行政院國家科學委員會專題研究計畫 成果報告
媒體科技與現代性：回顧台灣 1930 年代消費社會的成型
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媒體科技與現代性：回顧台灣 1930 年代消費社會的成型
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中 華 民 國 100 年 9 月 27 日
Media Technologies and Modernity: Tracing the Formation of a Consumer Society in the 1930s Taiwan
1. Introduction
In the 1930s, Taiwan stepped into a so-called consumer society for the first time in its history. Newspapers had been widely circulated around the island. Phonographs, music records and movies attracted huge audience in cities; radio broadcasting began to step into people’s everyday lives. Theatres, dance halls, and cafés were places where urban residents visited most often. The colonial government regarded the booming consumer culture as a display of modernity and prosperity. This emerging consumer culture ended, as the second Sino-Japan War broke out in 1937 and Japan got involved in World War Two.
The first hit single in Taiwan was ‘The Peach Blossom Weeps Blood’ produced by the Taipei branch of the Nippon Phonograph Company Co., then labeled as Columbia Records, in 1932. The appearance of the first mass produced music record indicated the following. First, global
capitalism had successfully penetrated Taiwan in the forms of commercialized entertainment. Second, media technologies had become available in a bundle. Movies, phonographs, records, and radio broadcasting attracted the young and fashionable generation and created mediated experiences which were definitely novel and modern. Third, the wide circulation of Taiwanese popular songs indicated that a new middle class Taiwanese who could afford to buy music records and frequent movie theatres were surging under the Japanese colonization. Fourth, recorded music was often played in public places such as restaurants, cafés, tea shops, and dance halls, which showed that the use of media technologies was interwoven with other daily activities. Fifth, the 1930s was the age of great divides between genders (men and women), generations (the young and the aged), classes (the rich and the poor), spaces (the cities and countries), ethnicities (the Japanese colonizer and the colonized Taiwanese).
By investigating the wide circulation of Taiwan’s first pop song, this paper portrays how media technologies were embedded with people’s everyday activities in the 1930s. As I write about the complexities of modern experiences, special attention will be paid to the Taiwanese women, who were relegated to the most inferior status both in terms of gender and ethnicity. By interpreting the Taiwanese peoples’ novel experience encountering media technologies, my aim is to explore the multifaceted modernities and to discover people’s real lives in the great transformation.
3
According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, the English word ‘modern’ originated from the term moderne in French, which denotes a person of the present time as opposed to antiquity, a person with modern tastes, and a work of modern architecture. In Modern English, ‘modern’ indicates the following: 1. Being in existence at this time; current, present. 2. Of or relating to the present and recent times, as opposed to the remote past. 3. Characteristic of the present time; not old-fashioned; employing the most up-to-date ideas, techniques, or equipment. While the term ‘modern’ could be traced to have been used in the 14th century, ‘modernity’ is a derivation first found in the 17th century
and it mostly refers to ‘the quality or condition of being modern; modernness of character or style.’ The term ‘modern’ in the Chinese translation ‘hsian-dai’ and ‘mo-dun’ cover both the masculine and feminine characteristics of the word: the former incorporates the great divides between the new and the old, while the latter is often associated with the imagination of fashion, mass consumption and urban lifestyle (張小虹 2009). This paper explores both the masculine and feminine characteristics of modern in the 1930s Taiwan, particularly in the interwoven relations among media technologies, consumption and modernity.
What is modernity? Giddens (1991: 14-15) used the term to refer to ‘the institutions and modes of behaviour established first of all in post-feudal Europe.’ His account of modernity could be understood roughly equivalent to the conjunction of industrialism, capitalism, and rationalism. In describing the discontinuous characteristics from the pre-modern societies that modernity
incorporates, Giddens attributed the arriving of high modernity to the intertwined development of media technologies, including printed and electronic media. As he wrote: ‘[m]odernity is
inseparable from its “own” media’ (p. 24). That is to say, media itself is a modern institution that requires industrial facilities, capital enhancement, and rational division of labour within the organizations. On the other hand, media technologies do not only contribute to the efficient widespread of information that alters the time-space relations, but also created collective acknowledgements and memories on the basis of mediated experiences.
