Island Lives: Considering biological diversity in Japanese colonial Taiwan／吉川莉莎 Lisa Yoshikawa（Professor of History and Asian Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges）
【環境史研究群講論會】
講題：Island Lives: Considering biological diversity in Japanese colonial Taiwan
主講人：吉川莉莎 Lisa Yoshikawa（Professor of History and Asian Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges）
主持人：都留俊太郎（中央研究院臺灣史研究所助研究員）
日期：2023年12月1日（五）
時間：10:30-12:30（GMT+8）（10:00開放入場）
地點：中央研究院臺灣史研究所802會議室
地址：11529 臺北市南港區研究院路二段128號 (人文社會科學館北棟八樓)
進行方式：實體，本次講座不提供線上直播
主辦單位：中央研究院臺灣史研究所環境史研究群
報名連結：https://forms.gle/dpCR7bkxA9FvAFxd6
備註：
1.現場與會請於11/27（一）前填寫表單如有任何問題，歡迎聯絡助理李孟霖先生asithteh@gmail.com。
2.本講座以英文方式進行，不提供線上直播，現場名額限50人。
3.本講座為本院環境教育項目之一，全程參加者可得2小時環境教育時數。領取方式說明：(1)將於報到現場發放時數證明，非所內人員無需簽名，但請至原服務單位完成登記手續。(2)所內人員仍須簽名，時數將由所辦進行登記。
4.現場活動將提供午膳，請於報名表中選擇葷食或素食，亦可選擇不用餐。
【摘要】
From the mid-nineteenth century to its height in 1942, the Japanese empire approximately sextupled both latitudinally and longitudinally. This enormous space contained both terrestrial and aquatic regions and was unique amongst contemporary empires in its relative contiguity and its large insular composition. Its latitudinal span from the subarctic to the tropics was of particular interest for resource potentials due to the variety in plant and animal species it offered. Natural historians and biologists in various fields hence were often pioneers in this extractive imperialism to identify and secure resources for the metropole, particularly with the rapid population growth and industrialization starting at the turn of the century. In the newly acquired territories, zoologists soon began to study more generally the animal population, including their diversity and their distribution, regardless of their direct economic utility to humans. The timing of the empire’s expansion that coincided with the publication of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Island Life and its geographical layout that was conducive to the study of the volume’s topic, zoogeography, led to the blossoming of the field in Imperial Japan. In 1928, Japanese scientists became one of the first in the world to establish a biogeographical society, second only to the French, with its organ starting publication in the following year. This predominantly English language journal that continued until 1944 under Imperial Japan became a stage on which scientists showcased their latest zoogeographical research internationally as part of the contemporary Indo-Pacific science competition. Of the most popular target locations for research in its first decade and half of existence were the Kuriles, metropole, and Taiwan.
Taiwan’s centrality in zoogeographical research resulted from environmental, scientific, and political reasons. Its (sub)tropicality offered animal species diversity and its insularity that often countered this advantage in turn accentuated certain features about the resident population that had made islands a historically favorite zoogeographical research site, for the likes of Darwin, Hooker, and Wallace, and later MacArthur/Wilson. Such significance was not lost on Imperial Japanese scientists to whom island territories on the N-S axis, including Taiwan, was clearly more important than continental colonies on the E-W axis. The empire’s early acquisition of Taiwan, in addition to its legal colonial status and attraction as a resource-rich domain provided incentives to establish infrastructures including research institutions that became important bases for investigations. In fact, of the 29 empire-wide cities from which the Japan Biogeographical Society members hailed in 1932, Taipei had the second largest number of members following Tokyo. Biogeography is a discipline crucial to environmental conservation today. This talk seeks to provide insights into the role of Taiwanese animals and and their scientists in the development of this important field during the first half of the twentieth century.
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