PHOTOS: Taiwan dogs of the Japanese resistance, early 1900s

Tags

formosan mountain dog, hunting dogs, japanese colonialism, taiwan, taiwan aborigines, taiwan dogs, tugou

As I was mining the archives in Taiwan, I always kept my eyes open for canine sightings. The difficult and wondrous thing about dogs is how ubiquitous they are, yet unindexed. I found them chronicled in books that are not specifically about dogs, but on closely related topics — such as Taiwanese indigenous resistance to Japanese colonialism. What we now know of the Formosan Mountain Dog is closely aligned with the history of Taiwanese aborigines, or yuanzhumin 原住民.

Dogs were seldom depicted as isolated subjects of early photodocumentation. But the photographs where they are integrated into domestic, social, and military scenes are incredibly rich with anthrozoological detail to me. Here are a few of my favorites from GEN Zhiyou 根誌優, ed., Collection of Historical Photographs of Taiwan’s People’s Resistance Against Japanese Occupation 1874-1933 [Taiwan kangri shi tuji 台灣抗日史圖輯] (Taipei: Taiwan yuanzhumin chuban youxian gongsi 台灣原住民出版有限公司, 2010).

Vol. I, p. 305 (Year 1905): “日軍11月9日以步砲聯合作戰攻入北葉社，懲罰其頭目庇護抗日義軍，圖為1905年在頭目宅前合影的北葉社排灣族。” On November 9th, the Japanese military launched a coordinated infantry-artillery attack on the Beiye Society as punitive measures against a chieftain who was harboring Japanese resistance fighters. Pictured are members of the Beiye Society, assembled in front of the chieftain’s home.

A moment of relative peace, given the violence that would ensue, as described in the caption. Even the dog, a drop-eared specimen, looks docile in contrast to the prick-eared hunters that are usually depicted in aboriginal company — and which would clearly be favored in the Formosan Mountain Dog breed standard, a century later.

Vol. II, p. 195 (Year 1916-7): “在警察掌握部落行政，法律與教育的日據時代，部落駐警宛如太上皇，可是一旦原住民忍無可忍起義，平日宛如貴族的日警與眷屬往往要魂斷異邦。” During the Japanese colonial period, the [Japanese] police who assumed administrative, legal, and educational control were basically overlords of their stations, but they’d quickly push the aborigines to the limits of tolerance and cause them to revolt. Typically, the aristocratic Japanese police and their families would have to make efforts to dissolve cultural differences.

I absolutely love the forced togetherness and awkward poses of this shot, especially the contrast between the Japanese ladies seated carefully atop furniture, the aboriginal women squatted even lower than the standing Japanese boy, and of course, the dog splayed on the ground, front and center.

Vol II, p. 39 (Year 1913): “南投，臺中軍警討伐隊完成大甲，北港兩溪流域之屠殺掃蕩任務後，下山路過草屯，當地日警與眷屬列隊歡迎之鏡頭。” Japanese Expeditionary Force from Taichung marching through Nantou after mopping up a massacre at the Dajia and Beigang Rivers. As they descended from the mountains and passed through Caotun, the police administrators and their families lined up to welcome the troops.

And who stands in the middle of the pathway, in defiance of all this pomp and circumstance? A pair of naughty piebald tugou. I just hope they had the sense to move ahead, instead of getting kicked out of the way.

Vol I, p. 402 (Year 1906): “「外太魯閣蕃」當中的博落灣（今部落灣）社人”

This shot, depicting “Savages of Outer Taroko,” is one of my favorites, because it is so layered, perfectly composed, and evocatively personified. The background scenery situates this in majestic nature — the steep, lushly forested cliffs make Taroko Gorge one of Taiwan’s signature tourist sites even now. Meanwhile, the building presents stark geometry, its sharp lines indicative of its rigid construction. The men are probably the most immediately eye-catching characters, scattered across the foreground in various poses of defiance. One guy even seems to be waving his sword? This was the year of a major incident in Hualian, and the aborigines were in no mood to be “pacified.” From the intensity of their direct stares, I definitely get the sense that the cameraman is intruding.

