1

Title: Corporate Protectors of State Sovereignty: Mitsubishi’s and a Taiwan Affiliate’s Accounts of Relations with Taiwan Aborigines By: Mark Munsterhjelm PhD, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario Canada E-Mail: mark.munsterhjelm@gmail.com Citation and Publisher’s Article Link: Munsterhjelm, Mark. 2014. Corporate Protectors of State Sovereignty: Mitsubishi’s and a Taiwan Affiliate’s Accounts of Relations with Taiwan Aborigines. Asian Ethnicity, Vol. 15(3), 351-373. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14631369.2014.906061

Abstract: This paper compares two related corporations’ accounts of enacting sovereignty with Taiwan Aborigines. First, Mitsubishi corporate webpage histories constitute mythic origin narratives about how their patriotic founder Yataro Iwasaki helped the Japanese government transport munitions and troops to Taiwan in 1874 and the government rewarded him with 30 ships, starting their close relationship. These narratives about this state-centered assemblage omit why Japan sent the military expedition, which ostensibly was a punitive expedition against Paiwan Aborigines for the 1871 massacre of 54 Ryukyu Islanders, but was actually part of the new Meiji state’s annexation of the Ryukyu Islands. Second, it analyses the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines which was founded in 1994 by the wealthy chair of the Shung Ye Group, a Taiwan-based Mitsubishi-affiliated conglomerate. The museum is a private assemblage organized around hero narratives in which the chair demonstrates his patriotism by rescuing Taiwan Aborigines and their cultures. The museum contributes to the Taiwan-centered identity project which challenges One-China sovereignty claims over Taiwan. Keywords: Taiwan Aborigines, Mitsubishi, Nationalism, Assemblages, Sovereignty Today, Taiwan Aborigines number over 500,000 or some two percent of Taiwan's population of 24

million. It was an early form of corporation, the Dutch East Indies Company, which began the large-scale

colonization of Taiwan in 1624 when they landed near present day Tainan, violently subjugated the Siraya

and other nearby Aboriginal peoples, encouraged and facilitated the mass immigration of Chinese settlers

(who hitherto had been few in number), and established a highly profitable colony in western Taiwan,

which it ruled until 1661. This corporation exercised a combination of sovereign powers that melded

together treaty-making, military violence, governance, and law. Recent scholarship has challenged the

idea of corporations as subservient to sovereignty of the state showing that they have both historically had

and today have their own ideologies and capacities to exercise sovereignty.1

In order to analyze sovereignty in practice, social semiotic analysis is particularly well suited

because it allows us to consider the constitution of subjectivities within the narratives through which

2

involved agents organize themselves. In order to understand more about corporations’ role in the

enactment of sovereignty, this paper contrasts the organizational narratives of two different case studies.

The first focuses upon how Taiwan Aborigines are represented in Mitsubishi corporate histories as

external threats to the nation of Japan during the 1874 Japanese military expeditions against the Paiwan

Aborigines of Southeast Taiwan who had murdered 54 shipwrecked Ryukyu Islanders. The second case

study involves the Mitsubishi-affiliated Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines (SYMFA), which

seeks to protect Taiwan Aborigines against external threats like cultural loss or indifference. In each case,

the social semiotic analysis shows how these corporate entities constitute themselves as modernizers who

protect the sovereignty of the nation. However, in the first case Mitsubishi corporate history narratives

constitute its founder as an adept patriotic modernizer who risked all to help protect Japan’s sovereignty

against Taiwan Aborigines, actions for which he was greatly rewarded by the Japanese government. In

contrast, in the second case the SYMFA’s narratives constitute its founder as an adept patriotic

industrialist who uses his wealth to protect Taiwan by helping culturally quaint but inept Taiwan

Aborigines against the forces of modernity like cultural loss, processes that help strengthen Taiwan-

centred national identity and resist Chinese assertions of sovereignty over the nation. Through this

analysis, this paper contributes to understanding of how corporations help enact sovereignty.

Colonial Views of Taiwan

Edward Said argued, "Neither imperialism nor colonialism is a simple act of accumulation and acquisition.

Both are supported and perhaps even impelled by impressive ideological formations that include notions

that certain territories and people require and beseech domination....”2 In the case of Taiwan, there has

been a consistency in an overall appeal to what has been called the ‘civilizing mission’ between earlier

formal colonialism and contemporary settler colonialism in how Aboriginal peoples have been

constructed as Other. That is, the succession of Dutch, Ching Dynasty, Japanese imperial and Chinese

Nationalist (Kuomintang or KMT) colonial powers asserted Aborigines had to be “civilized” and more

3

recently Taiwanese nationalists have asserted Aborigines and their cultures need to be “conserved,”

“preserved” and otherwise helped to survive in the modern world.

Historically, both Chinese accounts and Western accounts of the colonial period constructed

Taiwan as a boundary or frontier region with the densely forested and mountainous eastern part of the

island in particular viewed as a wild region inhabited by uncivilized “savages” beyond the boundaries of

civilization.3 This view was reflected in early Ching policy which utilized a guard line through the

foothills between the Western Taiwan lowland areas and Eastern mountainous regions, to prevent Chinese

settlement in these regions beyond Ching control and to prevent raids by still independent Aborigines.4

Organizationally, the subjectivity or representation of Taiwan Aborigines as savage and uncivilized was

critical to the colonial project and so was vital to the exercise of sovereignty. Sovereignty is not some

passive or omnipotent all-pervasive force that mysteriously envelops the land; rather it is, according to

recent work by Aihwa Ong, graduated and uneven, enacted in assemblages that articulate:

...a series of zones that are subjected to different kinds of governmentality and that vary in terms

of the mix of discipline and civilizing regimes. These zones, which do not necessarily follow

political borders, often contain ethnically marked class groupings, which in practice are subjected

to regimes of rights and obligations that are different from those in other zones.5

A crucial aspect is that corporate and other non-governmental actors play important roles in the enactment

of sovereignty within these assemblages. To the extent that corporations represent or affect Aboriginal

peoples’ rights and obligations, we can say that they are effectively contributing to the enactment of

sovereignty. In this way, a more nuanced analysis can be made of the key issues that Sassen identifies of

“territory, authority, and rights,” in particular, who has authority to represent whom and make decisions

over whom has what rights and obligations within the disparate transnational, national and local space-

times that make up assemblages under contemporary global capitalism.

In order to understand how corporate entities represent their participation in the enactment of

sovereignty within these assemblages, it is useful to analyse their dominant organizing narratives. A.J.

4

Greimas was an influential force in what came to be known as the Paris School of Semiotics during the

1960s to 1980s. Greimas identified what he termed a universal narrative schema that could be applied to

most narratives. The narrative schema model has attracted extensive research attention and I will draw on

the recent interpretations done by the organizational communications theorist Francois Cooren of the

University of Montreal. The particular advantages of this approach are that it allows attention to the

different sorts of agency within assemblages of human and nonhuman actants (agents) in their disparate

time-spaces, and actants which range in scale from micro to macro and can be physically present and

nonpresent. The universal narrative schema consists of five phases:6

1. Manipulation Phase: in this phase a sender gives a quest to the receiver to help deal with some

sort of disorder like a threat to the nation or the rapid loss of Aboriginal culture. This creates a

modality of having-to-do.

2. Commitment Phase: the receiver of the quest must decide whether to accept or not. If they

accept the quest, they become the receiver-subject of the quest. This commitment establishes their

fiduciary duty to carry out this quest something which is morally coded and constitutes a modality

of wanting-to-do.

3. Competence Phase: This phase occupies most of the narrative, and consists of the hero

demonstrating that they are capable of carrying out his quest. This phase typically consists of

numerous smaller sub-narratives that are embedded within this larger narrative. In these sub-

narratives, the receiver-subject demonstrates the modalities of being-able-to-do and knowing-how-

to-do. These subnarratives include gaining knowledge and helpers, overcoming obstacles, and

dealing with opponents. This phase is structured as a series of smaller sub-narratives that can in

turn be analyzed using the same five-phase narrative schema.

4. Performance Phase: the hero either is successful or unsuccessful in their quest. In Greimas’

terms the main actants here are the receiver-subject (the hero) and the object of the quest. This

involves the modality of to-do.

5

5. Sanction Phase: the senders of the quest reward or punish the hero depending upon whether

they succeed or fail. This phase involves the evaluative modality.

In Greimas’ terms, the main actants here are the hero as receiver-subject and the senders of the quest.

Their actions in relation to various opponents are critical in defining the boundaries of the narrative,

which are central to the exercise of sovereignty in these assemblages.

