Pei Hsi Lin, who has conducted an extensive study o rearms in Indigenous Taiwan, the possession, maintenance, and operation o matchlock, breech-loading, repeaters, ries, and shotguns was tightly woven into Indigenous society by the early 1900s. In many areas o Taiwan, a ratio o one or more guns per adult male had been reached during the rst decade o Japanese colonial rule.60 In a hard-ought six-month campaign that claimed 461 Taiwan Government-General casualties, the state conscated 1,110 rearms rom Gaogan (Atayal) rebels to the northwest o Puli
Pisi Lin, “Fims, n n C: Rsisn ins nins Cins, En n ns Enmn in G Cn Ci –” PD Tsis: inm n Unisi, , –.
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in November 1910.61 By May 1911, the “ve-year plan” to disarm the Atayal, Seediq, and Taroko peoples in northern Taiwan had produced the surrender o eight thousand rearms, aer only a year o ghting.62 And by the end o the ve-year campaign, in November 1914, the Taiwan Government-General recorded a total o almost twenty-nine thousand rearms conscated rom Indigenous Peoples throughout the island, including the eastern ri valley and southern Taiwan’s highlands.63 In short, the total count o 327 rearms in Sadu’s possession at the time Kondō made his ultimatum is not unreasonable, even though Truku had a population o less than one thousand at the time.64 In act, it was oen the case that Indigenous leaders did not understand the term “surrender” the same way it was understood by government ocials. Mori Ushinosuke, whose knowledge o Indigenous languages was ormidable, recorded that there were 61 T i mnsi s in GnmnGn s Gn s i i smns, ss, n , sins; sm k s , ns ns: ni Yssi, ., Riban shikō dai nikan (Taipei: Taiwan Sōtokuu Keimukyoku, 1921; [reprint 1995 Nantian shuju, Taipei]), 547; 675. An ofcial digest o the wars against Indigenous peoples describes Gaogan as “ormed rom nineteen settlements with over 2,000 people who have abundant guns and ammunition.” Taiwan sōtokuu minseibu banmu honsho, ed. Riban gaiyō (Taipei: Taiwan sōtokuu minseibu, 1912), 97. Nakamura Taira’s careul study o Gaogan, the guardline wars, and local memory accepts the fgure o nineteen villages. For an important summary of the battle history, but also oral histories, see: Nakamura Taira, Shokumin bōryoku no kioku to Nihonjin: Taiwan kōchi senjūmin to datsu shokumin no undō (Osaka: Ōsaka Daigaku Shuppankai, 2018), 67–82. 62 “in in siski,” Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, May 5, 1911, p. 2. Fjii i njini ini, Lifan: Riben zhili Taiwan de jice (Taipei: Wenying tang chubanshe, 1997), 240. 64 i, Taiwan banzokushi, 92.
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no words or surrender, subjugation, or military deeat in the Austronesian languages o Taiwan. Mori reported a case where one Indigenous inormant pronounced the Chinese character compound or “surrender”65 in his own language as “alliance.”66 Contemporary Japanese records rom the 1910s recorded Atayal inormants interpreting the Japanese term “deeat” as “msblaq,” which actually meant “restoration o riendly relations.” Nakamura Taira’s own inormants in the rst decade o the twenty-rst century explained to him that the Atayal interpretation o “surrender” was similar: the term “sblaq” (good relations) and “sblay” (making peace) were the ones understood as being operative aer the events Japanese termed “surrender ceremonies” (kijun shiki).67 In a word, there were two actors that complicated Kondō’s negotiations with Baso Bōran. First, rearms ownership was essential to Seediq livelihoods; but second, Kondō understood that or Seediq negotiators, “surrender” probably meant cessation o bombing and a return to the status quo ante. But as Kondō relayed to Baso Bōran, the Japanese state did not intend or matters to return to “normal.” Instead, the colonists envisioned a completely new order, one in which Indigenous Peoples did not selectively accept, modiy, or reuse Japanese edicts based on sel-interest, but rather a new dispensation. Under conditions o modern state sovereignty, Japanese ocials and police would issue orders, and Indigenous Peoples would ollow them.
65 帰順 (guīshùn in Mandarin). 66 i, “in nk,” . 67 km, Shokumin bōryoku, 75–77.
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28. Kondō and Baso Bōran Reunited The concluding sections o Kondō’s memoir describe the last phase o imperial Japan’s concerted push to disarm Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples. The initial phases o this project, chronicled in the early parts o Kondō’s memoir, were implemented piecemeal, with several reversals. It required a hal-decade or more or Japanese ocials and sub-ocials to acquaint themselves with the topography, languages, and diplomacy o the variegated terrain known as the “Aborigine District.” Moreover, in the early years o colonial rule, resources were mostly unneled into suppressing rebellions o Han Taiwanese in the plains, stang a colonial bureaucracy and police orce, as well as building basic installations o government. By 1903, the government-general took a more aggressive posture toward Indigenous Peoples. And by 1909, the year Kondō led 647 Tgdaya men en route to wresting 327 rearms rom Baso Bōran, the Japanese government had made large inroads in cordoning o the territory o the Atayal and Seediq peoples, setting the stage or Governor-General Sakuma to launch his ve-year campaign in 1910.68 Certainly, Kondō exaggerates his own centrality to this immense project. He attributes all Seediq motivations to personal ties o loyalty to him. It bears repeating that these military oensives were coordinated in Taipei, and that Indigenous Peoples throughout Taiwan either collaborated with or ought against Japan based on calculations o sel-interest. Again to emphasize his own prominence, Kondō mentions the eighth-class 68 F i n inin nins n in imi s, s: P D. B, Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874–1945 (Oakland, Caliornia: University o Caliornia Press, 2018).
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commendation or his work on the guardline. He does not mention that this was the lowest grade o decoration awarded or these campaigns. Kondō’s medal was one o thousands conerred upon Japanese policemen, interpreters, and associated staers or their participation in the guardline movements. This very long list included Kondō’s younger brother Gisaburō, or example, who was awarded a seventh-class Order o the Rising Sun badge with a 140-yen bonus.69 This sum was double Katsusaburō’s award o 70 yen in 1906 or meritorious service on the guardline; moreover, Gisaburō’s medal was a grade above Katsusaburō’s.70 In act, Katsusaburō’s award did not distinguish him rom thousands o other Japanese and Taiwanese who took up arms against Seediq, Atayal, and Taroko people in the 1900s and 1910s. One can imagine that Kondō’s eorts to persuade, entice, and threaten Baso Bōran, to acilitate the building o a guardline outpost in Xakut in February 1909, were repeated with variations throughout Indigenous Taiwan. Without mediation resembling the type o interaction described by Kondō, it is hard to explain how the Japanese guardline could have extended itsel in such dicult terrain without airpower support. With hundreds o guard-houses and miles and miles o ences already strung in Seediq and Atayal territories, on October 25, 1909, Sakuma’s second “Five-Year Plan to Manage the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples” commenced. All matters relating the Aboriginal territory were put under the head o one central authority, the “Bureau o Aborigine Pacication” headed by Ōtsu Rinpei. For the ve years 1910 to 1914, the Taiwan Government-General budgeted over 15 million yen, or about 7.5 million dollars (between 6 and Kanpō #846 (May 29, 1915): Furoku, p. 5. “nōō ki ō Eiō njin ōs ni knsi sō,” Taiwan sōtokuu kōbun ruisan, Record #4938/7.