Yet, what is most fascinating to me is the canine detail, carefully set between two of the human characters in the foreground and quietly lurking somewhere in mid-ground, on the front porch of the building.

The flexed muscles and antagonistic stance of the man on the right is subtly offset by the casual posture of the dog lying in front of the door (I can’t quite make out what the other dog is doing). Now, hanging back and not approaching the camera may very well be the dog’s manner of expressing his disapproval. What I think is interesting is how perfectly those dogs fit into the gap between the foregrounded figures, as if this was a deliberate compositional choice. Or the whole thing could have been a happy accident, shot quickly just moments before the cameraman was charged and chased off the site. I have no idea. But this picture stirs my imagination in so many ways, I wish I had a large, sharp print to frame and hang and stare at every day.

Vol II, p. 83 (Year 1914): “力里社頭目在宅前處理剛獵獲的山豬，排灣族和所有台灣原住民一樣都愛狩獵，收押其槍枝，必然引發極大的風暴。” The chief of the Lili Society carves up a freshly caught mountain hog in front of his house. The Paiwan tribe, like the rest of the Taiwanese aborigines, love to hunt. Forced disarmament [by Japanese decree] inevitably caused a commotion.

You get a good sense of the size of the boar compared to the dog. The dogs were hunting partners and part of the tribe, and so naturally expected a share of the meat (the look on the face of the dog watching the butchering is so familiar). But it was the gun that brought down the animal, not the dog.

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There’s more where these came from, but I’ll present them some other time. This is the fun part of research, after all — flipping through hundreds of pages of words and images, scanning for the traces of that which was deemed not important enough to index, but means the world to me. Sorry about the crooked frames and page glares. I had my choice of low resolution scans or higher resolution cell phone pictures, so this is what worked best for me at the time. Click on any of the pictures for a closeup.

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PRINT: Congolese hunting dogs (1978, 1983, 1990)

Tags

african dogs, aka, basenji, congo, democratic republic of the congo, dog photography, hunting, hunting dogs, mbuti

I was flipping through Inu no Nihon shi : ningen to tomoni ayunda ichimannen no monogatari [犬 の 本 史 : 人間 と ともに 步んだ 一万年 の 物語] (Ed. Taniguchi Kengo 谷口 研語, Tokyo: PHP Kenkyūjo, 2000), a special volume on the working relationships between dogs and people, put out by the Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples. Contained within was relatively little on Japanese people and any of the Nihon ken. What was included, however, was a broad span of material on working and hunting relationships between humans and dogs from indigenous cultures of other continents.

This series of photos caught my eye.

Hunting dogs of the Mbuti

Hunting dogs of the Aka

Photographs 8 and 9 (from 1990) were contributed by ICHIKAWA Mitsuko 市川光雄, 11 and 12 by TERASHIMA Hideaki 寺島秀明 (from 1978), 13 and 14 (from 1983) by 丹野正 TADASHI Tanno. They are researchers whose work concentrates on the Mbuti (p. 28), the Aka (p. 29) and other hunter-gatherer cultures of the Congo Basin.

The dogs are not identified as “Basenji,” but as hunting dogs. Function, not breed, is the focus of this monograph. The diagram on page 29 depicts how Central African net hunters use their dogs and beaters (helpers who make loud noises, always women) to drive game into nets. And yes, the dogs wear absurdly large bells so that they can be heard (and not harmed!) in the thick of the action, since they don’t bark.

My favorite shot is P13, not for the naked natives but the plump, arch-necked basenji who can’t help but be included as an underfoot critter in this utterly domestic campsite scene. While the humans look self-consciously at the camera, the dog knows only to heed the shins of her people. Similarly, P14 is a nice shot, too. Perhaps the photographers had not intended to specifically capture the dogs in those photos — but they were there, a constant presence and ineradicable part of life.