Aborigines Dance for a Mitsubishi Freeca

During the 1990s, Taiwan Aboriginal peoples became important signifiers of non-Chinese identity in the

Taiwan-centered national identity project.7 An August 2 1999 Newsweek article entitled ‘Escaping the

Past’ with the subtitle ‘Everything Taiwanese is cool. Lee Teng-hui is leading the race away from

mainland China,’ which considered the rise of Taiwanese national identity during the 1990s, declared:

Right now, the cool thing to be is an aborigine. Once brutalized and herded into isolated villages,

the nine original tribes of Taiwan are undergoing an image revival. The Taiwan Museum is

featuring an exhibit called ‘Atayal facial tattoos, family trees on their faces.’ The government has

sent an aboriginal troop on a world tour, now dancing in Israel. A hot-selling CD series documents

the songs of each aboriginal tribe.8

Neoliberally configured market assemblages were an important element in constructing Aborigines as

“cool,” as sources of non-Chinese difference in the Taiwan identity project, helping create a new

imagined community that President Lee Teng-hui called the “new Taiwanese.” This emphasis on

difference readily fit with and perpetuated long established concepts of Aborigines as Other.

The earlier One-China ideology of the KMT dictatorship utilized centralized state institutions to

expropriate Aboriginal territories and enforce its brutal Sinocentric-assimilationist policies (which

devastated Aboriginal languages and cultural practices), backed by an extensive state-terror apparatus and

state censorship over the press. With Taiwan’s democratization movements of the 1980s, Taiwanese

nationalism incorporated Aborigines as signifiers of a Taiwan-centred identity, distinct from China. Later

in the 1990s, while Taiwan state institutions played a major role in the Taiwan-centered identity project

6

including shifts in school curriculums and national symbols, an important element in the project was the

development of neoliberally configured commercial assemblages in which contributions to the project

were created and validated outside the direction of state institutions. This shift involves what Sassen calls

denationalization in that there was a major change from the enactment of sovereignty by the KMT

dictatorship’s state institution organized assemblages to the Taiwan-identity project’s neoliberal

configured assemblages.9 These contributions included the rise of Taiwan Aboriginal pop music stars,

such as Difang (a Pangcah Aborigine) after he was illegally sampled by Enigma for their international hit

song “Return to Innocence,” which was used to promote the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and A-Mei (a

Puyuma Aborigine), who became one of East Asia’s biggest pop stars of the late 1990s with her high

profile endorsements including Sprite and Fujifilm.10 These commercial assemblages (networks) did not

fit neatly within the boundaries of or the conventional authority of the Taiwan state and its institutions.

Rather, these assemblages involved fluid contingent commercial networks of private Taiwan-based and

foreign-based actants (agents).

The appearance of Taiwan Aboriginal cultural elements in advertising in the late 1990s involved

new neoliberal commercial assemblages frequently organized around the long entrenched concepts of

Aborigines as Other. Such ads are part of a process the Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith calls “trading

the Other” which constructs products based on fantasies of Indigenous peoples as exotic and strange.11

Trading the Other as a practice has strong implications for Indigenous self-determination as it shapes and

reproduces dominant settler views of Indigenous peoples. The concept of Aborigines as the Other was

evident in a 40-second 1997 Mitsubishi Freeca (a multipurpose vehicle) television ad, which can be

analysed using the universal narrative schema:

Manipulation phase: Nature is the unstated implied sender of a call-to-adventure. This creates a have-to-

do modality.

Commitment phase: The driver and passengers accept the quest and the Mitsubishi Freeca is pictured in

the ad’s opening scene cruising along a forested mountain road. This indicates a wanting-to-do modality

7

Competence phase 1, ‘Meeting the Other.’ A man dressed in traditional Tsou Aboriginal clothing calls out,

apparently announcing the appearance of the Mitsubishi Freeca. An ethereal New Age song called

Adiemus by Karl Jenkins, a Welsh composer, begins. This is the first able-to-do modality.

Competence Phase 2, ‘Seeing Nature.’ We the viewers are treated to sweeping vistas of Taiwan's high

mountains. These demonstrate further able-to-do modalities.

Competence Phase 3: ‘Cultural Performance of the Other’ scenes of leaping male dancers dressed in

traditional Tsou Aboriginal costumes in the mountains merge with the Freeca cruising on mountain

roads.12 These are the final set of able-to-do modalities.

Performance: the people in the Freeca have answered Nature’s call to adventure, which fulfills a to-do

modality.

Sanction phase: In the final scene, the Freeca sits against a beautiful mountain vista surrounded by

dancing Tsou. Acting on behalf of Nature, the Tsou positively sanction the Freeca, while the announcer

says in Mandarin Chinese, ‘Mitsubishi Freeca, for your beautiful life.’ This last scene involves an

evaluative modality.

This stereotypical usage, prevalent in tourism and entertainment, involves Taiwan Aborigines as the

primal Other dancing and singing in the wild mountains of Eastern Taiwan in an ahistorical state of

perpetual celebration.13 This commercial assemblage that involves actants including Mitsubishi, its

Taiwan affiliates, advertising agencies, New Age music from Europe, and Tsou Aboriginal imagery in

Aboriginal territories enacts a temporal-spatially coded organizing narrative that juxtaposes the modernity

of urban Chinese settlers and the supposed timeless premodernity of Aboriginal peoples to create a

fantasy encouraging mass consumption. Such cultural products impose particular identities of the

premodern Other on Aborigines, in what is an act of representation and therefore sovereignty.

The hierarchies of this juxtaposition were also evident in further Mitsubishi-branded

representations that were organized through narratives that made strong moral claims of adept Taiwan

settlers helping quaint but inept Aborigines, in a sort of corporate social responsibility form of public

8

relations. In 1998, I began seeing Mitsubishi vehicle advertisements on Taipei's transit system and in

magazines featuring artifacts from the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines. In 1999, I

photographed this banner outside of a Shung Ye Group Mitsubishi car dealership in Taipei’s Shihlin

suburb, featuring information about its sponsorship of Aboriginal children's camps (Image 1).

Image 1: In this June 1999 photo a banner promoting an Aboriginal children’s camp in conjunction with China Motor Corporation hangs outside of a Shung Ye Group Mitsubishi dealership in the Shihlin suburb of Taipei (photo by Mark Munsterhjelm).

There was a very strong moral claim being made in these various efforts that these Mitsubishi

affiliates were deeply committed to furthering Taiwan Aboriginal peoples’ welfare and well-being.14 The

name of the museum fuses this Mitsubishi affiliate with Taiwan Aboriginal identity, something that was

discussed in a 1999 edition of Sinorama magazine, which is published by the Taiwan government:

It should be mentioned that the Sheng Ye Group and its generous financial support is closely

bound to the museum's image. Seeing aboriginal culture used as a central theme in advertising

9

Sheng Ye's automobiles, people naturally make a connection with the Sheng Ye Museum and its

efforts to conserve aboriginal culture.15

This quote involves a fusing of philanthropy with corporate advertising within the larger Taiwan national

identity project seeking to protect and “conserve” Taiwan Aboriginal culture. It summarizes one of the

identity project’s central organizing narratives in which adept modern Taiwanese settlers take on a

fiduciary duty to rescue Taiwan Aborigines from this or that internal or external threat or opponent, such

as cultural loss or similar reified processes.16

The 1997 Freeca TV ad fantasy and the pairing of the Shung Ye Museum’s Aboriginal artefacts

with Mitsubishi vehicles contrasted sharply with how Mitsubishi companies were sharply criticized by

NGOs and Aboriginal rights organizations, and were the subject of a consumer boycott during the 1990s

orchestrated by the Rainforest Action Network and other organizations.17 In these boycotts and protests,

Mitsubishi companies were accused of complicity in the destruction of Aboriginal peoples’ territories in

various countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Canada, which involve mass violations of

Aboriginal rights and sovereignty.18 As the following case study shows, Mitsubishi’s active complicity in

helping assert sovereignty over Indigenous peoples dates back to its early years just after the 1868 Meiji

Restoration.

The 1874 State of Emergency

One of the key ideas in conventional concepts of statehood is the ability to exercise sovereignty,

particularly a monopoly of legitimate and legal violence over national territory, the capacity to impose

and enforce law backed by the capacity for overwhelming violence. The weakness of the feudal Japanese

Tokugawa Shogunate was revealed when an American naval fleet commanded by Admiral Perry sailed

into Tokyo Harbour in 1853 and forced the Tokugawa Shogunate into an unequal treaty, an instrument of

law. These violations of Japanese sovereignty created a state of emergency that destabilized the

Tokugama Shogunate.19 A succession of European powers also seeking unequal treaties followed, which

raised the possibility of Japan being carved up like the Ching Empire. These foreign incursions did much

10

to delegitimize the Shogunate which when combined with various internal pressures, led to over a decade

of upheavals that culminated in the victory of reformist elements and the founding of the modern Japanese

state with the 1868 Meiji Restoration.20 Conventional state-centered conceptions of sovereignty tend to

downplay the role of corporations and business in the enactment of sovereignty, but mutually reinforcing

relationships between the business sector and the new Meiji government were vital to the founding and

stabilization of the modern Japanese state.

