死刑之慘－－近代中國絞刑中的人體、器械與感覺，1906–1948

The Horror of Capital Punishment: Body, Artifact and Sensibility in Chinese Executions by Strangulation and Hanging, 1906–1948

絞刑乃民國時期中國唯一法定死刑，卻少受學界關注。現有關於此一時期死刑的研究，多半關注其立法沿革及實務判決，雖有論及死刑執行者，但多以目的論籠統概括。本文以絞刑為主軸，探討近代中國刑罰人道主義轉向中的死刑實踐；透過梳理報刊中的紀實、評論以及官方政令，探究二十世紀上半葉中國是如何理解刑具器械的物質條件、刑器與受刑者及行刑者人體之間如何交互作用，從而建構對死刑之慘的想像機制。在中國擁抱「現代化」的路程中，面對新、舊死刑方式的不同文化意含，此一想像機制是否受到衝擊？新式絞具引發的特殊感覺又是如何影響國家對極刑形式的選擇，進而重新定義國家、社會與合法暴力之間的關係？本文指出，從斬絞並行到死刑唯絞，再從傳統水平絞殺法到引進英式垂直吊斃機，反映出近代中國在遺體完整性之外，也開始將行刑方式產生之痛苦程度納入考量，從而思考到速斃與否的問題。然而，表面看似同時符合此二項要求的英式絞機，因其原理與自縊相似之故，卻引發時人質疑，這可能是在資源、技術等問題之外，推行新式絞機不成功的另一因素。同時，隨著槍斃刑的規範化，原本對其破壞屍體的隱憂也隨之淡化，使得槍斃刑終究取代絞刑，成為能夠兼顧速斃與屍身完全的執刑方式。

Being the only legal method of the death sentence during the Republican era (1912–1949), execution by strangulation or by hanging has hitherto received sparse attention from scholars. Focusing on this form of execution, the present article is aimed at filling the lacuna and investigates the practice of capital punishment under the humanitarian transformations in modern China. Unlike extant relevant scholarship, which either is mostly concerned with the legislative evolution of the death penalty and convictions or adopts a simplistically teleological view to summarize the penal reforms of the time, this article attempts to reconstruct the practical details of execution by strangulation or by hanging, including the techniques and tools in use. The objective is to understand how China in the first half of the twentieth century construed the interactions between the materiality of tools of execution and the body of both the convicted and the executioner, so as to unravel the underlying mechanism of imagination for the horror of capital punishment. What kind of mutations did such a mechanism undergo while China was“embracing”modernity and facing different cultural meanings respectively endemic to the old and new methods of execution? How did the particular sensibilities provoked by new tools and methods of execution influence the State’s choice of the form of its most severe punishment as well as redefining the relationships among the State, society, and legal violence? This article argues that the transitions from the dual (decapitation and strangulation) to the single system (only strangulation) and from the traditional horizontal strangulation to the British-style method of hanging reflect that apart from the ideal of maintaining the integrity of the corpse, the rapidity of death began to be taken into account to measure the cruelty of the capital punishment form. However, due to the significant similarity in its way of functioning with that of suicidal hanging, the British-style hanging machine, albeit seemingly apt to meet the criteria of corpse integrity and of a rapid death, was object of some criticism, thus providing another explanation, beyond factors of technical or financial order, for the unsuccess of the hanging machine in modern China. At the same time, as the execution by gunshot was subject to a more clearly defined procedure, the anxiety about the damage it might cause to the body withered away, thus making this form of execution an ideal substitute for both strangulation and hanging.