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10 percent o the colony’s annual budgets), to push the conquest o the recalcitrant Atayal, Seediq, and Taroko villages to completion.71 During the rst year o this oensive, the number o incidents o violence sank dramatically, but the number o killed and wounded per skirmish rose just as quickly. In 1912, government orces suered their heaviest losses o the y-year occupation, but by 1913 the Bureau o Aborigine Pacication began turning districts over to the jurisdiction o regular police oces. In 1914, Japanese army units who were garrisoned in Taiwan joined the oensive and over 12,000 men participated in the last push to conquer the Taroko branch o the Atayal on Taiwan’s east coast (near Hualien).72 In July 1915 the Bureau o Aborigine Pacication was disbanded.73 O the nearly 30,000 ries that were conscated rom Indigenous Peoples between 1896 and 1922, a majority were taken during the ve-year oensive; 14,637 were taken in 1914 alone.74 Even with the last urious oensive, by government reckoning, about 13,000 mountaineers in 121 villages remained openly hostile in 1915, as against 551 villages populated by over 116,000 Indigenous people who were said to have surrendered to Japanese authority.75 According to a recent deposition to a 71 Riban shikō, vol. 3 (Taipei: Taiwan sōtokuu keimukyoku, 1921), 9–19. 72 The Japan Yearbook (Tokyo: The Japan Yearbook Ofce, 1916), 708. Ō in, “kmini snsō sōk n siis” in Iwan ami kōza: Kindai Nihon to shokuminchi, Teikoku tōji no kōkoku vol. 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992), 10; Mochiji Rokusaburō, Taiwan shokuminchi seisaku (Tokyo: Fuzanbō, 1912), 392; Taiwan jijō (Taipei: Taiwan Government-General, 1916), 594–596. 74 Taiwan jijō (Taipei: Taiwan Government-General, 1923), 93. 75 Japan Yearbook (1916), 708.
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United Nations working group on Indigenous aairs, over 10,000 Indigenous Taiwanese perished during the 1910–1914 campaign.76
29. The Story of Kondō the Younger Sixteen-year-old Kondō Gisaburō had come to Taiwan in 1901. Gisaburō worked his way up through the ranks to become a supervisor o assistant patrolmen in the Aborigine District police by the time o his inamous transer, thanks to his acility with the Seediq dialects spoken near Musha. Igarashi Ishimatsu, a Japanese ocial o long experience in Musha, recalled Gisaburō as a companionate husband to Diwas Rudao who commanded respect rom Tgdaya people. Igarashi claimed that Diwas’s devotion to Gisaburō allowed the Japanese to squelch an uprising by Xakut and Salamao in 1913. Overhearing the plan rom her brother Mona Rudao, Diwas alerted Gisaburō, who in turn sounded the alarm and averted disaster or the Japanese.77 Just aer the end o the ve-year campaign launched by Sakuma, and beore his disappearance, Mori Ushinosuke photographed Gisaburō standing above a large assembly o Truku men, in January 1915. Mori attested to Gisaburō’s linguistic prowess and credited him with helping to deeat the Taroko combatants.78 76 Ain in Aiins, Cin, n L , “R n Hmn Ris iin in’s nins Ps,” in Indigenous Peoples of Asia, ed. R.H. Barnes, Andrew Gray, and Benedict Kingsbury (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1995), 357–372. 77 si sims, Musha jiken jikki (Puli: Taiwan keisei Shinpōsha Hori shikyoku, 1931), 118–21. 78 i Usinsk, ., Taiwan banzoku zufu, vol. 1 (Taipei: Rinji Taiwan kyūkan chōsakai, 1915), plate 31.
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In February 1915 Kondō Gisaburō was awarded 140 yen and the seventh-class Order o the Rising Sun medal or his participation in the guardline wars o the 1910–1914 period. According to this memoir, Gisaburō was transerred because o disagreements stemming rom the promised sale o land in Kirigaseki. Despite Kondō Katsusaburō’s protestations in this memoir, Gisaburō is still depicted in popular writing about the Musha Rebellion in Taiwan as someone who abandoned Mona Rudao’s sister Diwas Rudao.79
30. The Government-General Abandons Kondō’s Family Whatever the truth o Kondō’s evocative and literary description o Gisaburō’s possible suicide, it is certainly true that by 1916 the brothers Kondō had worn out their welcome in Seediq and Truku territory. Aer the guardline movements were completed, and a majority o Indigenous people disarmed, men like Katsusaburō and Gisaburō, who were willing to marry into Seediq political amilies to urther the goals o empire, appear to have been o little utility to the state. Katsusaburō notes that Diwas Rudao would not be eligible or death benets rom Gisaburō’s disappearance because she was not a legally registered wie. But it was also the case that Katsusaburō ailed to enter his Seediq wives in his amily register. Some Japanese interpreters, like Watanabe Eijirō, did enter Indigenous wives into their household registries, which suggests that the brothers Kondō had that option. In any F m, i Rn, “Musha Incident: A Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Graphic History” (Musha shijian: Taiwan Yuanzhumin lishi manhua [Taipei: Taiwan Yuanzhumin jijinhui, 2001]).
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event, when such marriages dissolved, sometimes Indigenous women ound employment working or Japanese companies or government oces, while others ared less well and were simply abandoned.80 As Kondō Katsusaburō insisted, these marriages and their abrupt dissolutions were oen poisonous to relations between Japanese and Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan.
31. Kondō Relocates to Hualien Kondō’s memoir concludes with the observation that Japanese ocialdom orgot and neglected Kondō’s amily, as well as Mona Rudao’s people, aer the guardline was built and the Seediq polities disarmed. In Kondō’s telling, both men became ineectual at pleading their cases with government apparatchiks, especially as the men Kondō had secured patronage rom moved on, either returning to Japan or climbing the bureaucratic ladder. Whereas Kondō resigned himsel to his ate as a man on the outs with little political inuence, Mona nursed a two-decade grudge that nally exploded in the Musha Rebellion. Here, Kondō strongly suggests that Indigenous Taiwanese, especially Seediq people including Mona Rudao, were incapable o adjusting their attitudes to shiing realities. Mona Rudao, however, was not the simple rustic that Kondō makes him out to be in this installment. Mona had traveled to Japan as a mature adult in 1911, and throughout the Musha plateau as a dealmaker and intermediary among Tgdaya peoples or decades. But whereas Kondō could pick up stakes and remove to Hualien in the mid-1910s as a Japanese P D. B, “C Bk n nni i in Cni in: ns ns n Ti Aiin Wis, –,” Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 2 (May 2005): 323–60.
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settler-colonist, Mona Rudao could not simply leave Mhebu to start a new lie elsewhere. As a Tgdaya headman, Mona was responsible or the political, economic, and spiritual welare o orty households in Mhebu directly, but also as the paramount headman o about two thousand Tgdaya men, women, and children. While Kondō moved to the east coast o Taiwan to try his hand at arming and lumbering in various locales near Hualien (Map 3), Mona continued to prosecute his duties as a leader o Mhebu until his death by suicide in late 1930. This last installment o Kondō’s memoir, almost in passing, provides a glimpse into Katsusaburō’s land reclamation and agribusiness concerns. These projects, which date rom 1905 and continue into the 1930s, were premised on the colonial state’s seizure o land rom Taiwanese who lacked the wherewithal to prove ownership and register land with the Japanese colonial government. The Taiwan Government-General declared all unregistered land “public property” in 1895. But it required a decade or survey teams to create a detailed map o its public lands. Legally speaking, the unregistered land was “wasteland” and was open to homesteaders like Kondō, as well as Han Taiwanese claimants, i they could get government approval o their business plans. The operation o this system depended upon not only on the land survey but also the October 1905 population census, which established xed residences and amily registers or prospective land claimants to state on their applications.81 81 : E Wik, “ns Ln Piis in in, – ,” Agricultural History 43, no. 3 (1969): 369–78; Chih-ming Ka, Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan: Land Tenure, Development, and Dependency, 1895–1945 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995); Ruiping Ye, The Colonisation and Settlement of Taiwan, 1684–1945: Land, Law, and Qing and Japanese Policies, (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018).