The Mitsubishi Company was formed when Yataro Iwasaki took over debt from the Tosa Clan

(his former employer) in return for ships and trading rights. Iwasaki leased three ships (all Western built)

from the clan in 1870, and began shipping services in coastal Japan. 21 A webpage I downloaded on July

24 1999 describes the beginnings of Mitsubishi as a shipping company and features the title ‘The History

of the Mitsubishi Companies is the Story of Modern Japan,’ which strongly associates Mitsubishi with the

Meiji Restoration and Japanese state led modernization. 22 A critical moment came when, ‘Yataro made a

public display of patriotism in 1874, providing ships to carry Japanese troops to Taiwan. That earned the

gratitude of the government, which rewarded him with 30 vessels.’23 In this brief account (a subnarrative

embedded within the larger Mitsubishi corporate history), the sender is Japan and as the receiver-subject

Iwasaki, acting out of patriotism, committed to serving his country. He provided Mitsubishi ships to help

enforce the sovereignty of the state, for which he was rewarded by Japan (positive sanction). There is a

metonymic chain based on part for whole in which government officials were authorized to represent the

government, and the government in turn was authorized by the Emperor to represent the eternal Japanese

nation. In this way, the officials’ actions are equivalent to those of the macroactant of Japan. Though it

was officials who sent the quest to Iwasaki, it was the macroactant of Japan that he responded to. This is

also evident in another account. Mitsubishi Electric’s webpage entitled ‘High-Tech and Tradition - The

Origins of Mitsubishi Electric Air Conditioning’ states Iwasaki leased three ships in 1870. 24

Manipulation phase: The brief subnarrative begins with Japan sending a quest to Iwasaki, ‘Soon

an unexpected turn of events created a new future for the company: Japan was engaged in an

11

expedition to Taiwan at the time and needed to ship large quantities of fresh munitions to the

island.’25

Commitment Phase: Mitsubishi’s founder committed to the quest, ‘Iwasaki leapt at the

opportunity, immediately volunteering his ships for the task. He was moved less by the profit

motive than by his fervent patriotism.’ 26 Iwasaki’s morals and patriotism are important actants in

his decision to commit and take on a fiduciary duty to help Japan in a time of danger.

Performance: Mitsubishi ships carried troops to Taiwan.

Sanction: Japan rewarded Iwasaki and Mitsubishi prospered

‘His attitude did not go unnoticed by the government; he received 30 ships disposed by

the government free of charge. In this way Mitsubishi established a firm base in the

modern shipping industry which entered into severe competition with the U.S. Pacific Mail

Steamship Company and the British P&O Steamship Company.’ 27

The Mitsubishi historical accounts frame their founder’s participation in the 1874 expeditions in terms of

honor and patriotism that was rewarded by the Japanese government, on behalf of the nation, which then

enabled Mitsubishi to compete with American and British companies.

This virtuous patriot storyline continues today in the company websites (January 2014). For

example, the www.mitsubishicorp.com website features a webpage about Yataro Iwasaki entitled

‘Mitsubishi's Foundations Underpinned by Strong Sense of Honor,’ which recounts the significance of the

1874 expeditions:

The turning point really came the next year. The government was having trouble finding someone

to transport troops and supplies to Taiwan when Mitsubishi was finally chosen for the task.

Mitsubishi accepted the job, despite the risks, based on the belief that the company owed its very

existence to the nation. The operation was a success, thereby earning Mitsubishi the confidence of

the government.28

12

The narrative schema remains the same. Japan is the sender and Mitsubishi the receiver-subject who

completes the quest and Japan sanctions Mitsubishi by giving the corporation its trust. This account does

not mention the windfall of ships, but it maintains that Mitsubishi’s participation in the 1874 Expedition

shows that patriotism and honor are foundational corporate virtues. There is an interesting slippage in

terminology between these two accounts since Mitsubishi replaces Yataro Iwasaki in this account, so that

it is Mitsubishi, the corporate entity, which acted with moral virtue.

But why did Japan ask Mitsubishi to carry troops to Taiwan? None of the corporate histories tell

us. Rather, these accounts’ manipulation phases all indicate that the government was facing some sort of

crisis, a state of emergency. And it is here that we have to fill in some of the historical blanks in order to

understand this enactment of Japanese state sovereignty. The 1874 expedition by Japan against Paiwan

Aborigines in southeast Taiwan was ostensibly in retaliation for the December 1871 massacre by Mudan

Paiwan of 54 shipwrecked Ryukyu Islanders. Mudan Paiwan oral traditions about this massacre indicate

the Paiwan initially provided food and assistance for the shipwrecked islanders.29 However, tensions

escalated due to language barriers and cultural misunderstandings and the Ryukyu Islanders attempted to

escape. The involved Paiwan were angered, so they pursued them, and a fight ensued in which the Paiwan

killed 54 of the Ryukyu Islanders.30 However, twelve Ryukyu Islanders did manage to escape to Chinese

held areas and they were eventually repatriated. The Japanese government used this massacre as the

pretext for mounting a punitive military expedition.

Before the 1870s, the Kingdom of the Ryukyu Islands had a sort type of shared vassal state status

paying tribute to both Japan’s Satsuma daimyō (feudal domain) and the Ching Empire. However, in 1872,

the Japanese government began to assert exclusive sovereignty over the Kingdom of the Ryukyu Islands,

and made claims that the Ryukyu Islanders were Japanese subjects. There was an extended period of

diplomatic struggle between Japan and the Chinese government over who had sovereignty and legal

jurisdiction in this case. The Chinese government maintained that the Japanese had no right to intervene

in Taiwan because the Kingdom of the Ryukyu Islands was a Chinese vassal state which the Chinese

13

referred to as Liu-chiu, so the murdered Islanders were Chinese subjects and Japan had no claim over

them.31 However, the Ching government also refused to take responsibility for the massacre, for though

Taiwan was claimed by the Ching, Aborigines still controlled most of the eastern part of the island and so

the Paiwan Aborigines were outside direct Ching control. The Japanese government maintained the

victims were Japanese subjects who had been killed on territory over which Ching Dynasty exerted no

real administrative control, so Japan had the right to retribution against the perpetrators of the murders,

who were effectively outside the reach of any law.32 Foucault argues that the exercise of sovereignty is

based on the right to make-die or let-live; so the Mudan Paiwan had violated the Japanese state’s

sovereign exclusive right of death over its claimed citizens.33 For according to Carl Schmitt, the sovereign

is whomever is able to decide whether a state of normality exists or there is a crisis requiring a state of

exception where the law is suspended but not abrogated.34 The 1874 Expedition was therefore related to

the Japanese assertion of exclusive sovereignty over the Kingdom of Ryukyu, and as a way of testing

international reaction to the potential colonization of Taiwan.35 The Expedition marked the beginnings of

an assertion of regional dominance by the Meiji Restoration state at a time when the Ching Empire was

undergoing a marked decline. For the Ching Empire was increasingly unable to assert its own sovereignty

due to major internal rebellions (like the Nien and Taiping) and the various foreign interventions of the

Western powers which were imposing their own extraterritorial zones within China, such as the British in

Hong Kong, following the First and Second Opium Wars.

