부산대학교 도서관

Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule is considered as a 'police state' by most researchers, who agree on the high efficiency of police system at that time in maintaining social order and handling matters such as household registration and public security. However, in their discussions of the Japanese police system and its impact on the Taiwanese society, researchers often see police as a tool used by the colonizer to surveil the public. The policemen's personal activities in their day-to-day duties have rarely been examined. This is largely due to a lack of documentation on the policemen's personal experiences and mindset. As a result, the current literature on Japanese police in Taiwan tends to be one-sided, regarding the police as merely an extension of the colonizer in controlling Taiwan and focusing on the fear of Taiwanese society for it. Even if we accept the view that the police was a tool for Japanese government to ensure public security in its colony, questions still need to be answered regarding the manners in which laws and regulations that governed police duties were implemented in daily life, changes in police duties at different stages and the effect of these duties on the surveillance of the local society, and the manners in which the Japanese-centered police and the local society, of which Taiwanese people accounted for the majority, interacted publicly and privately. Through the lens of the personal diary of a Japanese policeman Yoshioka Kisaburo, this study investigates Yoshioka's actual situation at work in his roles as a Junsa (police officer) and Keibuhou (inspector) in Tainan between 1909 and 1912. It clarifies how the police system was implemented in the day-to-day life of the Taiwanese society and how the police controlled its daily affairs, large or small, thus rendering the colony a 'police state.' At the same time, this study explores the various social roles a Japanese policeman performed in the Taiwanese society. Yoshioka's personal activities were documented in Diary of Yoshioka Kisaburo. Supplementing this important source of information is the diary of Chang Li-jun, who served as a Pao-cheng or Hosei (the headman of 100 households) during that period.