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Kondō’s land reclamation projects commenced immediately aer this inrastructure had been put in place. The government was willing to lease “public land” only to aspirants with sucient capital, agribusiness experience, and evidence o xed residency. I a local subpreect approved the applicant and business plan, he sent the application to higher-ups in Taipei or nal approval. I the applicant demonstrated progress in reclaiming the land, according to the business plan, he could be accorded a title, in the orm o the right to alienate his leasehold. Kondō was involved in three reclamation projects between 1905 and 1920. The unpublished documentation that attended these cases reveals that Kondō did in act experience bureaucratic resistance to some o his plans, as he states in the memoir. On the other hand, he was eventually granted title to sizable estates, which he was able to sell later or considerable sums o money. Kondō asserts in the memoir that he ocused on obtaining a arm near Kirigaseki (Map 2), but this term is not used in any o Kondō’s land claims. Instead, in September, 1905, just aer Kondō helped broker the placement o mountain guns in Tgdaya territory as the base or shelling villages in Wanda, Kondō led an application to lease and develop about thirty-eight kō o land along the Beigang River in a place called iangouzhang, just
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west o Shuizhangliu (Map 2).82 Ocials in Taipei demanded additional documentation regarding Kondō’s application because o his known association with Seediq peoples, his Tgdaya wie, and his role as an interpreter who resided or a time in Indigenous settlements. The chie o agriculture and industry in Taipei questioned Kondō’s ability to reclaim thirty-eight kō; he suspected that Indigenous Peoples would be managing the property and doing the actual work. In response, Nantō Preect Koyanagi replied that Kondō had been an agriculturist since 1899, aer quitting his residence in the Indigenous territory. He averred that Kondō would develop the iangouzhang tract himsel, but, as a sideline, Kondō would also encourage his Indigenous associates to learn agriculture and create an Indigenous arming community. Kondō duly led a development plan along with his application. Aer many delays, the plan was approved in early 1907. Having passed the inspection or successul reclamation, Kondō applied to sell the iangouzhang property in May 1909. At this time, Kondō had just nished corralling 647 Tgdaya men or the ght against Toda and Truku. According to the memoir, Kondō was ready to settle down on an estate in Kirigaseki at 82 One kō (or one jia in Mandarin) = .97 hectares. This was thus a very large estate by Taiwanese standards; the great majority o Taiwanese farmers owned less than two kō of cropland. In 1921, a few years ater Kondō’s claim was resold, only the top 1 percent o landowner households owned more than twenty kō of land (Ka, Japanese Co lonialism in Taiwan, 148). The details and chronology regarding the Qiangouzhuang tract are based on my analysis of the twenty-three documents rom the case preserved in “Kanyū genya yōyaku kaikon no ken (Kondō Katsusaburō)” May 1, 1909 (Archives of the Gov ernor’s Oce o Taiwan: the Governor’s Oce Ocial Documents. National Archives o Taiwan (Taiwan Historica, Nantou). Record #00005237004). These documents are available at https://onlinearchives.th.gov.tw/index.php?act=Archive (accessed July 23, 2022).
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this juncture, on land inormally ceded by Paalan men to Kondō in exchange or oxen and trade goods. In actuality, on August 4, 1909, Kondō signed an agreement with developer Yu Xiaoqing to take over Yu’s lease o orty-seven kō o land in Shuizhangliu.83 This deal was approved in November 1909, while Kondō was still working with the government-general to disarm the Truku, Toda, Xakut, and Malepa peoples in Nantou County. Yu Xiaoqing made the original claim on the “government-owned sell-o land” in Shuizhangliu in July 1906. Yu’s application was quickly approved, without comment, in October, possibly because o Yu’s good standing with the Taiwan Government-General. In 1897, Yu was awarded a seventh-class bureaucratic rank or supplying Japanese counterinsurgency orces with intelligence.84 From 1906 through 1909, Yu converted about een kō o the Shuizhangliu tract into wet-rice paddy elds. Thereaer, Kondō reclaimed about twenty-three kō as dryeld, probably with Yu’s assistance. By 1910 the two proprietors had developed about thirty-nine kō o land on the orty-seven-kō parcel. Aer survey teams inspected Kondō’s tract, he submitted detailed maps o his holdings and his original contract with Yu
T is n n in ini s n m nsis im mns m s s in “ikni sikō is kk nō ssō ōk kikn n kn nō ssō.” m , . Archives o the Governor’s Oce o Taiwan: The Governor’s Oce Ocial Documents. National Archives of Taiwan (Taiwan Historica, Nantou). Record # 00005866017. 84 “Ci Linn k snmi jkn.” m , . Archives o the Governor’s Oce o Taiwan: The Governor’s Oce Ocial Documents. National Archives of Taiwan (Taiwan Historica, Nantou). Record # 00000220010.
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Xiaoqing. Kondō nally received conrmation o title to this land in September 1914. Pihu Walis’s 1988 memoir o lie in Tgdaya country claims that Kondō received a grant o government land in Shuizhangliu near the end o the Meiji period. He recalled that Kondō worked this land with his Tgdaya de acto wives and their amilies, whom Kondō treated like slaves.85 Whatever the nature o Kondō’s treatment o his labor orce, it would seem that he “adopted” the many daughters he claimed in 1930, Pihu Pira among them, during this time-period (1906–1914). It seems that Kondō unctioned in the local economy as a quasi-headman, brokering commerce, marriage alliances, and dealings with the colonial state. Author Wakumoto Seiichi wrote that Kondō received land and permission to harvest timber in the Puli region rom the eminent government ocial and proessor o orestry Konishi Nariaki.86 Konishi himsel rose up through Taiwan Government-General ranks in positions connected to the camphor monopoly, orestry, and public lands aer graduating rom the Tokyo Agriculture and Forestry School in 1898.87 Bureaucrats such as Konishi would have been reliant upon Kondō’s expertise as an interpreter and actotum to navigate their requent travels and inspections o orest land in the Aborigine District. 85 Pi Wis [G Ynin], Musha hizakura no kuruizaki: gyaku satsu jiken ikinokori no shogen, trans. Katō Minoru (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1988), 13. 86 Wkm iii, Taiwan hiwa (Taipei: Nihon oyobi shokumin, 1928), 269. 87 “nisi iki,” in “iji snjūninn ikō ikis ski iū sikk snss n i sn ii,” n , . Archives o the Governor’s Oce o Taiwan: The Governor’s Oce Ocial Documents. National Archives of Taiwan (Taiwan Historica, Nantou). Records #00112554010 and 00112554068.