In May 1874, the Japanese forces landed unopposed at Liangkiau Bay in southeast Taiwan. The

first military engagement involved approximately seventy Mudan Paiwan Aborigines who attacked a

Japanese scouting unit on May 22. This scouting unit was subsequently reinforced by more Japanese

troops and the engagement developed into what became known as the Battle of Stone Gate. Some sixteen

to thirty Mudan Paiwan Aborigines were killed and an unknown number wounded.36 Japanese casualties

amounted to four dead and ten wounded.37 Japanese military action continued into June against a number

of villages of the Mudan Paiwan.38 By the middle of July all Aboriginal villages in the area had

14

surrendered to the Japanese forces. New accounts based on oral histories of Mudan Paiwan Aborigines

say the Japanese attacks resulted in the deaths of several dozen of their people.39 The Ching government

for its part had ordered some 10,000 troops to Taiwan, and the situation seemed to be moving towards

open war between Japan and China. However, after several months of negotiations brokered by the

British, an agreement was reached which stated:

...the aborigines of Formosa formerly committed outrages upon subjects of Japan; that Japan sent

troops for the sole purpose of inflicting punishment on these aborigines, and that the troops are to

be withdrawn, China assuming the responsibility of measures for the future.40

This agreement recognized the Ryukyu Islanders as Japanese subjects. The Japanese withdrew in

December 1874. And Mitsubishi had played a crucial role. According to Wray, ‘By the end of the year

[1874] its ships had made 24 voyages, transported three battalions [about 3500 troops] as well as 5600

civilians, 45,000 bales of rice, large quantities of munitions, and currency, including the indemnity of

500,000 taels that Okuko [a senior Japanese official] had wrestled from the Chinese.’41 In short, without

Mitsubishi the Japanese government could not have projected it sovereign military power against the

Paiwan.42

The 1874 Expedition not only consolidated Japanese control over the Kingdom of the Ryukyu

Islands, but it also greatly increased public support in Japan for the still unstable central government and

its modernization project. According to Eskildsen, domestically, narratives of civilizing the Other were

pervasive in the extensive news reporting of the expeditions by Japanese newspapers. This reporting

rendered the Japanese military as modern and civilized versus the supposed savagery of the Paiwan

Aboriginal peoples.43

The Mitsubishi accounts of the 1874 Expedition omit any mention of its larger political

importance. These instead focus upon the significance of their long-dead founder’s virtuous patriotism

and the rewards (as forms of sanction) it reaped from the Japanese government ensured the long-term

15

success of the company. According to a 1999 Mitsubishi Semiconductor of America webpage entitled

‘Mitsubishi Corporate History’:

The company's turning point came with an unexpected event in 1874. The Japanese government

needed to ship munitions to Taiwan, but the shipping company it generally used declined the job.

Motivated by patriotic fervor, Iwasaki stepped into the breach and volunteered the services of his

ships. In return, the government rewarded him with a fleet of 30 new ships. This boon was to form

the basis of Mitsubishi's formidable presence in the shipping industry.44

In this subnarrative, the Japanese government was the sender, while the unnamed shipping company was

YJK, which fearing loss of domestic shipping markets to its rival Mitsubishi, refused the Japanese

government’s request to transport troops to Taiwan.45 Unmentioned is how the Japanese government then

tried to hire foreign shipping companies for the expedition. The American-owned Pacific Mail Steamship

Company declined because the American government had banned any American-owned shipping or

citizens from participating in the transport of Japanese soldiers to Taiwan in order to avoid diplomatic

trouble with China. Similarly, the British government banned any British shipping companies from

involvement in this expedition as well. The Japanese government then asked Mitsubishi to help it enforce

state sovereignty and purchased thirty Western-built ships so Mitsubishi could do so, creating a vital

nationally controlled naval sealift capacity to enforce the sovereignty of this new modernizing state.46

The extensive Japanese government subsidies that Mitsubishi now received allowed it to compete

against American and British shipping interests, including the same interests that had refused to carry

Japanese troops to Taiwan in 1874. An article on the Mitsubishi.com website entitled ‘Yataro Iwasaki:

The Man Who Started It All’ states:

Yataro Iwasaki was dutiful to the new Japanese government, as well as to his company. Mitsubishi

provided the ships that carried Japanese troops to Taiwan. That earned him more ships and a large

annual subsidy. He agreed, in turn, to carry mail and other government supplies. With government

support, he was able to purchase more ships and increase Mitsubishi's shipping lines. That helped

16

him drive two large foreign shippers out of the prosperous Shanghai route. The now-giant

shipping company also carried troops to put down a rebellion in Kyushu.47

This account also reiterates the relationship, Mitsubishi developed with the central government with its

support of state sovereignty in the 1874 Expedition and suppression of the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion (a

rebellion by samurai against westernization that occurred in southern Kyushu) contributed to its success

in the domestic market and against foreign shipping on important regional routes. There seems to be also

an underlying colonial nostalgia in which the 1874 Expedition to Taiwan provided Iwasaki with an

opportunity to demonstrate his virtues of courage, patriotism and nationalism.

Asserting that such action is a sign of honorable virtue illustrate a particularly nationalistic

construction of Mitsubishi’s history. A 2012 Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee webpage explains

briefly how Mitsubishi emerged from the 1874 expedition with a dominant market position. A biography

of Yataro Iwasaki entitled ‘The Birth of Mitsubishi: Establishing Mitsubishi in a Time of Tremendous

Upheaval and Change,’ describes the significance of the 1874 expedition and Mitsubishi subsequent

involvement in the 1877 suppression of the Satsuma Rebellion:

Under an exclusive contract from the government, Mitsubishi provided the ships that carried

Japanese troops to Taiwan in 1874, and later to Satsuma when the Southwestern Rebellion broke

out in 1877. This business earned Yataro Iwasaki the trust of Japan’s government and the financial

rewards of this business relationship solidified the financial base for the company for the future.

During this period, Mitsubishi owned 61 ships, or 73% of the gross tonnage of Japan’s steamship

fleet. 48

In large part, Mitsubishi’s early success stemmed from its role in asserting Japanese central state

sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands and later in helping the government to crush the last major samurai

uprising in 1877 against the sovereignty of the modern central state. As Mitsubishi's own histories

indicate, the 1874 expeditions came at a critical time, and greatly boosted the company's fortunes. These

events, including Mitsubishi’s relationships with the Japanese state, helped it to grow rapidly during the

17

breakneck industrialization of the 1880s and 1890s, from which Mitsubishi emerged as one of the four

main zaibatsu (large financial/industrial groups).

The references to the expeditions in the Mitsubishi corporate histories do not explain the larger

political significance of these expeditions to Japanese, Taiwan, and Chinese history. Critically, missing

from these Mitsubishi accounts is any direct mention of Japan's opponents. Rather these narratives focus

solely upon Yataro Iwasaki as a virtuous patriotic dead ancestor. This omission is necessary because the

dead are sources of sovereign power, the inclusion of the dead Ryukyu Islanders would raise issues about

Japan’s annexation of the Kingdom of Ryukyu, while the Paiwan killed and injured by the Japanese

expedition would raise issues about Japanese colonialism and contemporary Mitsubishi complicity in

violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights.49 Combined the Ryukyu and Paiwan dead would undermine

these Mitsubishi origins stories’ metonymic intention of focusing on their corporate ancestor Iwasaki's

virtues. Including China as an opposing macroactant would shift the focus to Japan's history of imperial

overseas expansionism, which led to the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese war, through which Taiwan became part

of the Japanese Empire, then the occupation of Korea, and eventually to the devastating invasion and war

against China during 1931-1945 and World War Two. In order to maintain the internal coherence of these

corporate narratives, they do not include potentially dissonant dead actants and events which would

distract from the narrative of mythic ancestral origins, and perhaps even render these accounts

contradictory or incoherent. These histories try to claim glory from the modern Japanese state’s first

colonial military expedition in part by disavowing, or at least failing to acknowledge, its colonial

character.

These corporate webpage narratives seek to emphasize their founder’s virtuous service to the

nation of Japan in a time of need, despite the danger and risk to the company. Kenneth Burke argued that

metonymy involves utilizing the corporeal to represent the incorporeal.50 Semiotically, Iwasaki serves as

the metonymic actant, who embodies incorporeal values of patriotism and service to modernizing Japan.

Things are as they are now because a great ancestor figure did great things during a time of crisis that

18

ensured the success of Mitsubishi. These corporate accounts are origin myths, not accounts of historical

events.

These corporate history narratives glorify the 1874 Expedition as examples of patriotic virtue

which was rewarded ensuring Mitsubishi’s business success. By this logic, if Mitsubishi’s windfall is an

example of selfless patriotic virtue being rewarded, it would also seem to imply that assisting Japan’s

imperial military ventures is virtuous. There is an underlying refusal to critically consider Mitsubishi’s

role in Japan’s imperial past, something that is also reflected in a number of Mitsubishi companies’

obstinate refusal to settle claims by survivors and their families from various countries including China,

South Korea, and the USA, who were forced to provide slave labor in Mitsubishi’s operations during

World War II.51 There is a strong continuity in the nationalist values expressed in these corporate

webpage histories that span 15 years.

With Japan's victory over the Ching Empire in the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese war, the Ching ceded

Taiwan to Japan. It would take the Japanese nearly 20 years to finally conquer the Aboriginal peoples of

Taiwan and there were frequent Aboriginal uprisings until the 1930s. By the time of the 1894-5 Sino-

Japanese war, Mitsubishi had become a diversified concern, one of the four major zaibatsu which returned

to the island from which it had benefited so much in 1874. Mitsubishi was the main owner of the Nippon

Yusen Kwaisha (NYK) shipping line which helped provide troop transport between Taiwan and Japan

during the colonial period.52 Mitsubishi also had investments in the paper industry, and it eventually held

a significant position in the highly profitable Taiwan sugar industry by the 1930s which it dominated

along with two other conglomerates, Mitsu and Nito.53 Mitsubishi's presence in Taiwan temporarily ended

with Japan's defeat in 1945. However, Mitsubishi companies began re-establishing business links with

Taiwan in the 1950s including distribution and manufacturing relationships with the Shung Ye Group.

