1908：黃禍論的一年－－中、德、英三國文本的比較

1908, A Year of Yellow Peril-A Comparative Study of Chinese, German, and English Texts

有這樣一種「黃禍論文學」與「敵國入侵文學」的混合文類，其樣品在1908年即分別見於中、德、英三國，本文對它們作出了歷史分析。在中日甲午戰爭、義和團運動、日俄戰爭以前，最深感黃禍威脅者是亞太地區的白人國家，例如美國與紐澳，這個威脅的化身是華工，他們被妖魔化為無法被主流文化吸收的異文化、甚至是敵國的第五縱隊。待日本躋身於列強俱樂部，「新成吉思汗」的幽靈就浮現了。日俄大海戰成為新一代敵國入侵文學的靈感。在上海有作家夢想以中國取代日本，遣艦隊西征歐洲，至1999年成為世界超級霸權。一部德國的作品則想像在不遠的未來日本將侵占美國西部，華僑為其內應。在英國大文豪威爾斯筆下，則出現對未來空權的預測，他幻想在德國空襲美東期間，被在航空技術上已超趕西方的日中大亞洲同盟從中插入，擊潰了交戰雙方，世界陷入普遍的宣戰，人類文明因而解體。三者其實都是時事評論。

There is such a genre as the hybridization of Yellow Peril literature and Invasion literature. The article begins by providing a historical background of three samples of this hybrid in 1908. Before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, the Boxer Uprising of 1900, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the Yellow Peril was most keenly felt by Asia-Pacific white nations such as the United States and Australia, in the form of Chinese immigrant labor, which was demonized into an unassimilated alien culture and a conspiratorial fifth column. When Japan rose to become one of the Powers, the bogey of a ”new Chingis Khan” started to loom large. Japan's naval victories came to fire the imagination of a new vintage of Invasion literature. A Shanghai writer replaces Japan with an imaginary China attaining global domination by the year 1999, whereas a German writer imagines an invasion of western United States by Japan, with Chinese immigrants acting as its fifth column. A similar attack by a Pan-Asian Alliance, in the form of the future air war, also informs the English story by H.G. Wells, this time intercepting a German air raid on the United States East Coast, vanquishing both, ushering in a gloomy future for mankind. All these stories are comments on current affairs.