In the book ‘The Media and Moderntiy,’ Thompson (1995: 27-31) further elaborated the relation between media and modernity by listing five major characteristics of mass communication. First, it involves certain technical and institutional means of production and diffusion. Second, it typically involves the commoditization of symbolic forms. Third, it institutes a structured break between the production of symbolic forms and their reception. The recipients of mediated
messages have relatively little power, compared with the producers; however, this does not imply that the recipients are powerless or passive. Fourth, it extends the availability of symbolic forms in space and time, which becomes increasingly taken for granted as a routine feature of social life. Fifth, it involves the public circulation of symbolic forms, available to anyone who has the
technical means, abilities, and resources to acquire them.
Thompson’s emphases also linked the media with consumer culture as he indicated that mass communication ‘typically involves the commoditization of symbolic forms,’ which extends
massively across time and space and are available to the public. The process of commoditization inevitably concerns monetary transaction of materialities, one basic meaning of consumption. In fact, as monetarization is tied to the rise of industrialization and bureaucracy and, in Simmel’s account, monetarization to some extent liberalized consumption from many obligations in pre-modern societies (Miller, 1987). As Slater (1997: 9) explicitly pointed out ‘consumer culture is inextricably bound up with modernity as a whole’:
Firstly, core institutions, infrastructures and practices of consumer culture originated in the early modern period. … [Consumer culture] was rather part of the very making of the modern world. Secondly, consumer culture is bound up with the idea of modernity, of modern experience and of modern social subjects. As indicated above, the media and consumption are inseparable subjects in the discussions of modernity. The birth of media industry was possible only in the condition of modernity and the media in turn strengthened the qualities of modernity and further deeply penetrated the influences into everyday life. The symbolic forms presented on the media influence the audience’s tastes and created shared experiences in reading, listening, watching the content, which often have great influence in shaping consumer culture. What Giddens asserted that ‘modernity radically alters the nature of day-to-day social life and affects the most personal aspects of our experience’ is also a main interest in this article.
‘The modern world is a very differentiated world in both time and space’ (Taylor, 1999: 9) and the experience of modernity is not universal. Taylor (1999) reminds us to think about ‘Who’s modern?’ ‘Whose modern?’ when addressing on the topic of modernity. Taiwan in the 1930s was an age of great transformation. In the transition toward rationalized, urbanized, and
individualized lifestyles, encountering the disjointedness with the tradition was never easy. In my writing about the birth of Taiwan’s first hit single and the popularity of music records in the 1930s, I would like to show how the formation of Taiwan’s consumer society is entangled with individualization, urbanization, colonialism, capitalism, and the introduction of media
technologies.
3. The birth of Taiwan’s first hit single
Taiwan’s first hit single was launched in 1932 (莊永明 1994), when the Shanghai production ‘Peach Blossom Weeps Blood’ debuted in Taiwan. In order to promote the silent movie, the film distributor sponsored Chan Tien-Ma, the lyric writer, and Wang Yun-Feng, the composer, to create a song based on the movie(葉龍彥 1999). Bands and wagons were hired to parade in Taipei’s Daitoutei, where most Taiwanese merchants and shops gathered, and this made the song well known among Taiwanese residents in Taipei. Later, as the film toured around the island, the
5
theme song immediately became an island-wide sensation. Seijiro Kashiwano, then the Taiwan manager of Columbia Records invited (Tsai, 2002) singer Chun-Chun to Mainland Japan and turned the song into a kyoku ban – 72 rpm phonograph records made of Celluloid. This move was a big success and initiated the booming popular music market in Taiwan.
The story of ‘Peach Blossom Weeps Blood’ was about a rich young man who fell in love with a poor girl Lin-gu in spite of his mother’s strong opposition. The lovers did not have a happy ending in the film but the lyrics of its theme song demonstrated quite a different sentiment, as it wrote:
A girl’s life and a peach’s are alike: they blossom and die. But the peach will bloom again when the spring comes, while the girl could never come alive after her death. There is no class division in love; it is true love that is most important. Lin-gu was born poor and ill-fated as the peach. A modern world should not be bounded by Confucianism; the best world is a free world. … This is a civilised new ear and we ought to love freely. The constraints of class are harmful, and the marriage regulations must be reformed. ... Old –fashioned orders should be abandoned. If you want to know what really happened, go and see ‘Peach Blossom Weeps Blood.’
