巡查大人的「理蕃」烏托邦：吉村敏的臺灣小說〈山路〉

The Japanese Authority’s Utopia of Aborigine Control: Satoshi Yoshimura’s Taiwan Novel“Mountain Road”

垂水千惠指出，《決戰臺灣小說集》網羅的作家多為戰前臺灣具代表性之作家，但戰後有關吉村敏作家作品研究卻與此不相稱。本文首先透過吉村敏在臺活動及其文學歷程進行初探，結果顯示其任職機構皆屬官方，其作品多具國策協力面向。小說〈山路〉發表於太平洋戰爭前夜，當時旨在確立高度國防國家體制以邁向東亞新秩序建設的「皇民奉公會」剛在臺成立，莎韻「美談」傳遍臺灣，總督府也已發佈臺灣將於隔年起實施特別志願兵制度的消息，而原住民亦適用之。〈山路〉以「廣義理蕃人」日警之妻的葬禮為舞台，透過日原親密關係與同質化敍事、「聖戰」當前無個我的書寫策略，提出時局所需的「蕃界人」形象；並透過原民爭取承擔受徵召日警嬰兒養育責任之敍事，影射「志願」協助日人的原民形象。作者流露對日人的人本關懷，卻隱蔽原民的困境而代以原民對日人的恩惠歌頌與報恩及「志願」敍事。然而在作者將具有「非本意性」的日本的「義理」「報恩」意識強加諸原民的前提下，親密關係終有破綻，「內臺融合」僅是烏托邦，「志願」背景更絕非僅因日本教化的成功。據此，〈山路〉的人本關懷不僅有源自種族主義的侷限，其殖民地主義的橫暴也更形強化，小說因此可回收到吉村敏的國策協力文學系譜。

Tarumi Chie noted that the authors included in the Anthology of Taiwan War Fiction were for the most part representative of the prewar period, but postwar research on the works of Satoshi Yoshimura does not support this assertion. This article begins with a discussion of Yoshimura’s activities and literary work in Taiwan. I show that Yoshimura worked only with official institutions and that most of his writings were closely aligned with national policies. The novel Mountain Road was published on the eve of the Pacific War, when the Kominhokokai (Imperial Subject Service Association), which aimed to establish a high-level national defense system and move toward the construction of a new East Asian order, had just been established in Taiwan. At that time, propaganda about the “Sayun Incident” was sweeping across Taiwan. The Taiwan Governor-General’s Office announced that the Imperial Army Special Volunteer System would be implemented the following year and that the system would apply to aboriginal people. The story of Mountain Road is centered around the funeral of a Japanese police officer’s wife. Through narratives depicting assimilation and the close relationship between Japanese and aboriginal people as well as a writing strategy that erased the individual in the face of a “holy war,” the novel presents an idealized image of colonizer–colonized relations that suited the needs of the regime at that time. Also, the narrative of aboriginal people seeking to assume responsibility for bringing up the children of Japanese police officers reinforces the image that aboriginal people voluntarily assisted the Japanese. The author reveals a humanistic concern for the Japanese, but conceals the plight of the aboriginal people. Instead, the aboriginal quandary is replaced with paeans to the kindness of the Japanese and the “volunteering” narrative. However, the premise which the author uses to impose a sense of “righteousness” on the Japanese and the “repayment of kindness” on the aboriginal people eventually breaks down, inadvertently revealing that the “assimilation of the Taiwanese” was nothing more than a utopian fiction and “volunteering” was not successfully engendered by Japanese indoctrination. In this sense, not only do the humanistic concerns of Mountain Road have their origins in racism, but they also reinforce colonialist brutality. The work can therefore be placed squarely in Yoshimura’s literary genealogy of national policy support.