19

The Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines

The events of the 1874 represented a state of emergency in which there were disputes over who had

sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islanders and over Paiwan Aborigines. In the 1990s, disputes over Taiwan's

sovereignty continued and claims over Taiwan Aborigines continued to play a role. Subjected to forced

assimilation by the Japanese colonizers and their KMT successors, the Aboriginal rights movement had

emerged as an important force in Taiwan's democratization movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The

dictator Chiang Ching-guo decided to lift martial law in 1987. With his death in 1988, Taiwan-born Lee

Teng-hui came to power. By 1991, Lee's Taiwan Faction of the KMT had effectively marginalized the

last One-China elements of the old guard in the KMT. It was under Lee’s presidency (1988-2000) that a

Taiwan-centered national identity project became official state policy, and private initiatives in support of

this identity project were strongly encouraged by the state. Aboriginal peoples were central signifiers of

this new Taiwan-centered identity that posits Taiwan as distinct from China.

This state identity project constitutes a form of sovereign related activity in that it seeks to

transform peoples’ relation to the land within which they live. These projects are done with express

political aims. Some of these aims were discussed by President Lee Teng-hui in his 1999 book The Road

to Democracy: Taiwan's Pursuit of Identity which elaborated upon his the unifying concept of the ‘new

Taiwanese’ stating, ‘All of us who grow and live on this soil today are Taiwanese people, whether we be

aborigines or descendants of the immigrants from the mainland who came over centuries or decades ago.’

54 Building on existing cultural concepts of ancestry, Lee in effect claims both the living and the dead as

part of an eternal Taiwan nation, which was finally being realized.

Yet Lee’s only discussion of Aboriginal issues in this book occurs in a section under the heading

‘Adequate Social Security.’ Lee considers that though Aborigines may have contributed equally to

Taiwan, they have not benefited equally: ‘Taiwan's national wealth has increased very rapidly, but some

of our people have not yet been able to share in that affluence. In the case of indigenous people, they lost

the base for their traditional lifestyles but failed to adapt to another way of life.’ 55 One thing that Lee

20

does here is transfer part of the blame to Aboriginal peoples saying that they have ‘failed to adapt.’ In this

way, the rescue story of the adept capable settler helping inept Aboriginal peoples with their problems and

difficulties unfolds as he continues ‘Think of African-Americans and the struggle they have had, or the

poor whites in the American South. Clearly this problem is unimaginably difficult.’ Lee’s argument now

leads to his proposed solution:

In Taiwan, our goal, as expressed by the ‘new Taiwanese’ concept, is to provide everyone with the

same opportunities. We plan to formulate a financial assistance policy for the indigenous people to

pursue economic prosperity while holding onto their ancient cultures. This process will take time

and patience.56

Framed in neoliberal market terms, Lee sets out a hierarchy in which Aboriginal peoples are identified as

new Taiwanese but require government assistance to survive in the marketplace. This implies that Lee

paternalistically sees Aborigines as less adept under modernity compared to recent and long-term Chinese

settlers.

This identity project was an integral part of the recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state. One of

the things that it did was break with the KMT’s previous official One-China policy by providing a

Taiwan-centered history, not one centred on China. Aborigines’ claims over Taiwan since time

immemorial predate any assertions by China, so the ancient Aboriginal dead provide a very powerful

source of sovereign power.57 These ancestors were mobilized as sources of authority and belonging in the

narratives of Taiwanese nationalism, something well summarized in a popular Taiwanese nationalist

expression with its metonymy of blood as ancestry, “We have Chinese fathers, but not Chinese mothers”

which refers to the intermarriage of Chinese settler men with Pingpu (Plains) Aboriginal women, which

was common during the late 1600s and early 1700s.58

A 1999 book entitled A Dream Comes Alive: Safe C.F. Lin's Cultural Pursuit commemorating the

fifth anniversary of the founding of the SYMFA provides an illuminating organizational account of a

privately-organized assemblage participating in the Taiwan-centered identity project, which we will now

21

analyze using the five-phase narrative schema. This book is a hero’s quest in which a wealthy industrialist

was transformed from a collector of Taiwan Aboriginal artefacts into a protector of Taiwan Aboriginal

culture and by extension that of Taiwan.

Manipulation phase

The 1999 book’s cover states this it is a, ‘special publication to commemorate the fifth anniversary’ of the

SYMFA. The critical aspect of the manipulation phase is senders giving the quest to the receiver-subject,

in this case the senders request that the Museum commemorate its fifth anniversary, thereby creating a

having-to-do modality. The first sender identified are Taiwan Aborigines as represented in a brief verse of

poetry by Monanung, a Paiwan poet: ‘Carefully pick up our blood, that is boiling once again, recollect

their songs, our dances, our ceremonies, our traditions of coexisting unselfishly with the mother Earth.’59

Next, a page of calligraphy written by Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui congratulates the museum on this

fifth anniversary, and so acts as an endorsement on behalf of the people of Taiwan.60 Lee’s endorsement

is followed by twelve messages of congratulations from Taiwanese academics on behalf of several

prominent Taiwan-based institutions.61 As well, there are six congratulatory messages from well-known

foreign institutions including Oxford University, University of Tokyo, University of California at

Berkeley, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the British Museum. In this way, we have an

aggregate of senders (some of whom are later helpers) in the form of macroactants including Taiwan

Aborigines, the Taiwan people, Taiwan universities and research institutes, and foreign universities and

museums, who together send a quest to the SYMFA. This assemblage of disparate Taiwan-based and

foreign entities does not conform to the boundaries of the Taiwan state, but by working with SYMFA and

researching Taiwan Aboriginal histories and subjects, together they contribute to the Taiwan identity

project.

Commitment Phase

The first chapter is the commitment phase and it is important because the receiver accepts or rejects the

quest. By accepting, the receiver submits to the senders, and takes on a fiduciary duty to complete the

22

quest and thereby creates a modality of wanting-to-do. The chapter is entitled ‘The Founding Mission of

the Museum’ and begins ‘Indigenous people the world over have an ever-increasing consciousness and

self-awareness regarding their own situation.’62 It describes how Indigenous peoples are increasingly

advocating for issues of autonomy, ‘cultural independence’ and ‘group identity.’ In this way, Taiwan

Aborigines are portrayed as engaged in a quest to improve their own situation, but needing help. The

SYMFA positions itself as responding to Aborigines’ efforts by stating, ‘there are also a number of Han

Chinese with a concern for aboriginal culture who play a quiet supporting role in the preservation and

continuation of these cultures.’63 This fiduciary duty creates an important moral claim, for the SYMFA as

the receiver-subject has submitted to the quest given by these Aboriginal senders.

This fusion of interests between Aborigines, the Shung Ye Group, and Mitsubishi in the SYMFA

is articulated in the commitment phase. This shared identification is evident in the description of the

significance of the rhombus-emblem of the museum (see Image 2 below): ‘this motif is synonymous with

‘eye’ in the language of the Seediq subgroup of the Atayal, and happens to be similar to the corporate

logo of the Shung Ye Group (Mitsubishi) it therefore symbolizes both the Sheng Ye Group and the

Aborigines of Taiwan.’ 64 Furthermore it adds that, ‘The curving lines on either side represent the ocean

waters that surround Taiwan,’ which geographically positions Taiwan as an island in the Pacific Ocean,

with no reference to China.65

Image 2: The SYMFA emblem from a banner in front of the museum on June 2 2001 (photo by Mark

Munsterhjelm).

23

Competence phase

Having committed itself to this quest, the book’s competence phase, which occupies most of the book,

seeks to demonstrate the modalities of knowing-how-to-do and being-able-to-do needed to fulfil the goals

of the museum including, ‘collection, research exhibition and education.’66

The second chapter is entitled ‘International Perspective’ states that, ‘All-important civilized

countries of the world have established ethnological museums.’67 The SYMFA clearly wants to

symbolize Taiwan as an advanced country and itself as an advanced institution, asserting that, ‘we hope to

emulate their great example and set ourselves some of the same goals’ and the chapter then spends several

pages describing Western and Japanese ethnology museums.68

With its knowledge from these Western and Japanese examples about how museums should be

run, the competence phase subnarratives involves several chapters that focus upon how the SYMFA

carries out its mandate. Chapter Three, entitled ‘Planning,’ provides a history of the Shung Ye Group,

which was founded in 1947 and eventually obtained a, ‘franchise right to operate in Taiwan from the

Japanese Mitsubishi company.’ 69 The abilities of the Shung Ye Group to help Aboriginal people stem

directly from its business success as a Mitsubishi affiliate in Taiwan during the rapid growth of the 1950s,

60s and 70s. This wealth allowed the Shung Ye Group’s Chairman C.F Lin to collect Aboriginal art and

artifacts, but eventually he was transformed from a collector into a philanthropist and benefactor of

Aborigines. Lin recollects that, ‘initially it was just a search for a location to house my own collections

but, under the encouragement of various learned friends, finally I vowed to construct a museum.’70 In this

way, the founder is again submitting to others’ requests and he committed himself to founding the

museum.