P9 is a very close runner-up for favorite shot. Most powerful to me is the juxtaposition of the hunter’s muscular forearm, as well-toned as his dog’s. In this moment of sinew and flesh and the promise of meat, a snapshot conveys the very essence and history of action, with all its chronology and fluidity. And that is a dog whose alert posture, erect ears, and abundant figure commands a central place in the photographic composition. All this is counterbalanced by the child in the back right. The boy’s grip on his bow suggests that he’s no anomaly; he has full claim to this hunt, despite his youth. Yet, I suspect the dog has already seen more of the world than the boy has dared to dream…

Anyway, sorry for the low-quality scans… but not really. Alas, stuff has a tendency to circulate without credit on the internet. These photos should definitely be traced back to the source, so here’s hoping that my low resolution scans just might encourage someone to do so.

Sighting: Hootie the Decker Terrier

Tags

decker terrier, hunting dogs, rat terrier, terriers

Just some more pictures of Hootie, the Decker Terrier we met yesterday —

I’d only heard about this “giant rat terrier” after joining the Basenji Forums. I don’t know much about them other than they were created fairly recently with the help of some Basenjis in the 1970s that still appear rather prominently in some lines.

So I have been curious to meet one.

Bowpi didn’t react to Hootie as she normally does when meeting other Basenjis. He was sturdy, dense, bulked up with a weight in the lower 30 pounds or so. Quite friendly, with just a hint of impishness to his demeanor that seemed so familiar…

Print: Old-style Japanese falconry vs. new-style rifle hunting (1889)

Tags

falconry, hunting, hunting dogs, japanese art, pointers, sports hunters

The back page of every issue of Fūzoku gahō 風俗画報, a Tokyo-based illustrated magazine of Japanese life and customs, featured a pairing of some cultural practice “before” and “now.” Several of these layouts included dogs, and I’ll be blogging them as I get a chance to raid the archives.

Each spread was presented with inscriptions from the magazine’s editors, calligraphers, and other journalists. My ability to decipher brush script isn’t great, so I’m not going to comment on the text (though sadly, that means I will fail to credit the illustrator[s] until I get a chance to follow up). As my greater interest is in documentary images, I focus on the visuals for now.

These layouts remind me of the constructed boundaries of tradition, and how this category is always formed in dialectical opposition to an emergent sense of the modern. Neither should ever be treated as stable categories. Both words frequently make me twitchy when uncritically applied to monstrous, complicated bodies of knowledge and experience. In my field, there is often much at stake depending on who (or what) gets to act in the name of preserving “tradition,” and who gets to participate in the making of “modernity.” Therefore, I am seldom inclined to treat these words as self-evident descriptors of historical truth. It behooves us to be much more precise about what we mean whenever we use these terms, or at least double back on our own assumptions and ask just where we’re coming from when we label something as traditional or modern.

… End digression. Here’s a pretty picture (click for enlarged view):

Artist unknown (for now), Fuzoku Gaho no. 9 (September, 1889) p. 24

Japanese falconry (takagari 鷹狩) is contrasted against rifle hunting (jūryō 銃猟) as elite sports. While it is the hawk that bears categorical equivalence to the gun here, I can’t help but notice the proportional weight given to the dog in this layout. I especially like the way the hunter is caught with his hand mid-stroke on the back of the dog’s neck. Perhaps the samurai is expressing his appreciation for his animal companion in his own, dispassionate way.

So who do you suppose bagged the dead duck between them?

Guns did nothing for Chinese dogs

Tags

asian art, chinese art, chinese dogs, hunting dogs, japanese chin, japanese dogs, pekingese, taiwan dogs, vwf collier

I am intrigued by the work of V.W.F. Collier, writing in 1921 on the significance of dogs in Far Eastern culture. I have found no information on his (?) biography, who he was and why he was in a position to write a book on Dogs of China and Japan in Nature and Art. Was he some kind of statesman or envoy in China, based primarily in Beijing, as were most of his native informants? What kind of person was he in the UK? What dogs of his own did he keep? What was the extent of his relationship to the fancy?