The lyrics firmly criticized the old Confucian regulations on marriages. The song’s high popularity at the time demonstrated that the public, the young and the educated in particular, eagerly requested for autonomy, equality, freedom, and individualism. These new values inspired social movements in Mainland Japan in the 1920s and Taiwanese students in Japan brought the debates back home (葉龍彥 1999). In this paper, the case of Peach Blossom reveals the following three subjects: the capitalism and mass production of leisure, ethnic divides and space segregation, and gender inequality in the colonial Taiwan.
(1) Capitalism and manufacturing leisure
Columbia Records, the company that produced the ‘Peach’ song records, was established as the Nippon Phonograph Company in 1910 in Tokyo. It then adopted the Columbia brand name from Columbia Records in the UK in 1931 and standardized its record logo1. The Taipei branch of Nippon Phonograph was set up shortly after the mother company’s establishment. Prior to 1932, Columbia Records in Taiwan had tried various styles of music, including Japanese traditional and popular songs, western classical music, and Taiwanese operas, but none of them contributed to large amount of sales. The big success of Peach created a business model for record companies and film distributors at the time. Native Taiwanese poets and composers were recruited to write
songs and new releases appeared monthly. Many of them were launched in company with the debut of Chinese films.
A single side of a 10 inch 78 rpm record could hold about 3 minutes of sound. All the singers and performers must travel by boat from Taiwan to Tokyo in order to press phonograph records. Technical limitations plus the production costs together drove the standardization of the length of popular songs. Peach Blossom Weeps Blood was 8 minutes long and took both sides of a 10-inch 78 rpm record to complete the song. After that, new creation of songs lasted only 3 minutes and could be held in each single side of a record (林太崴 2009 ). This shows that the presenting formats and styles of music are deliberately manufactured, subject to the conditions of technologies and capitalism.
The ownership of phonographs in Taiwan increased significantly during the early 1930s. As the Chinese section of Taiwan Nichi-nichi Simpo reported:
In recent years, phonographs had become very popular on the island. Many upper and middle class families and local organizations owned phonographs,
particularly the merchants who used phonograph to play music to attract customers. The phonographs were for business use, for entertainment, and for language study. Because of that, the Taiheichou Business Association sent couples of people to Tokyo and Osaka to learn about how to make latest popular music records. They had been there for months and now returned to look for business opportunities. (Taiwan Nichi-nichi Simpo, 29th April 1934, p. 4)
Taiheichou was a prosperous Taiwanese district of Taipei. The report above revealed how new media technologies were embraced by many Taiwanese residents, which had contributed to booming business opportunities. During the 1930s, Taiwan’s popular music market was in severe competition. Record companies adopted multiple marketing strategies and radio broadcasting was one useful channel (王櫻芬 2008). Taiwan’s radio industry was initiated in February 1926, when Taipei Housou Kyoku, Taipei Radio Broadcasting Association, was set up by the colonial
government. The first radio station JAFK started to operate in 1928. By 1944, there were five stations in operation, situated in Taipei, Tainan, Minshiun, Giayi, and Hualien (呂紹理 2002; 周 兆良 2003). The mission for radio broadcasting was to educate people, to frame public opinion, and to promote official policies. At first, the radio programmes were targeted only the Japanese listeners. After the Japanese-Taiwanese assimilation came to be the primary focus in the 1930s, more Taiwanese content was incorporated in the radio shows. During 1933-1938, there were regular sections for Taiwanese music on radio, and new releases of records were often played on the radio for promotion (李乘機, 2006). Although few Taiwanese could afford to own radio
7 players in the 1930s2, they would buy music records.
From the mid-1920s onwards, seeing movies at theatres had become common practices of entertainment for urban citizens in Taiwan (葉龍彥 1997). During the 1930s, often before the debut of a film, reviews of the story would be published in newspapers. A theme song would be created based on the movie, pressed into records for sale and played on radio. A detailed
timetable of radio programmes would be published in the newspapers. The case of
interpenetration of print media, movies, and phonographs indicated that media technologies arrived in a bundle and became embedded in everyday life for the young, educated, and middle-class, especially for those who lived in cities. The multi-sourced films and records and cross-promotion strategies also indicated that Taiwan was a site for global capitalistic activities. Massively manufactured materials and commercialised entertainment announced the formation of a consumer society in the 1930s and also a complex collective experience of modernity.
