By turning a colonial tragedy into romantic exoticism, Satō shows what Kikuchi Yūko calls “the cultural distance of colonial relations” in “Jokaisen kitan” and his writings on Taiwan. Kikuchi has claimed,
Another noteworthy feature of Satō’s writings on Taiwan is the centrality of “cultural distance” in colonial relations. Evidently, Japanese colonials intended to distance themselves from their colonial subjects, and this imposed distance was reciprocated by the hontōjin towards the Japanese. When Satō wanted to meet hontōjin cultural elites, his guide told him that many of these people disliked the Japanese, and that one poet had refused to meet them on many occasions.49
While the poet she has mentioned is not Segaimin but another Taiwanese poet that appeared in Satō’s travelogue “Travels in the Colonies” 植民地の旅 (Shokuminchi no tabi, 1932), we can still find traces of “cultural distance” in “Jokaisen kitan” as well as other works on Taiwan. In my interpretation, the idea of cultural distance not only indicates the differences between the empire and colonies, but also implies Satō is unaccustomed to the southern colony. One example is that Satō frequently mentions the
49 See Yū ko Kikuchi, Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan
“heat” in his writings on Taiwan. When the two travelers go on an excursion to the Red Fort (Sekikanrō 赤崁楼), the narrator observes the landscape of this historical vestige and
depicts it as,
Even the tropical sun just before noon would not reflect off the mucky surface of the waves. This strange sea without reflection…Burning white beneath the bright noon sun. A sea that absorbs all the light…Amidst this landscape of violent movement not a single sound reverberated. From time to time, a humid, dull breeze like the breath of a malaria patient would brush through. All these images congealed into an inner landscape. The symbols multiplied, filling me with an uneasy feeling like that aroused by a nightmare. No, it was not just the scene. After coming into contact with this seascape, there were two or three times when recovering from a hard night of drinking, I was frightened by nightmares of dreary seashores— when I stared at the sea of this kind, it was quite possible that Segaimin also felt the same as I did—this talkative man finally was becoming taciturn. その濁り切った波の面には、熱帯の正午に近い太陽さへ、その光を 反射させることが出来ないと見える。光のないこの奇怪な海．．． 白く灼けた真昼の下。光は全く吸い込んでしまってゐる海。水平線 まで重なり重なる小さな浪頭。洪水を思わせるその色．．．激しい 活動的な景色のなかに闇として何の物音も響かない。時折にマラリ ヤ患者の息吹のやうに蒸れたのろい微風が動いて来る。それらすべ てが一種内面的な風景を形成して、象徴めいて、悪夢のやうな不気 味さをさへ私に与えたのである。いや、形容だけではない、この景 色に接してから後、私は乱酔の後の日などに、ここによく似た殺風 景な海浜を悪夢に見て怯かされたことが二三度もあった。――この やうな海を私がしばらく見入ってゐる間、世外民もまた私と同じや うな感銘を持ったかも知れない、――このよく喋る男もたうとう押 黙ってしまってゐる。50
50 See Satō, Teihon Satō Haruo ZenshūVol. 5, 150-1, and Kleeman, Under an Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South, 93. The English translation is based on Kleeman’s version with my own revision.
From the narrator’s depiction, the landscape becomes an extended nightmare that lasted for years. Kleeman has precisely commented that “This is not a casual observation by a random tourist. The disturbing seascape is inhospitable and foreign to this stranger in a strange land.”51 Indeed, this paragraph is not simply a portrayal of a southern island or
historical vestige, the implications such as “the tropical sun which cannot reflect the surface of the waves,” “burning white beneath the bright noon sun,” “a sea that absorbs
all the light,” “landscape of violent movement,” and “malaria patient,” in fact, reveal the author’s unsettled feelings about the island of gaichi, and his unaccustomed attitude vis- à-vis this bizarre historical remnant.
Specifically, the “heat” that the narrator experiences in Taiwan—if we put it in a colonial context—is a metaphor of stressfulness in the society. Not only does the narrator emphasize the heat in the description of landscape in “Jokaisen kitan,” the author Satō Haruo also mentions the hot weather several times in his travelogues and essays. For instance, there is an episode in his travelogue “Travels in the Colonies” when Satō arrives near Puli,52 where he is initially arranged to stay in a very hot and humid room, which makes him extremely uncomfortable. The narrator describes that he “even [when he] stretch his feet and lie down there, he still feels extremely uncomfortable.”53 The narrator
turns to complain to the maid, “The room is too hot. I cannot bear it…Is there any cool place I can go?” However, the maid replies without hospitality, “you just came out from
51 Kleeman, Under an Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South, 93-4 52 Puli was a formal fort built during the Qing dynasty. It is located near the geographical center
of Taiwan.
the mountains, so you will feel hot in any room here.”54 The maid’s response not only
shows harsh room service and the intense heat of the place, but represents an irony that Satō is mentally stressed and physically suffering in the colony even though he
mentioned he is well-prepared for the trip before his departure.
In fact, Satō is not a person who is extremely sensitive to heat, as we can see from
his writings on Taiwan. In his essay “A Record of That Summer” かの一夏の記 (1936), Satō clearly mentions his opinion on the Taiwan trip. He writes,
Someone may say that people should choose a better place to travel in the midsummer. The person who chooses Taiwan as a travel destination on purpose must be eccentric! Yes, I am indeed eccentric. I believe that people cannot comprehend true charm without visiting a hot place in the summer or going to the north on snowy days…And what is more, a skeletal person like me possesses a body that can tolerate any heat in any place. 盛夏の候に場所もあらうにわざわざ台湾とは物好き千万などいふ人 もゐる。物好きには相違ない。暑い地方は炎天の下に、北方は雪中 でなければ真の趣を得られないといふのが自分の持論だから・・・ それに痩せつぽつちの自分の体質は暑気にならいくらでも堪へる方 であった。55
We do not know whether Satō is only bragging, but it is certain that the heat should not be a big problem given that there are also hot summers in Tokyo or his hometown, Shingū 新宮. It is possible that by intentionally highlighting the heat, Satō shows his
direct and sincere impression of the southern island: it is different and stressful over here.
54 Ibid., 399.
As Xiaojue Wang has claimed, “the issue of Taiwan has been from the very beginning embedded in the contestation and negotiation of multiple forces: tradition and modernity, Chinese culturalism, Japanese colonialism and imperialism, and finally, Japanese and Chinese modernization,”56 these binary forces also can be seen from Satō’s colonial travel and writings. During his voyage in Taiwan, Satō indeed traveled to many aboriginal sites and places that a normal visitor could never have had a chance to visit. However, as we can see from “Jokaisen kitan” and his other works on Taiwan, Satō is neither a pseudo-ethnographer, nor traveling for the reason of ethnographic studies. It is safe to say that Satō’s voyage began with a personal matter—a love triangle with Tanizaki and Chiyo—and ended with a national matter—another love triangle between naichi and gaichi. By emphasizing several binaries of the colony, the colonial landscape that Satō has portrayed is enlarged from the scale of personal emotions to the scale of race and nationality. From Satō’s literary eyes, the landscape is full of clear shapes that display the contradictions between ghost/science, tradition/modernity, and China/Japan. His distinct visions of nationality, identity, and cultural difference are not a result of being a temporary traveler, but rather a consequence of the cultural domination of naichi. After all, the landscape that Satō painted for the colony is not as much exotic and
romantic as many people see, but relatively stressful and diverse.
56 Xiaojue Wang, Modernity with a Cold War Face: Reimagining the Nation in Chinese Literature across the 1949 Divide (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2013), 156.