252
NOTES: 31. KONdō rElOcaTES TO hualiEN
But whatever benets Kondō derived rom such connections, in the memoir he claims that such reserves o goodwill had dried up by 1915. Not coincidentally, that was the very year the government-general dismantled the Bureau o Aborigine Pacication, which had been created to prosecute the guardline wars in which Kondō took part. According to the memoir, in June 1916, Kondō made an agreement to sell the developed portion (about orty kō) o the Shuizhangliu tract to Xia Lianshi. Kondō asserts that Xia misrepresented the sold land as comprising the ull original orty-seven kō specied in Yu’s ounding 1906 claim. Kondō meant to sell only the nearly orty kō that had already been reclaimed or agriculture, at least according to the memoir. Whatever the veracity o Kondō’s and Xia’s respective accusations, it is evident that Kondō did in act alienate all orty-seven kō o land by 1915, likely to Xia Lianshi. To read between the lines o the memoir and the land-transaction records, it appears that Kondō had set aside, or so he thought, about seven kō o land rom the Yu Xiaoqing claim, as a permanent residence. The alienation o the Shuizhangliu land came at a critical juncture in Kondō’s lie. While he alludes to his nancial responsibilities as the successor to his ather’s household headship in the memoir, it would seem that the occasion o his contested land case with Xia Lianshi marked his exit rom this role. At the same time, the loss o his stake in the Shuizhangliu tract also resulted in Kondō’s separation rom his Tgdaya kin network in the Puli and Beigangxi districts o Nantou Preecture. Regarding Kondō’s Tokushima amily, we recall that his ather, Mankichi, passed away in 1909, leaving Katsusaburō as the legal amily head. Six years later, his brother Gisaburō, husband to Mona Rudao’s sister Diwas, apparently returned to Tokushima to 253
Kondo the BarBarian
take care o the amily matters that Katsusaburō was ostensibly charged with. On March 15, 1915, Gisaburō applied to start his own household registry, at a location not ar rom the original amily residence in Myōsei county, Tokushima. A week later, the township clerk approved Gisaburō’s application to leave Kondō Katsusaburō’s household register. Gisaburō’s younger brother Yoshio (b. 1888) entered Gisaburō’s new household register as well. Nine months later, Katsusaburō’s three nieces, who were born out o wedlock to Katsusaburō’s younger sister Hisa (b. 1876), also le Kondō’s amily register. In December 1915, Hisa wed Takehara Gisaburō, and joined his household in Kagawa Preecture with her daughters (Katsusaburō’s nieces) Yoko, Seki, and Haruko. In eect, the household registry o nine that Kondō Katsusaburō inherited rom his ather Mankichi in 1909 was reduced to three members in 1915 (only Kondō’s mother Chiyo and younger sister remained).88 All o this evidence suggests that Kondō Gisaburō abandoned his Seediq wie Diwas Rudao in order to manage amily aairs in Tokushima, contrary to Kondō’s protestations. It is sae to assume that Kondō Gisaburō le Taiwan or Tokushima in early 1915 to obtain the approval o city government clerks or the legal reconguration o the Kondō household. Gisaburō possibly returned to Taiwan aerward, but his standing with the police department was too low to merit a place in the personnel registers o the colonial government. It is thus impossible to conrm Gisaburō’s post-1916 whereabouts independently. In the memoir, Kondō states that he removed to Hualien, 88 T inmin n nō mi’s sin in is kn m s is in , i s in in nō’s iin s kō o land in Mailun, Hualien (see footnote below).
254
NOTES: 31. KONdō rElOcaTES TO hualiEN
alone, in January 1918, having grown weary o the ailed land claim in Kirigaseki and the court battle with Xia Lianshi. His third land claim states that Kondō was resident in Hualien already on December 28, 1917. I he did receive a cash payout o twenty thousand yen, and distribute a small percentage o it to his Tgdaya kin and associates beore leaving, he would have arrived in Hualien a relatively wealthy man. Nonetheless, his application to lease nine kō o “government-owned sell-o land” in Mailun, just north o Hualien (see Map 3), took well over a year to make its way through the colonial bureaucracy. Kondō led a plan to develop this land, along with a deposit. The claim was nally approved in mid-1919.89 A ragmentary manuscript le by one Miyatake Shōtarō, the nephew o Kondō’s Hualien wie, suggests that Kondō remarried around this time. Miyatake states that Kondō ended his days managing a sugar plantation in Shuilianwei (see Map 3). Kondō relocated there aer a 1922 typhoon destroyed his property in Hualien (presumably the Mailun tract). Miyatake implies that Kondō employed Indigenous labor on his land in Shuilianwei.90 Author Wakumoto Seiichi’s 1928 publication reers to Kondō as “an elderly man living easily in the boondocks o Hualien, domiciled with an Indigenous wie.” Wakumoto adds that Kondō was also a lumber-dealer.91 In an indirect but signicant way, Kondō’s commission to aid Kaku Kurata and other ocials in the campaigns to subdue and dispossess the Nanshi Pangcah, in 1907 and 1908, made possible “nū n is kk nō ssō.” n , . Archives o the Governor’s Oce o Taiwan: The Governor’s Oce Ocial Documents. National Archives of Taiwan (Taiwan Historica, Nantou). Record # 00006821006, pp. 90–91. Ymm, “iks nō ssō,” . Wkm, Taiwan hiwa, 259; 273.
255
Kondo the BarBarian
Kondō’s settlement activities in Hualien in the 1920s. Like his properties in Hualien, the iangouzhuang and Shuizhangliu tracts in Beigangxi District were also put up or sale by a conquest state that arbitrated land claims mostly or the purpose o increasing tax yields. Indigenous Peoples were generally the biggest losers in this game, but Han Taiwanese also lost land when large Japanese sugar corporations, via the politics o land classication and titling procedures, bought up expansive tracts o “unclaimed land.” Despite the big gains that Japanese corporations made at the expense o Taiwanese landholders in the countryside, it would be inaccurate to say that all Taiwanese were victims o the land-title system. At a smaller scale, the Japanese sole-proprietor Kondō was not avored by the state over wealthy and industrious Taiwanese entrepreneurs such as Yu Xiaoqing and Xia Lianshi. When the Musha Rebellion broke out on October 27, 1930, Kondō made his way to Tgdaya country to interview jailed suspects like Pira Pihu. Upon returning to Hualien on November 10, 1930, he submitted a report to the Hualien preect, and a dra o his memoir to a newspaper editor. This was serialized in the Taiwan Daily News. On November 16, 1930, while Japanese army and police units were still deployed against the rebels, Kondō’s observations on the causes o the rebellion were rst published in that newspaper. Kondō publicized his conviction that Mona Rudao and the Tgdaya workers who labored to advance the guardline to Tattaka in 1909 were not compensated. Their resentment, averred Kondō, was a long-term cause o the October 27, 1930, conagration.92 Three months later, he repeated these claims in the last installment o the serialized memoir, which appears in “s jikn n kii ni ski ‘nsū’ nōsi k,” Tai wan Nichinichi Shinpō, November 16, 1930, 5.
256
NOTES: 31. KONdō rElOcaTES TO hualiEN
this volume as chapter 31. By then, the rebels had been routed by the Taiwan Government-General’s combined military and police orces, aided by thousands o Indigenous auxiliaries. But the physical damage rom the war remained in evidence, as did the sordid drama o imperial Japan’s penchant or retribution against the Tgdaya people associated with the rebellion. Reader response must have been avorable, because the newspaper thereaer reported extensively upon Kondō’s activities in 1931 through 1934, always linking him in some way to the deceased captain and the events o 1897. The newspaper also appears to have sponsored a visit to Taiwan by Fukahori Yasuichirō’s widow, Sechiko, just aer the nal installment o Kondō’s memoir was published on February 15, 1931.93 Sechiko arrived in Taipei in March 1931. She was scheduled to make a trek across the Central Mountains to replicate aspects o her late husband’s journey. The trip, however, was delayed due to the disrepair o the police installations along the Nenggao Trail and the damage sustained by suspension bridges during the rebellion. In April 1931, Sechiko, and the late expedition leader’s son Captain Fukahori Shū o the Taipei Mountain Artillery Company, were photographed at a roundtable discussion with Kondō at the Imperial Railroad Hotel in Taipei (Figure 2). Finally, in December 1931, Kondō escorted Fukahori’s sixty-seven-year-old widow and Tis is n inn s n n ik’s i, n n in. T min nō n ik ii mi Ri H s sns Taiwan Daily News, so it seems that the whole stay in Taiwan, covered extensively by the newspaper, was also paid or by the newspaper. “Yue Fukahori Tai’i tsuioku zadankai kaisai,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō (March 25, 1931), 2.