(2) Colonial modernity: spatial segregation
In the 1930s popular music was often played in public places such as café, restaurants, and dance halls. The Japanese government considered these places as representations for prosperity and advancement. On March 6 1934, a report titled ‘Daitoutai Noticeably Modernized – Thriving and Prosperous Café Street, the Birth of Theaters’ on the Taiwan Nichi-nichi Simpo, a newspaper issued by the colonial government, wrote:
In recent years, with the accomplishment of road construction and street lighting facilities, and the inaugurations of department stores and retail shops, Taipei’s Daitoutei had become a modern urban region. Situated in the central part of Daitoutei, Taipeicho Avenue appeared to be even more splendid and flourishing with the emergence of cafés, … (Evening edition, Taiwan Nichi-nichi Shimpo, 6th March 1934)
The Peach song was created to promote a Shanghai production’s film, which showed that seeing movies in theatres had been a common form of entertainment for urban residents in the 1930s and the consumers were not limited to the Japanese. However, due to the obvious spatial segregation between the ruler and the ruled people, the Japanese and the Taiwanese did not only see and listen to different types of movies and music, but also went to different places to seek for enjoyment. Daitoutei, the region mentioned in the report above, was where parades of Peach Blossom Weeps Bloom took place and the residents were mostly Taiwanese. Chinese films would be played in Eirakuchou (永樂町) and Taiheichou (太平町), while theatres in Sakaechou (榮町) and
2
By 1937, 43,551 families possessed radio players, and 72.38% of them were Japanese. On average only 0.229% of Taiwanese residents owned radio players. (呂紹理 2002)
Seimonchou (西門町) were crowded by different levels of Japanese customers.
Prior to the Japanese domination, Taiwan was a feudal society loosely governed by the Qing Empire. After Japan took over Taiwan in 1895, the coloniser brought the modern institutions of nation-states into Taiwan. Many public infrastructures were built across the territory and western systems, including public health, education, legal system, and urban planning policies were introduced to Taiwan (陳柔縉 2005). As Chou (周婉窈 1997:150) commented: ‘Japan took the western cities, rather than itself, as the model for modernising its colonies.’ Modernization of Taiwan was to boost the colony’s productivity and also to prove that Japan was compatible with the superpowers, such as France and Britain.
To the people in Taiwan, the experience of modernity was novel but not entirely positive. In colonial Taiwan, with only few exceptions, the Taiwanese went to a different school system from the Japanese. After the Taiwanese graduated from primary schools, the opportunities in higher education were limited. Although the Taiwanese were trained to serve in Japanese companies and local institutions, management levels were dominated by the Japanese. Moreover, the Japanese always got much higher pay than the Taiwanese even when they were in the same positions. Although there were rich Taiwanese families who earned their fortune from tea and coal businesses, the Taiwanese was generally seen as inferior to the Japanese. Lung Yin-tzung (龍瑛 宗1911-1999), a prize-winning writer and also a clerk who worked for the Bank of Taiwan under Japan’s rule, depicted in his short fiction ‘A Town with Papaya Trees’ that a Taiwanese employee of a Japanese sugar company had such a low wage that he could hardly afford to support a family, while his Japanese co-workers all enjoyed rich bonuses and lived in comfortable houses provided by the employer.
Chen Fang-Ming (2004) analyzed the Taiwanese writers’ works in the colonial time period and argued that the modern experience brought by Japanese colonization did fulfil the desire for the new, but the disconnectedness from the tradition and the inferior status of the Taiwanese had confused Taiwanese intellectuals for all times. In Chu Dian-Ren’s (朱點人 1903-1949) work ‘Autumn’s messages,’ Chen was an old man who grew up and was educated under Qing Empire’s rule of Taiwan. When Taipei Exhibition was held in 1935 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Japan’s rule of Taiwan, he was sceptical about whether or not he should go and see the exhibition in person, as the government, the media and all his acquaintances suggested. Eventually he came to Taipei and felt lost and empty after his encounter with the huge contrast between the traditional and the modern, the Japanese ruler and the colonized Taiwanese. Also in Chu’s work
‘Outstanding,’ San-guei was a Taiwanese man who was determined to become Japanese and despised the ethnicity he originally belonged to. Chu, Lung and many other writers’ works at the time showed how the duality between ‘advanced Japan’ and ‘backward Taiwan’ constructed by the Japanese colonial government had caused collective frustration among the Taiwanese.
