Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa. Janet B. Montgomery McGovern
to cover them. The feet themselves—those members which every lily-footed woman most carefully conceals—were exposed. The sight was not a pleasant one.
I turned to watch the men, most of whom were working in the rice-paddies. Some of them were ploughing—with much the same sort of plough as those supposed to have been used by the ancient Egyptians. To these ploughs were harnessed great “water-buffaloes.” Here was picturesqueness unmarred by a suggestion of pain, even of pain proudly borne, as in the case of the women. The greyness of the “water-buffaloes” made a pleasing contrast to the vivid green of the rice-paddies and to the blue smocks and high-peaked, yellow, dried-bamboo-leaf helmets of the men. There are few things more pleasing to the eye than a carefully terraced Chinese rice-paddy in full verdure, with its graceful slopes and intricate curves of shimmering green. If one approaches too near, the olfactory sense is unpleasantly assailed. But on this first day in Formosa I was not too near. I saw only the beauty—beauty of unusual richness and variety; for, as a background to the rice-paddies, and peasant villages and multi-coloured temples, beetled the great mountain crags, all glowing in the brilliance of tropical September sunshine.
So beautiful was the scenery of the island that after I was settled in Taihoku I made frequent excursions through the country, scraping what acquaintance I could—by means of sign language and the few words of Chinese-Formosan dialect that I had learned from my servants—with the peasants, and taking “snapshots” of their houses and temples, and of their children. Attractive as are all Oriental children, these little ones seemed particularly so; perhaps because of the quaintness of Chinese children’s costume, certainly as this is still worn in Formosa.
On one of these excursions into the country I passed through Keelung. My kodak was in my hand, but the idea of taking a picture in Keelung never occurred to me. In the first place, I knew that the taking of photographs of any sort in this port was one of the many things “strongly forbidden” by Japanese officialdom. In the second place, Keelung is a squalid and dirty town, with none of the picturesqueness of the open country or of the tiny peasant-villages. There was no temptation to photograph its ugliness, or the flaunting evidences of its vice—vice of the mean, sordid type of Oriental, sailor-haunted port-towns. I was hurrying through this hideous town as quickly as possible, in order to reach a stretch of open country, which I knew lay beyond, and which commanded a beautiful view of the sea and of fantastically rearing rocky islets, when I felt my arm roughly grasped. Turning around, I beheld a Japanese policeman. Clanking his sword as he spoke, he demanded my name and address; also he peremptorily demanded to know what I meant by coming to take photographs in the great colonial port-town of his Imperial Majesty, and asked if I did not know that this made me guilty of the unspeakably abominable crime of lack of respect for his August Majesty. I explained that I was not taking pictures in Keelung, had not done so, and had no intention of so doing; that there was nothing there worth photographing.
“But the fortifications,” he began; “you may be looking——” Then he stopped, apparently rather abashed.
“What fortifications?” I asked. “I did not know that there were any. Where are they?”
“Oh no, of course,” he answered, with confusion rather curious in a Japanese policeman. “Of course there are not any now. Only there might be some, one day, and——” Suddenly his brow cleared, as if under the inspiration of an idea that would elucidate matters. “Anybody might be a German—a German spy, you know, looking for a site to build some fortifications perhaps.”
Although this was during the Great War, I knew that in Formosa the fear on the part of the Japanese Government of a “German spy” was practically nil. Also the Japanese policeman was sufficiently intelligent to be able to distinguish one to whom English was the mother-tongue (I was speaking with my secretary as I walked) from a German, even though the latter were speaking English.[28] But in those days of war-hysteria when many English-speaking people became excitedly sympathetic at the suggestion of German spies and their machinations——. Yes, it was a clever move on the part of the policeman. But it aroused my curiosity.
Afterwards I made several trips to Keelung, but without my camera. And once, quite by accident, I learned how strongly fortified that port is at the present time, and with what ingenuity the fortifications are concealed. But that forms no part of the present narrative. …
The fact that I had taken a “photographic apparatus” to Keelung was recorded against me in the police records of Taihoku, and brought several calls of an inquisitorial nature from the police.
To inquisitorial calls from the police and from other Japanese officials, however, I became accustomed during my residence in Formosa. My object in going there was to devote my leisure time—that not engaged in teaching—to the study of the aboriginal tribes of the island. There were reports—reports confirmed and denied—of a pigmy race among the aborigines. These reports still further stimulated my interest. I knew there were really pigmies—the Aetas—in the Philippines. Were there, or were there not, such people in the mountains of Formosa? I determined to find out.
My teaching duties occupied only four days a week. The other three days of each week, besides all the days of the rather frequent vacations, were supposedly my own, to employ as I felt inclined. It was supposed apparently by both school officials and police officials (the duties of the two seem curiously interlinked in the Japanese Empire) that inclination would lead me to devote this leisure to attending tea-parties at the houses of the missionaries in the city and to distributing pocket Testaments among the young men of the school. My predecessor (who had resigned the school-post in order to take up avowed missionary work) had, it seemed, so devoted her leisure, and to the mind of Japanese officialdom it was incomprehensible that what one seiyō-jin woman had done all others should not, as a matter of course, wish to do. When it was learned that my inclination lay in another direction—that of tramping the island, especially the mountains, and getting into as close touch as possible with the aborigines—I received several calls from horrified officials. The Director of Schools was especially insistent (he said he was requested to be so by the Chief of the Police Department) in wishing to know why I was not satisfied with ricksha-rides about the city. This after I had made him understand that I was not a missionary and that I was not particularly interested in either pink teas or Testament distribution. “Why you want to walk?” he demanded. “Japanese ladies never walk; only coolie-women walk.”
I explained that obviously I was not a Japanese, also that I was not at all certain that I was a lady, and that if the distinction between coolie-woman and lady lay in the fact that the one walked and the other did not, I much preferred being classed in the former category.
He scratched his head rather violently—a Japanese habit when puzzled or annoyed. Suddenly the light of a great idea seemed to dawn upon him. “Ah,” he exclaimed exultantly, the recollection of some missionary speech or sermon evidently being made to serve the occasion, “but they will say you are immoral, and Christian ladies do not like to be thought immoral.”
This struck me as being amusing—for several reasons.
“Yes,” I said, “and who is likely to think me immoral?”
“Oh, everybody,” he answered impressively. “And they will publish it in the papers—all the Japanese papers in the city, and in the island,” he emphasized, “that you are immoral. And, anyhow, you must do in Rome as the Romans do,” he added triumphantly, evidently thinking he had convicted me out of the mouth of one of the sages of my own Western world. Ever afterwards this: “Do in Rome as the Romans do” was a favourite phrase of his when he tried to insist upon my regulating my life in every detail upon the model of that of a Japanese woman.
AUTHOR IN RICKSHA IN THE CITY OF TAIHOKU.
USUAL FORM OF TORO (PUSH-CAR).
(Author has vacated seat by the side of Japanese policeman, in order to take “snapshot.”)