257
Kondo the BarBarian
Captain Fukahori Shū on a seven-day trek across the Nenggao Trail, rom Puli to Hatsune in Hualien. Along the way, Sechiko met Baso Bōran, the Truku leader who had housed Kondō in the 1890s while he searched or Fukahori’s remains. She also visited the site o his probable death beneath “Fukahori Falls,” where she obtained a rock to use as the “spirit-body” (shintai) or the uture Fukahori Shrine.94 The Fukahori Shrine is mentioned several times in the memoir as the object o Kondō’s desire. The newspaper company and Kondō rode the wave o rekindled interest in Fukahori’s 1897 expedition that ollowed in the wake o Mona’s rebellion to collect unds and generate interest in building a shrine. The government itsel was not eager to und such a shrine, but neither was it against the project. Several newspaper articles rom the period report that Kondō was given two spectacular Taiwan r trees, about seven eet in diameter, rom Taroko Gorge to und the shrine. Subsequently, Kondō opened a shop in Taipei to sell the ragrant, ornamental, and rare lumber as boards and incense material. Without irony, the paper noted that Kondō used Taroko labor to get the large logs to Hualien’s plains or processing.95 (Tgdaya discontent with labor dras involving log-hauling was a major cause o the rebellion in October 1930). By January 31, 1932, Kondō had orchestrated the installation o an inner shrine to house the spirit-body brought to Hualien by Fukahori’s widow much earlier. The outer shrine precincts, or the “worship shrine,” however, was not yet completed when Fukahori’s widow, son, “Fki i’i miōjin n ūō snmk ōn,” Taiwan Nichini chi Shinpō, March 25, 1931, 2; “Yue Fukahori Tai’i no sōnanchi o tomarau,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, December 18, 1931, 7. “Gkmk n i ik ,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, December 24, 1931, 2; “Nengan jōju no tame ‘Seiban Kondō’ no kaiten,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, December 13, 1931, 2.
258
NOTES: 31. KONdō rElOcaTES TO hualiEN
Kondō, and several government ocials consecrated the Fukahori Shrine that day. There was another ceremony a year later to commemorate the shrine’s rst anniversary; but the outer shrine remained unbuilt. Kondō remarked that the ceremony was not an authorized public religious ritual but only personal worship.96 By 1934, news o the Fukahori Shrine project had disappeared. I it was ever completed, it did not attract media or ocial attention. Kondō’s last mentions in the press were related to products made rom the Taiwan r trees he received to und Fukahori’s Shrine. In one case he commissioned a wooden Fudōsan (Buddhist tutelary deity) statue or a Hualien town along the railway; in another instance he traveled to the imperial place to present a screen-sized board in Tokyo.97 We do not know the details o Kondō’s lumbering operations, but the scattered evidence suggests that he continued employing Indigenous labor into the 1930s to obtain and process the rare wood. In August 1935, the Taiwan Government-General published a list o Japanese nationals in Taiwan who had been resident in the colony or orty years. Kondō Katsusaburō was one o only thirty-three Japanese in Hualien Preecture who made the list.98 A distant relative, Miyatake Shōtarō, recalled that Kondō died o a cerebral “Fki i’i in,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, February 4, 1932, 3; “Fukahori Tai’i no rei o inoru,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, February 1, 1933, 3. “Riinn ni Fōsn in,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, October 14, 1934, 3; “Jurei sen yo-nen no kasugi no tsuitate,” Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō, January 23, 1935, 3. “Ynjūnin ijō ii mn iji nijūknnms m i.” Taiwan Sōtokuu Kanpō #2466, August 14, 1935, 43. National Archives o Taiwan (Taiwan Historica, Nantou). Record # 0071032466a007.
259
Kondo the BarBarian
inarction beore he could be repatriated to Japan, suggesting that Kondō may have lived somewhere in Hualien into the 1940s.99 The last documentary trace o Kondō that I could locate was in a missing package notice rom the Taiwan Railroad Bureau, dated 1943. It states that one Kondō Katsusaburō, address unknown, sent an eighteen-kilogram wooden board rom Kaohsiung to Keelung via parcel post. The notice stated that unclaimed lost reight would become the property o the Railway Bureau in six months.100 I the sender o this large piece o wood was Katsusaburō o Tokushima, then the career o “Kondō the Barbarian” was nearly coterminous with the duration o Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan. It is perhaps tting that Kondō ended his days in Shuilianwei, a ormerly Nanshi Pangcah territory in close proximity to ijiachuan. Kondō’s exploits as a tracker in 1908 helped the Japanese push the Pangcah people out o ijiachuan and its environs, to make way or the Japanese immigrant communities o Yoshino, Toyoda, and Hayashida villages, and one reugee rom the guardline wars in central Taiwan.
Ymm, “iks nō ssō,” . “nsi mi nims sō.” Taiwan Sōtokuu Kanpō #415, August 20, 1943, 120. National Archives o Taiwan (Taiwan Historica, Nantou). Record # 0072030415a019.
260
imin
Dates with no asterisks are independently conrmed. A single asterisk (*) indicates a probable date taken rom Kondō’s recollections, but one that lacks independent conrmation. Two asterisks (**) indicate a plausible but unconrmed date taken rom Kondō’s recollections. I. Kondō’s Youth in Japan and Trading Post Days in Taiwan (1873–1900) December 10,
Kondō Katsusaburō, the eldest son o Kondō
1873
Mankichi and Chiyo (née Kawahara) o Myōzai County, Urashō Town, Tokushima Preecture, is born.
July 23, 1894
Japanese orces occupy Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul. First battle atalities in the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War.
September 15,
ing orces surrender in the Battle o
1894
Pyongyang, the rst and last major land battle o the Sino-Japanese War. Two days later, the Japanese Navy wins the Battle o the Yalu River, the major sea engagement o the war.
261
September 18,
The Japanese transport ship Seigi-maru is
1894*
crippled by a collision with a British merchant ship o Mutsurejima near Shimonoseki; among its passengers are Kondō, who is transerred to the ship Tosa-maru. He disembarks at Incheon, Korea, as a transport and logistics worker in the Japanese Imperial Army.
March 23–25,
Japanese orces seize the Pescadores Islands
1895
(Penghu). Japan loses over one thousand men to cholera during operations. First maneuver o the Japanese military occupation o Taiwan.
April 17, 1895
Treaty o Shimonoseki. The ing dynasty cedes Taiwan to Japan.
May 1895*
Kondō musters out as a transport worker o the Imperial Japanese Army, Nagoya Division. Kondō briey returns to his hometown o Tokushima.
May 29, 1895
Prince Kitashirakawa, at the head o the Imperial Guard, and Governor-General Kabayama Sukenori, leading a mixed brigade, arrive in Taiwan to crush anti-Japanese resistance and establish Japanese rule.
June 17, 1895
The inaugural day o the Taiwan GovernmentGeneral. Kabayama Sukenori presides over a ceremony in Taipei, the Japanese capital city.
August 6, 1895
In the ace o massive Taiwanese armed resistance, the Taiwan Government-General enacts an ordinance declaring martial law, putting the military in charge o governing Taiwan.
October 21, 1895 Rebel orces surrender Tainan to Japanese authorities aer months o heavy ghting. January 1, 1896
Taiwanese rebels kill six Japanese civilians in the Zhishanyan Incident. Taipei is under siege; Japanese non-military personnel are issued weapons to deend the city.
January 1, 1896
Puli preect Hiyama Tetsusaburō holds rst ocial meeting with Tgdaya delegation headed by Pihu Sapo.
February 1896*
Kondō arrives at Keelung Harbor rom Hong Kong.
March 31–April
Imperial Headquarters or the Sino-Japanese
1, 1896
War is dissolved, ending martial law in Taiwan. The basic laws, ordinances, and administrative guidelines or civil rule in Taiwan are promulgated.
May 19, 1896**
Kondō arrives in Puli to work or the military as an interpreter.
May 25, 1896
Hiyama Tetsusuburō is appointed acting head o the Pacication-Reclamation Oce in Puli. Hiyama is charged with managing government relations with the Atayal and Seediq peoples in the uncharted territories east o Puli.
June 13, 1896
Jian Yi leads guerilla units to attack exposed Japanese police stations, beginning a monthlong series o rebellions in Taiwan.
July 11, 1896
Captain Ishizuka orders the Japanese garrison, the police, and civilian ocials to abandon Puli and retreat to Taichung. The next day, more than ve hundred rebels pour into the walled city o Puli.
July 17, 1896
Pan Dingwen’s Pingpuzu orces welcome Japanese troops back into Puli. These Indigenous militias deend Puli while Japanese ocials shelter in Taizhong.
July 23, 1896
The Puli Pacication-Reclamation Oce reopens with Hiyama Tetsusaburō as the head.
July 1896*
Kondō arrives in Puli, according to his published recollections.