The remainder of the chapter provides a history of how the museum was built including the

purchase of land in 1989, the commissioning of architects to design the museum and the expenditure by

Lin of over NT$250 million (US$10 million) for the museum's construction before it finally opened in

June 1994. Finally, in a critical act of beneficent submission to the Taiwan identity project, founder

24

Chairman Lin gave his collection of over 800 Aboriginal artifacts to the Museum he had built: ‘These

objects are no longer mine. I leave my most beloved objects to Taiwan.”71 The chapter continues that

Chairman Lin’s sense of purpose, vision, and planning inspired others to contribute artefacts and energy

into a collective effort to assemble the museum’s collection of artifacts. The SYMFA carries out its duty

and role as a protector of the Aboriginal artifacts, physically shielding them from non-human opponents

like high temperatures and excessive moisture, all for the benefit of Taiwan, including Aborigines. A

critical aspect is a metonymic relationship between the artifacts and Aboriginal peoples. In particular, if

we consider Burke’s conceptions of metonymy as corporeal representing the incorporeal, the artefacts

metonymically are the corporeal manifestations of the incorporeal Aboriginal people who made these

artifacts and by extension the time-space within which they lived. In short, Chairman Lin is a protector of

the cultures of living and future generations of Aboriginal peoples, in part by mediating relationships with

artefacts made by their long dead ancestors.

In his role as protector, Chairman Lin seeks to improve and increase knowledge by providing

funding for research by prestigious Western and Japanese research institutes, effectively enrolling these

institutes as helpers. One of the central characteristics of these de-nationalized assemblages is that they

are often implemented through and stabilized by various forms of contracts (e.g. memorandum of

understanding) that define rights and obligations and which also coordinate the flow of financial,

intellectual and other forms of resources that also transcend the boundaries of the state. The SYMFA

signed a number of agreements in which it exchanged financial resources for research by prestigious

Western institutions.72 For example, SYMFA gave US$300,000 to the University of California at

Berkeley, ‘for studies concerned with Taiwan's aborigines, publications following an academic

symposium, and the costs of mounting an exhibition.’73 As well, it signed an agreement on ‘cooperative

research’ with the Institute of Eastern Culture at the University of Tokyo, with SYMFA ‘providing a 40

million yen budget’ (about US$400,000).74 Through its significant financial resources, the SYMFA is

able to enroll these prestigious foreign institutes to help do research on Taiwan Aborigines.

25

The book then describes how SYMFA directly aids Aborigines, such as sponsoring Aboriginal

graduate students at a number of institutions in Taiwan including National Taiwan University and Tzu

Chi College of Medicine and Humanities. Chapter 7 and 8 deal with how the SYMFA actively protects

Aboriginal cultures by exhibiting the artefacts to increase knowledge about Aborigines through its

permanent and temporary exhibitions, and by physically protecting the artefacts from heat and humidity.

The SYMFA's public education functions are further detailed in Chapter 9. The book shifts to how to run

the museum. Chapter 10 is entitled ‘Management’ considers that museums in “advanced countries” are

not profit-making ventures and restates SYMFA’s drive to emulate Western museums. It also again

mentions how much money was spent on SYMFA and how Chairman Lin must provide ongoing financial

subsidies since admissions do not cover operating costs.75, 76

Having spent most of its chapters on how the SYMFA protects Aborigines, the book now situates

itself in relation to the Taiwan identity project in Chapter 11. Entitled ‘Future Prospects’ the chapter

begins with a quote by Tu Cheng-sheng, who is a Taiwanese nationalist academic and politician:

Local museums can be considered to have completed their important mission if, when they arouse

feelings of history, they cause people of Taiwan to identify with this island, help those who arrive

from the mainland to lose their itinerant sentiments, and those who have been here longer to stop

harboring the idea of being immigrants.77

Tu’s quote summarizes in many ways the goals of the Taiwan centered identity project. The SYMFA as a

privately organized assemblage contributes to and is embedded within this identity project by rendering

traditional Aboriginal culture relevant to contemporary society; and by making the museum a center of

Aboriginal research through its, ‘research cooperation and sponsorship relationships with Oxford, Leiden,

Tokyo and UC Berkeley and various domestic universities.’78 The book advocates particular ways in

which the identity project should be carried out asserting that, “the repetition of a slogan calling for ethnic

integration is inferior to building from the foundation of understanding and respecting Aborigines.” 79

The Performance Phase

26

The book now shifts to its performance phase where it claims to have completed its goals of

commemorating the museum’s fifth anniversary with a chapter entitled ‘Record of Important Events,’

which features a foldout with two timelines of international Indigenous and Taiwan Aboriginal events as

well as important events for the museum. The foldout also lists books, DVDs and other publications

sponsored by the museum. These timelines and lists function as a type of summary of the museum’s

activities that is meant to persuade the reader that it has achieved these goals and fulfilled the to-do

modality, of helping Taiwan Aborigines.

The Sanction Phase

The book’s sanction phase is a page with a list of ‘Acknowledgments’ which states, ‘A huge debt of

gratitude is due to the following individuals and organizations for their great help during the production of

this commemorative publication.’80 This final list features the names of all the senders, and through this

list of thanks, this book claims implicit sanction by these senders. This phase concludes the book’s

narrative.

In A Dream Comes Alive, the hero, Chairman Lin, is transformed from a wealthy collector of

Aboriginal artifacts into a philanthropist who helps Aborigines, and thereby contributes to the Taiwan-

centred identity project.

Discussion

The Taiwan-centered identity project has taken on a more ambiguous status under present day Taiwan

President Ma Ying-jeou, elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, whose KMT administration emphasizes

Chinese identity. For example, in his 2012 Presidential Inauguration speech, Ma stated: ‘The people of

the two sides of the strait share a common Chinese ethnic heritage. We share common blood lines, history

and culture.’81 Ma’s speech implies Taiwan Aborigines are Chinese, which is consistent with criticisms of

Ma that he views Taiwan Aborigines as just another minority group to be ruled over by the Han Chinese

majority, denying Aborigines any sort of sovereign status. Whereas the Taiwan identity project

27

emphasizes the Taiwan Strait as a dividing line, Ma stresses that Chinese culture and ancestry bridge the

Taiwan Strait.

In contrast, the SYMFA’s continued support for the Taiwan identity project is apparent in their

support of two Chinese language volumes published in 2011 with the English titles Reading Chen Shui-

bian and The Myth of Chen Shui-bian, or more critically in Chinese respectively, Psychologists Read

Chen Shui-bian (心理學家閱讀陳水扁) and Trust and Betrayal: Chen Shui-bian’s Psychological File (信

任與背叛: 陳水扁心理檔案 ) which analyze the rise and fall of the former Taiwan President, who in a

highly politicized trial was imprisoned for corruption committed while in office from 2000 to 2008.82 In

the introduction to the former volume, Chairman Lin is quite scathing in what he sees as a betrayal of

Taiwan Aborigines, and Taiwan in general, by Chen’s administration.83 Lin argues that he, like others,

were optimistic and hopeful when Chen took office in 2000 for Chen was supposed to be a savior for the

independence movement, but turned out to be a weak leader who succumbed to corruption, events that

had to be understood so they would not be repeated.84 These books on Chen Shui-bian expressly depart

from the Aboriginal focus of the SYMFA and highlight how Lin embeds his Museum’s activities within

the Taiwan centered identity project.