9 (3) Who enjoyed popular music in colonial Taiwan?
Apart from the entangled ethnic identity, modernity was a double-edged knife that contributed to both a seemingly prosperous consumption society, and the enlarged multiple divides. As
described above, popular music was circulated mostly in the cities, where most theatres, restaurants, dance halls, cafés and tea shops were assembled. Having access to phonograph records and enjoying the music were a distinction that signified the status of the young, affluent and educated class, the emerging middle-class that often saw themselves mismatched with existing orders of the Taiwanese society.
Chen Jun-Yu(1955), an influential lyric writer in the 1930s, recalled that ‘the younger men and women fancied popular music, while the illiterates, elders, and married women still preferred Taiwanese operas’. Here the pop song lovers had a distinctive status that was different from fans of Taiwanese operas. Wang Yun-Feng (王雲峰 1955), the composer of Peach Blossom Weeps Blood recalled that in the 1930s, Daitoutei, the Taiwanese streets, was really flourishing and there were many wine houses in business. Main distributors of the widespread popular songs were those wine houses waitresses and modern young men who often visited wine houses. In the 1930s, dance halls, cafés, wine houses and restaurants were modern public places for recreation. A report entitled ‘The waitress who slipped from customers’ knees’ illustrated a common scene in cafés in Ginza, the most thriving district in Tokyo:
Once stepping into the café, you could hear the noises of men and women flirting. Jazz was played from the phonograph. Waitresses and customers sang together. All waitresses were in western style dresses. …… The waitresses yelled ‘more beers’ with a bit of tipsy demeanor. (Taiwan Nichi Nichi Simpo, 04/10/1930, p.2) This report showed that café waitresses were often associated with sexual interpretations. The same situation might apply to female dancers who were hired to accompany male customers. Both waitresses and dancers were new variations of traditional geisha (藝妓) or geidan (藝旦), female entertainers hosted in restaurants or wine houses. Geisha served the customers with their skills in performing traditional music and dance. There were regular columns in the newspaper that focused on famous geisha of the time and the women were often praised as beautiful, talented and attractive. As cafés and dance halls replaced wine houses and restaurants to be most fashionable spaces, many geisha got rid of their traditional style of dresses and performances, and began to sing popular songs, to learn ballroom dance, and became waitresses or dancers (王櫻芬 2008). The girls were service providers and entertainers in cafés and dance halls; however, similar to cafés in Ginza, sexual transactions often occurred in these places.
Back in the 1930s, there were limited job opportunities for women. Taiwan had been a patriarchal society, in which women’s rights were often ignored. The colonial government banned
foot-binding and demanded girls to receive school education, but women remained to be much more subordinate to men. For example, trading young girls for money was still a common practice of the time. Being a waitress was one of the few opportunities that a woman could earn her own living. The convenient access to most stylish materialities, particularly music, cosmetics, clothes, and films, made the occupation more desirable. Lung’s fiction ‘Black Girl’ was about a girl who was sold to be a child daughter-in law in a big family dreamt to be a waitress in cafés. Because she was always working and never wore clothes that were not torn, she envied
waitresses who appeared to be pretty and were always in good and clean clothes. In another story written by Wang Shi-lang (王詩琅 1908-1984), a frustrated father who lost his job after his participation in a strike had to make his teen-aged daughter to be a café waitress. He felt sorry and shameful for the decision.
Therefore, café waitresses and dancers at the time had a complex image. On the one hand, these women appeared to be fashionable and independent because they earned their own salaries and had access to media technologies and exotic materials. On the other hand, in contrast to men who sought comfort at cafés and dance halls, women in these spaces were the consumed cluster that often had to provide sexual services to men and hence had ill reputations. On 30th May 1935, Taiwan Nichi-nichi Simpo reported: a Taiwanese café waitress ran away and disappeared, because she was forced by her step mother to prostitute herself. As depicted in Wang’s fiction, many Taiwanese waitresses worked to support their families and had little autonomy for their own lives. The seemingly fashionable women were actually situated in the underclass of the society.