At any rate, this is one of his speculations as to why no such thing as a dog fancy or a more rationalized system of breeding emerged in China:

To the Western observer, the Chinese appear to have been far more successful in modifying the colour and form of canine breeds than in improving the powers of scent and sporting qualities of their dogs. This is no doubt largely due to the fact that for the last hundred years China has, from the point of view of sport, gone backwards. The Imperial hunts have been given up, preservation of the Imperial hunting-parks and game protection have ceased throughout China. The shot-gun, known to the Emperor Ch’ien Lung — to whom a specimen now to be seen in the National museum in Peking was sent by George III of England — though made in China is used for commercial rather than sporting purposes. When shot with it the game is more often sitting than on the wing. Powder and shot are too expensive, and their supply to a mis-ruled people under a weak Government [sic] is not encouraged. Consequently, it is not surprising to find in China but little of that care and skill which are devoted to the training of sports dogs in Europe. (58-9)

This excerpt comes from the chapter “Sporting and Guard Dogs” (Dogs of China and Japan in Nature and Art. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1921).

Hunting Scene, Ch'ien Lung Period

It seems arbitrary that Collier singled out the presence (or absence) of firearms as a factor that should lead to the refinement of dog breeding. Never having owned or fired a gun and never having been privy to the world of hunters, I’m not clear on the logic that derives sport hunting from a developed gun culture, though I can see how you would get from game sports to game dogs. There must certainly be other ways to get to sport hunting without widespread fervor for firearms. A pack of hunting hounds is just one of many tools that enter into play. Though the functionality of Chinese hunting dogs was documented in the Book of Rites centuries before even the Romans (51), contemporary specimen lacked some demonstration of finely-honed skill that elevated hounding from the level of brute necessity to artistry, in Collier’s assessment.

The thing is that Collier did not step away from Han and Manchu Chinese or elite (imperial) Chinese dogs to uncover the practices of real hunters. Had he been able to roam more ethnically muddled areas of the Southwestern borderlands or the mountains of Formosa, for example, he would have seen minorities and aborigines exercising a close working relationship with their hounds. But at the time of Collier’s writing, Formosa had already been a Japanese colony for a couple decades, and the colonial administration was far more invested in the violent suppression of aboriginal uprisings than any anthrozoological studies of native human-dog relationships.

This book is not trivial work, but what is documented herein is still confined to elite, official history. It’s the story of dogs traded as state presents, and breeds that traveled along channels of political power and contested trade routes. The Japanese Chin, for example, is deserving of mention only insofar as it can be traced back to Chinese origins. None of those which would be later enshrined as THE native, nationally-treasured Nihon Ken are even mentioned. And collectively, they are all interesting as portable possessions, objects and “toys” whose value is legitimized from afar, in the laps of foreign (European) dignitaries.

So it might be said that guns did nothing for Chinese dogs, but caused them to be brought to the rest of the world!

Qing Dynasty Pekingese Dog, Shen Zhenlin 沈振麟

To be fair, Collier does introduce his book by pointing out that canine cultural and genetic influence is bidirectional:

It is hoped that even to those who take no interest in dogs, the following pages may be attractive because of the sidelights thrown on Chinese history, together with Eastern palace life, and the inter-State relations of the long line of Emperors who have dominated the world’s oldest ruling race. Modern research tends to prove that more of the East than was generally imagined is akin to the West. On the other hand, not a little of Western canine life owes its origin and distinctive peculiarities to the East. (ix)

While I can’t help but be skeptical as to the quality and intentions of the “modern research” to which Collier alludes, his own research is generally presented without grossly Orientalist gestures as one might anticipate from a book of its era. Collier would probably be the first to agree that there’s much more going on than his limited sources will reveal. As of yet, few have taken up his calls to make serious study of the historical significance of Asian dogs.

NOTE: The book, having been published in 1921, is now in the public domain. The text is freely available online if you search for the title. After pulling an original edition from my university library, I made an impulsive decision to purchase what I thought was a reprint edition on Amazon.com, listed as having been put out by Nabu Press in 2010. As it turns out, it’s a low-quality black and white facsimile, printed on cheap photocopy paper, priced at an exorbitant rate. And it’s the very book that I’ve already checked out from my library, which means if I wanted a cheap photocopy for my collection, I could have made one for myself. I confirmed it was the same copy because of the penciled margin notations and perforated library stamps, all of which were reproduced.

I e-mailed Amazon as to my dissatisfaction, and they offered to take back my order for a full refund. Hopefully they’ll also update the description to note that they are selling a PRINT ON DEMAND copy, since this was not at all mentioned in the title’s product description when I ordered.