臺灣戲與福建戲──日治時期歌仔戲境外巡演的身份認同與危機

Taiwan Opera Or Fujian Opera—Ge Zi Opera’s Identity Crisis During Japanese Colonization While Touring Abroad

Taiwanese Ge Zi Opera was introduced into Xiamen and Southeast Asia in the mid-1920s. Known also as Gezi Tune or Taiwanese Opera, it was, at the time, more popular than the long-established Qizi Xi or Jiujia Xi, and gradually spread into Fujian. Introduced as a fresh new performing art, the Ge Zi Opera, or Taiwanese opera, became a fashion and the artists themselves had a certain appeal. When Taiwanese troupes went on a tour, family members constituted the core and they recruited other local performers, or they would recruit artists on the spot. Such was the usual practice, but as the political situation in East Asia and Southeast Asia deteriorated after the late 1920s, Taiwanese performers touring in these regions faced an awkward situation: while of the same ethnicity and sharing the same cultural and theatrical tradition with overseas Chinese, they were now Japanese subjects, hence, considered by China and overseas Chinese as enemies.
After the Jinan Incident of May 3,1928,“Taiwanese Opera”became taboo, and rarely appeared in newspapers or official occasions. Rejected by Chinese communities, Taiwanese troupes“corrected”their names into“Fujian opera”or“Min drama.”By early 1930s, troupes like the“Phoenix Men and Women Troupe”and the“Dan Feng Society”staged, on their tour in Singapore and Malaysia, what was termed as“Fujian opera”or“Min opera.”At the beginning of 1932, when the“Phoenix Men and Women Troupe”was performing at Wanjing Theater in Penang, a bomb exploded right in the theater, and the troupe had to claim its innocence in the newspapers for three consecutive days. The explosion was no accident, but an anti-Japanese manifestation of the rising Chinese national sentiment since the 1920s.
After the mid-1930s, Ge Zi Opera troupes ceased their activities completely in Taiwan under the strict Japanization policy, but continued to perform, circumventing the official restraints, in southern Fujian and Southeast Asia. However, with the outbreak of Sino-Japanese and Pacific war, they were caught in the middle of the conflicts between Taiwanese/Chinese, Japan/Allied forces (such as that of the British colonial government), and became a miserable kicked-around“human ball”.
On December 8, 1941, before the Japanese military took Singapore and Malaysia, the British army staged a sudden attack and arrested many Taiwanese artists touring among Straits Settlements and sent them to concentration camps in India. Nevertheless, other Taiwanese artists managed to continue performing in Singapore and Malaysia during this period.
This paper deals with the experience of six Taiwanese Opera troupes touring in Xiamen and Southeast Asia—their formations, operational and performing data and overseas activities etc., so as to demonstrate the“dramatic”situations Taiwanese Opera troupes were confronting under Japanese colonization while touring abroad.