Taiwan’s reconfiguration economically and politically along neoliberal democratic lines means

that in the identity project has been broadly reproduced in countless routine microlevel interactions

mediated through formal state institutions as well as various private corporate assemblages such as the

Mitsubishi Freeca TV ad or the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines (SYMFA), de-nationalized

private assemblages that represent Aborigines but do not readily fit the parameters of the state. It is this

nonconformity to the boundaries and formal institutions of the Taiwan state that allows SYMFA as a

private philanthropy-based assemblage to circumvent the diplomatic blockade enforced internationally by

the People’s Republic of China against formal Taiwan government actants. Such private assemblages’

conduct of informal diplomacy was integrated into Taiwan state institutional practice as formal state

28

institutions provided support to, but did not control SYMFA and other private assemblages’ conduct of

informal diplomatic ‘people-to-people’ relations. In this sense, the Taiwan identity project has had many

contributors, including formal state institutions and non-state agents. This speaks towards the

overdetermined, contingent, and enacted nature of sovereignty. That is, sovereignty is understood more in

the sense of governing practices within assemblages then as an abstract ether-like metaphysical presence

that mysteriously envelops the territory of the state and its citizens, somehow above or removed from

everyday political interaction.

So while sovereignty is not some mysterious ether, there is a theological foundation in sovereignty,

particularly claims over the dead. In the case of Mitsubishi, it helped the Japanese government enact

retribution against Mudan Paiwan Aborigines, the enemy opponent who violated the Japanese state’s

sovereign right of death over its subjects, the newly claimed Ryukyu Islanders. The role of the dead was

central to the Japanese state’s claim over the Ryukyu Islanders as Japanese subjects and was a key source

of authority in the exercise of sovereignty and punitive retribution by the Japanese against the Mudan

Paiwan Aborigines. The SYMFA’s authority to represent Taiwan Aborigines rests on a metonymically

mediated chain of relations first of object for maker, in which the corporeality of its collection of over

1100 Aboriginal artifacts represent the incorporeality of ancient dead Aborigines who made them. Second,

this metonymic association extends through a part for whole association to all of the long dead Aboriginal

Aborigines and their living descendents. SYMFA’s constructs its ownership and attendant guardianship of

these artifacts as both a source of authority and an obligation to help protect and rescue Aboriginal culture,

as part of the Taiwan-centred identity project.

In conclusion, the differing roles of Taiwan Aborigines in Mitsubishi corporate history and that of

the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines are due to their differing function in their respective

contexts. In the Mitsubishi corporate histories, Paiwan Aborigines were the unmentioned opponents that

threatened Japan’s sovereignty, and motivated Yataro Iwasaki and by extension Mitsubishi to act out of

patriotism and honor. In contrast, in the SYMFA narratives, Taiwan Aborigines, including Paiwan

29

Aborigines, are the central subject/objects of rescue led by Chairman Lin on behalf of the Taiwanese

people and nation, including Aborigines.

Notes on contributor: Dr. Mark Munsterhjelm lived in Taiwan from 1992 to 2001. His current studies focus on sovereignty, law, necropolitics and resistance within transnational assemblages of genetic research involving Indigenous peoples. His recent book Living Dead in the Pacific: Contested Sovereignty and Racism in Genetic Research on Taiwan Aborigines is published by UBC Press (2014). He can be reached at: mark.munsterhjelm[at symbol]gmail.com

1 Stern, The Company-State, viii; Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights. 2 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 9. 3 Teng, Taiwan's Imagined Geography. E.g. see Davidson, The Island of Formosa. 4 Shepherd, Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier. 5 Ong, Flexible citizenship, 6-7. 6 This version of the narrative schema draws heavily on Cooren and Fairhurst, ‘Speech Timing and Spacing,’ 798. 7 Hsiau, Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism, 161 8 Emerson and Meyer, ‘Escaping the Past.’ 9 Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights. 10 A-Mei’s career however suffered for being too closely identified with the Taiwanese independence movement after she sang the Republic of China national anthem at Chen Shui-bian’s 2000 presidential inauguration, for which she was temporarily banned from the PRC, which constitutes an act of sovereign exclusion by the PRC. 11 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies. 12 The background music is a song called Adiemus from the CD ‘Songs of Sanctuary’ by the Welsh performer Karl Jenkins. A low resolution copy of the TV ad downloaded from the China Motor Company website in 1999 is available at http://www.taiwanfirstnations.org/ad26.rm 13 Hsieh, ‘Representing Aborigines.’ 14 During the late 1990s, at the end of each weekly episode of the Taiwan Public Television Service’s Formosa Aboriginal Weekly News Magazine was a short statement that it had been sponsored by the China Motor Corporation which makes Mitsubishi vehicles that are sold, in part, through Shung Ye Motors. 15 Lin, Eric, ‘The Sheng Ye Museum.’ 16 Munsterhjelm, Aborigines Saved Yet Again. 17 Karliner, Corporate Planet; Pratt and Urquhart, The Last Great Forest. 18 Holzer, ‘Transnational Protest,’ 75; Karliner, Corporate Planet. 19 Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism; Storry, A history of modern Japan. The earliest verifiable foreign attempts to conquer Taiwan are those of the Japanese shogunate that sent two unsuccessful military expeditions against the island in 1609 and 1615, which were both repulsed by local Aborigines. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid.. 22 Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee, ‘The History of the Mitsubishi Companies.’ 23 Ibid. 24 Mitsubishi Electric, ‘High-Tech and Tradition.’ 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee, ‘Mitsubishi's Foundations Underpinned’ 29 Asian Political News, ‘SCOPE: Taiwan natives seek to regain respect.’ Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV). ‘0604 #19 Mudan Incident’; Tsai, ‘Paiwan Aborigines and Okinawans.’ These articles indicate that according to Paiwan traditions it was taboo to discuss battles, but the Mudan Paiwan are now telling their side of the story, since they have long been stigmatized for this massacre committed by their ancestors. 30 Ibid. 31 Gardella, ‘From treaty ports to provincial status, 1860-1894,’ 183.

30

32 Ibid. 33 Foucault, Society Must Be Defended. 34 Schmitt, Political Theology; Agamben, Homo Sacer; Agamben, State of Exception. 35 Eskildsen, ‘Of Civilization and Savages.’ Even in areas where the Ching exerted control, under the Treaty of Tianjin Westerners were covered by extraterritorial states of exception which exempted them from Chinese law. Furthermore, after a series of skirmishes in 1868 called the ‘Camphor War,’ the British took over the running of Chinese maritime customs in Taiwan. See: Davidson, The Island of Formosa, 190-201, 404-5. 36 Barclay, Japanese and American colonial projects, 111-12. 37 Barclay, Japanese and American colonial projects, 112; Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV), ‘0604 #19 Mudan Incident’; Tsai, ‘Paiwan Aborigines and Okinawans.’ 38 Eskildsen, ‘Of Civilization and Savages.’ 39 Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV). ‘0604 #19 Mudan Incident’; Tsai, ‘Paiwan Aborigines and Okinawans’ 40 Davidson, The Island of Formosa, 164. 41 Wray, Mitsubishi and the N.Y.K, 51. 42 Ibid, 168-69. The following year, the Ching attempted to assert authority over the Paiwan, but after a number of military engagements including a battle in which a Ching unit of 300 soldiers lost over 250 dead, these efforts ended. 43 For a discussion, please see: Eskildsen, ‘Of Civilization and Savages.’ 44 Mitsubishi Semiconductor of America Inc., ‘Mitsubishi Corporate History.’ 45 Wray, Mitsubishi and the N.Y.K, 46-7. 46 Wray, Mitsubishi and the N.Y.K. The Japanese government purchased this large number of ships in anticipation of potential war with China after negotiations became difficult in July 1874. 47 Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee, ‘Yataro Iwasaki: The Man Who.’ I originally downloaded this article on July 24 1999 and it is still posted at the time of writing February 2014. 48 Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee, ‘The Birth of Mitsubishi.’ 49 Munsterhjelm, Living Dead in the Pacific, 5-7; A. Smith, 'The "Sacred" Dimension of Nationalism.' 50 Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 506. 51 Underwood, ‘The Japanese Court, Mitsubishi and Corporate Resistance’; Underwood, ‘Redress Crossroads in Japan.’ 52 Davidson, The Island of Formosa, 619. 53 Ka, Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan, 80-1, 120. 54 Lee, The Road to Democracy, 193. 55 Ibid, 213. 56 Ibid, 214. 57 Gil, Metamorphoses of the Body, 53; A. Smith, ‘The 'Sacred' Dimension of Nationalism.’ 58 Kagan, Chen Shui-bian; Hsiau, Contemporary Taiwan Cultural Nationalism, 161. 59 Chang, A Dream Comes Alive, no page number. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid, 1. These academics include Nobel Prize winner Lee Yuan-tseh as the head of Taiwan's most prestigious research institute, Academia Sinica. There are other messages, including the head of the ministerial level Council of Aboriginal Affairs, all of which praise the museum's work over the last five years. 62 Ibid, 6. 63 Ibid, 6. 64 Ibid, 8. 65 Ibid, 8. 66 Ibid, 7. 67 Ibid, 10. 68 Ibid, 10; Ibid, 11-16. These foreign institutions include the National Museum of Ethnology in Holland, the Department of Ethnology at the Museum of Mankind in the UK, and the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka Japan. 69 Ibid, 18. 70 Ibid, 19. 71 Ibid, 26. 72 If we view this using Pierre Bourdieu’s forms of capital concepts, SYMFA exchanges its financial capital in exchange for the social, cultural and intellectual capital for these prestigious institutes. 73 Ibid., 30. 74 Ibid., 30. 75 Ibid., 54. 76 Ibid., 54. 77 Ibid., 57

31

78 Ibid., 59. 79 Ibid., 60. 80 Ibid, no page number. 81 Ma, ‘President Ma's inaugural address.’ 82 Chen’s trial has been sharply criticized for procedural irregularities, with critics arguing that it was about Chen’s advocacy of Taiwan independence rather than corruption. 83 Lin, ‘留下歷史記錄，促進族群融合.’ 84 Ibid.