December 23,
Taroko orces wipe out thirteen Japanese
1896
policemen in an attack upon the Hualien garrison post in Xincheng.
January 10, 1897 Xincheng retaken aer heavy ghting with the Taroko. January 18, 1897 The Fukahori mission departs Puli or Tgdaya territory, en route to Hualien. They reach Paalan, the hometown o interpreter Iwan Robao. According to Kondō’s memoir, this is the time he le the mission due to an attack o malaria. January 22, 1897 The Fukabori Mission enters Truku country, as the guest o Baso Bōran, headman o Sadu. The Japanese men stay in Sadu or several days, delayed by bad weather and operational challenges. January 28, 1897 The Tgdaya interpreters leave the Fukahori mission or ear o entering Taroko country. Captain Fukahori sends his last letter to military headquarters conrming the good health o his men. February 8, 1897 Captain Fukahori leaves Truku again with twelve Indigenous guides. They are never heard rom again. March 1897
Army ocials make several ailed attempts to ascertain the Fukahori mission’s whereabouts.
April–May 1897
Second Lieutenant Akimoto Genhiro leads an expedition to investigate the circumstances o Fukahori’s disappearance. On May 2, the mission arrives in Toda, where they nd evidence related to Fukahori’s demise. In Toda, however, they were stonewalled by reluctant headmen, and the mission returns to Hōgō on May 4, and to Puli on May 5.
April–May 1897* According to Kondō’s memoir, Puli ocials ordered Tgdaya men to assist the Japanese Army to search or Fukahori’s remains. To prove their own innocence, Tgdaya men bring Japanese police in Shizitou severed Truku and Toda heads. May 25, 1897
Hiyama Tetsusaburō, who was ound guilty o extortion and incitement to burglary, is ordered to vacate his post in Puli.
June 19, 1897
Nagano Yoshitora named as acting head o the Pacication-Reclamation Oce in Puli. Nagano is known or advocating strict policies o rearms control and trade sanctions against Atayal, Seediq, and Taroko peoples (the “Northern Tribes”).
August 1897–
Kondō leaves Puli to live in Truku to set up
December 1898* a trading post. In Kondō’s account, he enters the residence o Sadu headman Baso Bōran and remains there or some twenty months. During his residence, Kondō locates eight skulls le rom the Fukahori mission and receives a Fudōson amulet that belonged to Fukahori. September 28,
According to the Taiwan-based Japanese press,
1898
Kondō Katsusaburō, Itō Shūkichi, and Nagakura Jirōsuke leave Puli to visit the site o Fukahori’s demise and explore a route to Hualien.
December 16,
Kondō and his Tgdaya wie Iwan Robao contact
1898
the Puli District Oce as emissaries or een Seediq people rom Truku and Toda.
March 1899*
Kondō, Itō, Nagakura, and Tappa Kurasu return to Puli, according to Kondō’s recollections.
March 24, 1900
During a circuit o Toda and Truku, Ōkuma Hirotake, head o the Puli District Oce, nds several articles that belonged to the Fukahori mission’s members. Kondō is one o several members o Ōkuma’s team; he is listed as a “trading-post operator.”
August 1900
Kondō is hired with an allowance o ve yen per month as a part-time government interpreter, to address the unsettled conditions near Musha. Three Indigenous women are simultaneously red rom their positions. One o Kondō’s assignments is to accompany the ethnologists Torii Ryūzō and Mori Ushinosuke during eld work near Puli.
II. Kondō the Settler-Colonist and Government Interpreter during the War Against the Tgdaya People (1903–1915) April 29, 1902
Lieutenant Nakamura o the Puli garrison battles Tgdaya orces at the Battle o Hitodome Pass. In Tgdaya memory, this was a resounding victory against Japan, which in turn oments increased Japanese military activity in Tgdaya territory.
March–April
The Taiwan Government-General places
1903
“Aborigine Administration” under Police Headquarters to institutionalize a policy o oensive military operations against Indigenous Peoples.
October 5, 1903
The Shimaigahara Incident. The Puli Police Oce condones a Bunun ambush o Paalan and Hōgō Tgdaya traders. The Bunun-Tgdaya meeting was ostensibly arranged to circumvent the Japanese trade embargo. Over one hundred Tgdaya men were slain; their heads were brought back to the Puli police station.
1904–1905
Several kilometers o guardlines are constructed between Puli and Meixi in Tgdaya country. Kondō was a negotiator and interpreter or government orces, according to his memoir.
September 1905
Kondō applies to reclaim over thirty-eight kō (about thirty-eight hectares) o “governmentowned sell-o land” in an area o Beigangxi District called Wushulin in iangouzhang.
October 1, 1905
A provisional population census o Taiwan is carried out. Seediq, Atayal, Taroko and other Indigenous Taiwanese remain outside o the census area. They are administratively and legally residents o the “Aborigine District,” outside o the tax base.
April 11, 1906
Sakuma Samata named h governor-general o Taiwan. Sakuma will hold this post until 1915. He is the architect o the large-scale oensive wars against Taiwan Indigenous Peoples that were ought between 1907 and 1914. Kondō later claims that Sakuma sought his advice.
April 20, 1906
Kondō is cited or bravery or interpreting during major guardline movement between the Beigangxi and Zhuoshui rivers in Tgdaya country. He was later awarded a seventy-yen bonus or meritorious service.
May 31, 1906
A guardline is built through Mount Shouchengda in Tgdaya country. Twelve villages surrender weapons and participate in submission ceremonies.
July 29, 1906
Yu Xiaoqing applies to reclaim over orty-seven kō (about orty-seven hectares) o “governmentowned sell-o land” in Shuizhangliu. Kondō will later purchase Yu’s lease. This parcel o land will become an object o contention between Kondō and Xia Lianshi.
August 29, 1906
Kondō’s application or the Wushulin tract in iangouzhang is approved by Nantō preect Koyanagi Shigemichi and sent up the bureaucratic ladder.
September 5,
Kondō called to Taipei to meet with Governor-
1906*
General Sakuma.
January 16–20,
Kondō accompanies Governor-General Sakuma
1907*
and Captain Kaku Kurata on an inspection tour o Hualien. Kaku employs around two hundred ijiaochuan and Mugua men to assist in the exploration o the Chiyakan River.
January 22, 1907 Kondō’s application or the reclamation o “government-owned sell-o land” in Wushulin is approved. September 12,
Kondō leaves Puli together with “several
1907
Indigenous men” to cross the Central Mountains eastward.
September 16,
Kondō returns to Paalan aer ailing to secure
1907
guides; he sends an emissary to Katsukku to take applications or guide/porter work.
September 18,
Headman Watan Pokki o Katsukku secures
1907
the services o twenty-our porters/guides or Kondō, making an agreement that each man would receive our water bualo or his services.
September 22,
All but our o Kondō’s men abandon the
1907
mission in ear o the Taroko, Bunun, and ijjiachuan tribes.
September 28,
Kondō’s company o ve arrives at the plains
1907
on the east coast o Taiwan at the end o a harrowing trek that included near starvation.
January 4, 1908
Kaku Kurata leaves Taipei or Puli to join a tramontane expedition to Hualien, to ollow up on Kondō’s preliminary expedition. Kondō is a member o this expedition.
January 19, 1908 The Kaku Kurata Mission arrives in Wuquancheng in Hualien. They are greeted by a Pangcah headman who remonstrates with Kaku about encroachments on ijiachuan land. December 13,
Pangcah men rom ijiachuan abandon
1908
their posts on the guardline, touching o the “ijiachuan Incident” that results in the orced migration o ijiachuan’s population, clearing the way or government-sponsored Japanese settler-migration to Yoshino-mura.
May 12, 1909
Kondō’s request to sell his Wushulin plot in Beigangxi is approved upon receipt o a 52.99yen ee to Nantō Preecture.
August 4, 1909
Agreement between Yu Xiaoqing and Kondō to transer title or orty-seven kō o governmentowned sell-o land rom Yu to Kondō.
