Jun 3, 2020

version #1

The Taste of Opium: Science, Monopoly and the Japanese Colonization in Taiwan, 1895—1945

Hung-Bin Hsu


Excerpt from the article:

(...) In this article I want to recapture the subtle relationship between opium and science in a specific colonial setting. That is, I would like to describe how the political rationality of Japanese colonialism became manifest in a technoscientific discourse on bodily taste, hands-on practice and the management of related materials and personnel. In particular, I suggest that in researching and developing new opium pastes, colonial officers endeavored to reassemble a flexible, and sometimes unstable and fragile, framework for constituting superior authorities and colonial bodies. Experiencing the new taste of opium thus could be a means of experiencing colonial modernity.

Photo 1: The examination of paste in the laboratory of the Opium Production Office. On the right-hand side is a local opium expert examiner. Source: Opium Production Office of the Taiwan Government-General, Taiwan sōtokufu seiyaku sho jigyō dai-ni nenpō (the second annual report of the Opium Production Office of the Taiwan Government-General), (Tokyo, 1899), Courtesy of National Taiwan Library.



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