References

Agamben, G. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

--State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Asian Political News. “SCOPE: Taiwan Natives Seek to Regain Respect Lost Via Japanese Expedition.”

Kyodo News International, January 10, 2005. Factiva news database document

APNW000020050112e11a0000x

Auslin, MR. Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese

Diplomacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Barclay, PD. Japanese and American Colonial Projects: Anthropological Typification in Taiwan and the

Philippines. University of Minnesota, PhD Thesis, 1999.

Burke, K. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

Burke-Gaffney, Brian. On the Jagged Shores of Japan. University of Wisconsin Oshkosh webpage.

Accessed July 24, 1999. From http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/earns/walker.html

Chang YT (ed). A Dream Comes Alive: C.F. Lin’s Cultural Pursuit. Taipei: Shung Ye Museum of

Formosan Aborigines, 1999.

Cooren, F. The Organizing Property Of Communication. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Publishing Company, 2000.

Cooren, F and Fairhurst, GT. Speech Timing and Spacing: The Phenomenon of Organizational Closure.

Organization, 11 (2004): 793-824. Davidson, JW. The Island of Formosa: Past and Present.

London and New York: Macmillan and Company with Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and

Singapore: Kelly and Walsh Ltd, 1903. Reprinted by Taipei: SMC Publishing, 1992.

Emerson, T and Meyer, M. “Escaping the Past.” Newsweek (Pacific Edition), August 2, 1999, 134(5):28.

Eskildsen, R. “Of Civilization and Savages: The Mimetic Imperialism of Japan's 1874 Expedition to

Taiwan.” The American Historical Review, 107, no. 2(2002): 388-418.

Foucault, Michel. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College De France, 1975-76. Ed. Mauro

Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey. New York: Picador, 2003.

Gardella, R. “From Treaty Ports to Provincial Status, 1860-1894.” In Taiwan: A New History, edited by

32

M.A. Rubinstein, 163-200. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc, 1999.

Gil, J. Metamorphoses Of the Body. Translated by Stephen Muecke. University of Minnesota Press, 1998

Hsiau A.C. Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism. Routledge (New York, London), 2000

Holzer, B. “Transnational Protest and the Corporate Planet - the Case of Mitsubishi Corporation vs. The

Rainforest Action Network” Asian Journal of Social Science, 29, no. 1, (2001): 73-86.

Hsieh S.C. “Representing Aborigines: Modeling Taiwan's ‘Mountain Culture’.” In Consuming Ethnicity

and Nationalism: Asian Experiences, edited by Kosaku Yoshino, 89-110. Honolulu: University of

Hawai'i Press, 1999.

Ka C.M. Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan: Land Tenure, Development, and Dependency 1895-1945 .

Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Reprinted by SMC Publishing Inc. (Taipei), 1996.

Karliner, J. The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization. San Francisco: Sierra

Club Books, 1997.

Lee Teng-hui. The Road to Democracy: Taiwan’s Pursuit of Identity. Trans. Teresa Chang. Kyoto, Japan:

PHP Institute, 1999.

Lin, E. The Sheng Ye Museum-- Reflections of Aboriginal Culture. Sinorama, Taiwan Government

Information Office, 1999. Accessed July 19 1999. http://www.taiwan-

panorama.com/en/show_issue.php?id=199918801116E.TXT

Lin, C.F. “留下歷史記錄，促進族群融合”. In Reading Chen Shui-bian (心理學家閱讀陳水扁). 2011.

Accessed August 8 2012 http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/booksfile.php?item=0010496266

Ma Y.J. “President Ma's Inaugural Address.” 20 May, 2012. Office of the President of the Republic of

China website. Accessed July 3 2012

http://english.president.gov.tw/Default.aspx?tabid=491&itemid=27199&rmid=2355

Mitsubishi Electric. “About Us – History of Mitsubishi Group.” 2012. Mitsubishi Electric website.

Accessed August 5 2012.

http://www.mitsubishielectric.com/company/about/history/overview/group_history_print.html

Mitsubishi Electric. “High-Tech and Tradition - The Origins of Mitsubishi Electric Air Conditioning.”

Mitsubishi Corporation website, undated. http://www.mitsubishi-electric-

aircon.de/aboutus/index.htm Accessed: March 17 2003 Archive version:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020812053010/http://www.mitsubishi-electric-

aircon.de/aboutus/index.htm

Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee. “The History of the Mitsubishi Companies is the Story of Modern

Japan.” Mitsubishi Corporation website, 1999. Accessed July 24 1999

33

www.mitsubishi.or.jp/e/h/his.html

Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee. “Yataro Iwasaki: The Man Who Started It All.” Mitsubishi

Corporation website, undated. Accessed September 3 2013

http://www.mitsubishi.com/e/history/series/yataro/index.html

Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee. “Mitsubishi's Foundations Underpinned by Strong Sense of

Honor.” Mitsubishi Corporation website. 2012. Accessed August 8 2012

http://www.mitsubishicorp.com/jp/en/mclibrary/roots/vol02/

Mitsubishi Public Affairs Committee. “The Birth of Mitsubishi: Establishing Mitsubishi in a Time of

Tremendous Upheaval and Change.” 2012. Accessed August 8 2012

http://www.mitsubishi.com/mpac/e/activity/history/history01.html

Mitsubishi Semiconductor of America Inc. 1999. Mitsubishi Corporate History. Mitsubishi

Semiconductor of America Inc. website. 1999. Accessed July 24 1999 From

http://www.msai.com/HTML/body_mitsubishi_corporate_history.html

Munsterhjelm, M. Aborigines Saved Yet Again: Settler Nationalism and Hero Narratives in a 2001

Exhibition of Taiwan Aboriginal Artefacts. MA Thesis, Indigenous Governance Program,

University of Victoria, 2004.

http://web.uvic.ca/igov/research/pdfs/Munsterhjelm%20MA%20Thesis.pdf

Munsterhjelm, M. Living Dead in the Pacific: Contested Sovereignty and Racism in Genetic Research on

Taiwan Aborigines. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014.

Ong, A. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham and London: Duke

University Press, 1999.

Pratt, L and Urquhart, L. The Last Great Forest: Japanese Multinationals and Alberta's Northern Forests.

Edmonton: NeWest Publishers Limited, 1994.

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. London:Vintage Books, 1994.

Sassen, S. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2006.

Schmitt, C. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Trans. From German and

with an introduction by George Schwab. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1985.

Shepherd, J. Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800. Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1993

Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines. u.d. “Research and Published.” Shung Ye Museum of

Formosan Aborigines webpage. Accessed August 4 2012

34

http://www.museum.org.tw/symm_en/05.htm

Smith, Anthony D. 2000. “The “Sacred” Dimension of Nationalism.” Millennium: Journal of

International Studies, 29, no. 3(2000):791-814.

Smith, L.T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, 1999.

Stern, P.J. The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British

Empire in India. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Storry, R. A History of Modern Japan. New York: Penguin Books, 1982.

Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV). “0604 #19 Mudan Incident”. Taiwan Indigenous Television, June

4 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WGIlua0ZXy0

Teng, E. Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895.

Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Tsai, J. “Paiwan Aborigines and Okinawans Meet to Close Old Wounds,” Taiwan Today (Taiwan

government), December 26, 2011. http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=183032&CtNode=430

Underwood, W. “The Japanese Court, Mitsubishi and Corporate Resistance to Chinese Forced Labor

Redress." The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, February 8, 2006. Accessed January 13 2014

http://www.japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/1636

-- Redress Crossroads in Japan: Decisive Phase in Campaigns to Compensate Korean and Chinese

Wartime Forced Laborers. The Asia-Pacific Journal, July 26, 2010. Accessed January 13 2014

http://www.japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/3387

Wray, WD. Mitsubishi and the N.Y.K., 1870-1914: Business Strategy in the Japanese Shipping Industry.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.