December 1909
The Bureau o Aborigine Pacication is established to administer Sakuma’s Five-Year Plan to Manage the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples. Ōtsu Rinpei is appointed head.
December 15,
The Nantō branch o the Bureau o Aborigine
1910
Pacication begins the suppression o Musha (through March 1911).
January 12, 1911
A Tokyo-published national newspaper announces the een-year anniversary o Captain Fukahori’s disappearance. According to this article Kondō was a key gure in the recovery o Captain Fukahori’s Fudōson amulet.
July 1911
Kondō Kastsusaburō commissioned to arrange a sightseeing tour or Tgdaya people rom Hōgō.
May 17, 1914
Massive military orce brought to bear on Taroko people east o the central-mountain watershed. Musha is the base or the expeditionary orces. Japan declares victory on August 23.
September 11,
Approval o maps and charts or the sale o
1914
Kondō’s Shuizhangliu plot, the one transerred rom Yu Xiaoqing. Kondō pays 58.21 yen to the preecture. This is the tract that Kondō sold to Xia Lianshi under hotly disputed terms.
March 10, 1915
Kondō Gisaburō establishes a branch household in Myōsei-gun, Kōgawahara-mura, Minamijimaōaza, 413 banchi. He is approved to leave Kondō’s amily register (koseki) on March 24, 1915.
May 1, 1915
Andō Teibi is sworn in as the governor-general o Taiwan upon Sakuma’s retirement.
July 1915
The Bureau o Aborigine Pacication is abolished, marking the ocial end o the “Five-Year Campaign to Manage the Indigenous Peoples.”
III. Kondō’s Life as a Gentleman Farmer in Hualien and as a Media Figure (1918–1934) December 26,
Kondō applies or nine kō (about nine hectares)
1917
o government-owned sell-o Land in Hualien.
February 25,
Kondō’s application to lease government-owned
1920
sell-o land in Mailun, Hualien, is approved.
December 10,
Printing o Wakumoto Seiichi’s Taiwan hiwa,
1928
which contains Kondō’s narrative o service in the Sino-Japanese War and involvement in the Fukahori mission.
October 27, 1930 Musha Rebellion. At 8:50 a.m., the rst report o the Tgdaya attacks on Japanese installations and citizens were received at the Nenggao district oce; they were relayed to the governmentgeneral at 11:00 a.m. The government-general orbids all transmission o the news on the island. October 29, 1930 Kondō leaves Hualien or Puli to investigate origins and causes o the Musha Rebellion. October 29, 1930 The morning editions o Japanese newspapers, a ull two days aer the police squads descended upon Musha, begin to publish news rom the scene o the rebellion. November 1,
Morita Shunsuke, head o the Aborigine
1930
Pacication Section o the Police Bureau in Taiwan, dispatches interpreters Kabazawa Jūjirō and Ishikawa Genroku to Paalan village to locate neutral headmen and the in-laws o Mona Rudao to discover the whereabouts o the rebels and the causes o the conagration.
November 2,
The newspaper Yorozu Chōhō argues that
1930
the Tgdaya rebels are victims o capitalist imperialist invasion, and that their uprising is an independence movement on a par with India’s anti-colonial movement.
November 2,
The All Japan People’s Party holds “workers’
1930
congresses” in Tokyo and Ōsaka; the Tokyo meeting is broken up by the police when the speaker declares himsel against Japanese imperialism and the slaughter o Taiwan Indigenous Peoples.
November 4,
Former governor-general Kawamura Takeji
1930
charges Ishizuka and his administration with ineptitude — he calls the rebellion a “blunder.” He charges the government-general with putting inexperienced men in Aborigine Pacication and or not noticing that the rebels were stocking up on supplies to prepare or the rebellion. This is the rst salvo in the Seiyūkai Party strategy to use the Musha Rebellion to oust the Minseitō Party and regain power.
November 4,
Ishizuka sends a telegram to a prominent
1930
Seikyūkai politician claiming that the rebellion was caused by Tgdaya ignorance, and that it was being quelled eciently and would be stabilized soon.
November 8,
The newspaper Miyako Shinbun contains a
1930
story attributing the causes o the Musha Rebellion to a ailure to pay Tgdaya laborers or construction work.
November 10,
Kondō appears at the Hualien preect’s oce to
1930
give report on the rebellion.
November 14,
Prime Minister Hamaguchi is wounded by an
1930
assassin.
November 15,
The attempt on Hamaguchi’s lie crowds Musha
1930
out o the newspapers.
November 16,
In interview with a Taiwan-based Japanese
1930
newspaper, Kondō attributes one o the longterm causes o the rebellion to the lack o payment to the 647 Tgdaya people he mobilized against the Truku and Toda people so that the Tattaka guardline could be extended; the Tgdaya expended over a month’s worth o labor and were never repaid, so they held a grudge against the government; Kondō also explains that aer the Tgdaya surrendered their weapons, the Toda, Truku, and Xakut people got better treatment regarding gun loans.
December 20,
The rst installment o Kondō’s memoir appears
1930
in the Taiwan Daily News.
December 28,
Former governor-general o Taiwan Izawa
1930
Takio publishes an opinion piece in the newspaper Jiji Shinpō warning the Cabinet that prevarication on the issue o Ishizuka’s responsibility or the Musha Uprising would be politically disastrous or the Minseitō political party, strongly suggesting that Ishizuka should take the all or the good o the party.
January 16, 1931
Governor-General Ishizuka Eizō relieved o duty; Ōta Masahiro sworn in as new governorgeneral o Taiwan.
February 15, 1931 The last installment o Kondō’s memoir appears in the Taiwan Daily News. March 23, 1931
Photograph o Kondō, Fukahori’s son Shū, and Fukahori’s widow Sechiko appears in the Taiwan Daily News. The party was scheduled to set o on March 23 to cross the Nenggao Trail in Captain Fukahori Yasuichi’s ootsteps, guided by Kondō. But the cable suspension bridges and sleeping quarters along the trail are in disrepair due to the rebellion.
April 24, 1931
Kondō has begun work on the rst-stage o the Fukahori Shrine project at the beginning the Nenggao Trail near Hatsune Station in Hualien; Fukahori’s widow attends the ceremony.
December 9,
Kondō, Captain Fukahori’s widow, and
1931
Fukahori’s son leave Taipei to cross Nenggao Trail. They stay in the Puli, Musha, Truku police stations or one night each; in Truku widow Sechiko meets Baso Bōran and his amily; Kondō interprets or them.
December 24,
Kondō is selling products in Taipei made rom
1931
two two-meter-diameter trees elled rom Taroko Gorge. He has about orty planks/boards that sell rom ve to sixty yen each; Kondō is selling this rare wood to raise money or the outer shrine o Fukahori Shrine, which only has an inner shrine at this date.
January 31, 1932 Fukahori Shrine is opened; the ceremony was attended by several military and civil ocials stationed in Hualien; Fukahori’s widow is also in attendance. January 31, 1933
First anniversary o the installation o the spiritbody at Fukahori Shrine; Kondō reports that the shrine is not ocially recognized, because certain things need to be completed.
December 24,
Kondō presents a six-by-ve-oot slab o wood,
1934
taken rom a tree in Taroko Gorge, at the imperial palace in Tokyo.
Kondo the BarBarian June 17, 1935
Kondō earns a citation or orty years o residence in Taiwan on the ortieth anniversary o the Taiwan Government-General, commemorated on June 17, 1935.
August 20, 1943 An unwrapped eighteen-kilogram board was sent rom Kaohsiung to Keelung by one Kondō Katsusaburō, and le at the station; the notice, published in the Taiwan Government-General ocial gazette, also alerted readers to live chickens, cooked ood, and dead game that had also gone unclaimed in parcel post.
280
Aknmns
This book could not have been written without the generosity and assistance o many colleagues in Taiwan, Japan, and North America, who gave time and eort to this project with no expectation o reward. I would like to especially thank Paul Katz at Academia Sinica or introducing me to Deng Xiangyang, pioneering historian o the Musha Rebellion, and or organizing my rst visit to Musha. Kang Pei-te and Chen Wei-chi have been lie-long supporters o my research, and my guides to Hualien and Yilan. Jonathan Shuelt has been another patient host and collaborator in Taiwan, along with Chang Lung-chih, Kuan Dawei, and Huang Chih-huei. Caroline Hui-yu Ts’ai sponsored an extended stay at Academia Sinica, and is a praiseworthy mentor. Special thanks to Michael Turton or debuting Kondō’s story on his blog The View From Taiwan. In Japan, I have many colleagues to thank, especially Kasahara Masaharu, Kishi Toshihiko, Arisue Ken, Fuma Susumu, and Nobayashi Atsushi. Michael Berry opened many doors through his translations, scholarship, and organizational brilliance. Scott Simon and Darryl Sterk have been unselsh with their hard-earned knowledge o all things Truku and Seediq. Naoko Ikegami has been a patient collaborator in the transcription and translation o the memoir at the core o this text. Lastly, John Ross, Mark Swoord, and Michael Cannings at Camphor Press have vastly improved the contents, style, and accessibility o this book by giving a rough-looking
281
Kondo the BarBarian
manuscript their every attention. The author alone is responsible or all errors and misinterpretations that remain.
282
Further Readings and s n s
The lm discussed at length in the introduction to this book is a good entry point to the history o the Musha Rebellion: Wei Te-sheng, Warriors o the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, part 1 & part 2 (videorecording, 4.5 hours, international version distributed in United States by Well Go USA Entertainment). This lm is dramatized history, with some conating o the actual events and characters documented in the historical record; and some dialog is invented. As in all commercial lms, Warriors o the Rainbow indulges in artistic license to simpliy plotlines and increase viewer interest. Nonetheless, i supplemented by additional readings, Wei’s lm is a good place to begin. In the introductory section, I relied on translation-studies scholar Darryl Sterk’s research on the making o the lm. Sterk’s close examination o the Mandarin- and Seediq-language script, and the Japanese-language source documentation used to write the script, indicates where the lm takes liberties. More importantly, Sterk’s study also teases out many o the lm’s implicit and oen contested meanings. See: Indigenous Cultural Translation: A Thick Description o Seediq Bale. New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. 283
Kondo the BarBarian
Another good introduction is a recently published collection o essays on the history, politics, and cultural allout o the Musha Rebellion. I have especially relied upon Kitamura Kae’s chapter, “Relistening to Her and His Stories: On Approaching ‘The Musha Incident rom an Indigenous Perspective.’” See: Michael Berry, ed., The Musha Incident: A Reader on the Indigenous Uprising in Colonial Taiwan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. Anthropologist Scott Simon has conducted years o research in central Taiwan among Seediq people. His articles on headhunting, ethnic identity, and lie under colonial rule are recommended: “Making Natives: Japan and the Creation o Indigenous Formosa,” in Japanese Taiwan: Colonial Rule and Its Contested Legacy, ed. Andrew Morris. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015, 75–92. “Politics and Headhunting among the Formosan Sejiq: Ethnohistorical Perspectives,” Oceania 82 no. 2 (2012): 164–185. Truly Human: Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on Formosa. University o Toronto Press, 2023. For a synopsis o the history o Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan, see: Chou, Wan-yao. A New Illustrated History o Taiwan. Translated by Carol Plackitt and Tim Casey. Taipei: SMC, 2015. 284
urther readINgS aNd NoteS oN SourceS
Paul D. Barclay, “Japanese Empire in Taiwan,” in The Oxord Research Encyclopedia o Asian History (Oxord University Press, June 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/ acreore/9780190277727.013.376. For historical accounts o Japanese–Indigenous relations over the course o Japanese colonial rule, see: Paul D. Barclay, Outcasts o Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874–1945. Oakland, Caliornia: University o Caliornia Press, 2018. Kirsten L. Ziomek, Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives o Japan’s Colonial Peoples. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019. For an overview o the Musha Rebellion itsel and a guide to Japanese ideology vis-à-vis Taiwan Indigenous Peoples, see two inuential works by Leo T.S. Ching: “Savage Construction and Civility Making: Japanese Colonialism and Taiwanese Aboriginal Representation,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 8, no. 3 (2000): 797–799. Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics o Identity Formation. Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 2001. For an in-depth study o Taiwan Indigenous Peoples in the Japanese colonial mind, see:
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Robert Tierney, Tropics o Savagery: The Culture o Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame. Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 2010. For the context o the Musha Rebellion’s resurgence and vicissitudes in Chinese-language literature, see: Michael Berry, A History o Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. For social-scientic and humanistic scholarship that addresses the circumstances o Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan today, see: Huang Chia-Yuan, Daydd Fell, and Daniel Davies, eds., Taiwan’s Contemporary Indigenous Peoples. New York: Routledge, 2021. Among the Japanese- and Chinese-language scholarship and primary sources used in the writing o the introduction and notes to this book, the most important single volume is a collection o essays and reprinted government reports, Tai Kuo-hui, ed., Taiwan Musha hōki jiken: kenkyū to shiryō (The Musha Uprising Incident: Research and Documents).101 Especially important to my research were Haruyama Meitetsu’s chapter and appendix, as well as the chapter by Matsunaga Masayoshi. I have also consulted Yamabe Kentarō, ed., Gendaishi shiryō Taiwan II (Modern Historical Documents: Taiwan, Vol. 2),102 another important set o reprinted primary sources. It contains Kondō Katsusaburō’s Tokyo: Shakai Shisōsha, 1981. k: is ō, .
286
urther readINgS aNd NoteS oN SourceS
November 10, 1930, report to the Hualien police. Other works consulted: Kōichi Nakagawa and Wakamori Tamio, Musha Jiken: Taiwan Takasagozoku no hōki (Musha Jiken: The Revolt o Taiwan’s Takasago Tribes). Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1980. Awi Heppaha, Shōgen Musha Jiken: Taiwan Sanchijin No Kōnichi Hōki (Musha Incident Testimony: The AntiJapanese Revolt o Taiwan’s Highlanders), ed. Hsu ChiehLin. Tokyo: Sōūkan, 1985. Gao Yongqing [Pihu Walis], Musha Hizakura no Kuruizaki: Gyakusatsu Jiken Ikinokori no Shogen (The Crazy Blooming o Musha’s Scarlet Cherry Blossoms: The Testimony o a Survivor o a Great Massacre), trans. Katō Minoru. Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1988. Deng Xiangyang, Konichi Musha jiken no rekishi: Nihonjin no tairyō satsugai wa naze okotta ka (The History o the Anti-Japanese Musha Incident: Why Did the Massacre o Japanese Occur?), trans. Shimomura Sakujirō and Uozumi Etsuko. Ōsaka: Nihon Kikanshi Shuppan Senta, 2000. Chiu Ruo-lung, Wushe shijian: Taiwan Yuanzhumin lishi manhua (The Musha Incident: A Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Graphic History). Taipei: Taiwan Yuanzhumin jijinhui, 2001. Gary Clayton Anderson, Little Crow, Spokesman or the Sioux. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1986. (Quotations taken rom pages 2 and 5.) Robert L. Tignor, et al., Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History o the Modern World rom the Mongol Empire to the Present, 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.
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Japanese-language Primary Sources Kanpō (Ofcial Gazette), 1895–1934. Tokyo Asahi Shinbun (Tokyo Asahi Newspaper), 1894–1945. Yomiuri Shinbun (Yomiuri Newspaper), 1894–1945. Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō (Taiwan Daily News), 1894–1942. Manuscript Records o the Taiwan Government-General, 1895–1945 Institute or Taiwan History, Academia Sinica: http:// tais.ith.sinica.edu.tw/sinicarsFront/browsingLevel1. jsp?xmlId=0000320992
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