4. Concluding remarks
In this paper, I have used the birth of Taiwan’s first hit single as an entry point to illustrate many features of Taiwan in the 1930s. The network of media technologies, including films, phonograph records, radio, and newspapers, had brought the island into a generation of mass manufactured, commoditized media consumption. The consumption of these novel and exotic media
technologies was a status distinction that presented the lifestyle of the modern, young, urban and educated class. Mediated experiences had contributed to unified tastes and popular culture. However, the experiences of modernity were not entirely positive. The ethnic and class divide between the ruler and the ruled had led to collective self-suspicion and ambiguous identities among the Taiwanese. Among those who had access to new media technologies, café waitresses and dancers were the occupations dominated by women. These women who appeared to be stylish and independent were actually the exploited group and often had to provide sexual service
11 to male customers.
While writing about the formation of a consumer society in the 1930s Taiwan, I have demonstrated the complicated interpretations of experiencing modernity. In the seemingly prosperous and thriving age of consumption, multiple divides between ages, genders, and ethnicities made modernity controversial and contradictory to Taiwan. The emerging consumer culture did not last long. As the second Sino-Japan War broke out in 1937 and Japan got involved in World War Two, the colonial government squeezed control over consumption activities. After the War, Taiwan’s new ruler, the Nationalist Party (i.e. the Kuo-Ming-Tung), enforced martial law in its continuous war against the People’s Republic of China for nearly four decades. It was not until the late 1980s, when the people of Taiwan once again embraced free consumption. As mentioned, modernity in this article is considered to be ‘a condition experienced by people who live in a modern society’ (Taylor 1999:5) and hence there are multiple modernities. An investigation to the relations between media and modernity in the 1930s Taiwan does not only lead to a better comprehension of the island, but also prompts our awareness of the multifaceted modernity.
5. References
English
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford, California： Stanford University Press.
Miller, D. (1987). Material Culture and Mass Consumption. London: Blackwell. Polity.
Slater, D. (1997). Consumer Culture and Modernity. Cambridge, UK：Polity, in association with Blackwell.
Taylor, P. (1999). Modernities: a geohistorical interpretation. Cambridge,
Thompson, J. B. (1995). The Media and Modernity. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press
Tsai, W.-T. (2002, May 2002). ‘History of Taiwan Pop Songs.’ Retrieved 26 August, 2010, from http://home.comcast.net/~tzeng2/TaiwanPopSongs/in_english.htm
Chinese
王雲峰(1955) "電影、唱片、民間音樂"，台北文物 4(2), 77-79.
王詩琅、朱點人. (1991). 王詩琅、朱點人合集。 台北市: 前衛出版社.
169-196. 呂紹理 (2002). "日治時期台灣廣播工業與收音機市場的形成 1928-1945." 國立政治大學歷 史學報 19: 297-332. 周兆良 (2003). "日治時期台灣廣播產業之研究─1925~1945." 2003年度財團法人日台交流 協會─歷史研究者交流事業報告書. 周婉窈 (1997). 台灣歷史圖說-史前至一九四五年. 台北：聯經出版. 林太崴 (2009). "日治時期台語流行歌的商業操作：以古倫美亞及勝利唱片公司 為例." 臺灣音樂研究 8: 83-104. 徐元彥 (2008). 「傳統」VS「創新」：日本時代「摩登」的台灣戲曲音樂。 台灣博物 27(1): 32-37. 張小虹(2009)。"時裝美人現代性"，『女性．消費．歷史記憶』國際學術研討會，台北市： 國立政治大學。 莊永明 (1994). 台灣歌謠追想曲. 台北：前衛. 陳君玉. (1955). "日據時代台語流行歌概略. " 台北文物 4(2), 22-30. 陳柔縉 (2005). 台灣西方文明初體驗. 台北：城邦. 葉龍彥 (1997). "日據時期台灣戲院總覽"，台灣文獻 48(2): 187-203. 葉龍彥 (1999). "日治時期台灣「唱片」史"，台北文獻 直字129: 49-86. 龍瑛宗. (1991). 龍瑛宗集。台北市：前衛出版社. Japanese 李乘機. (2006). "ラジオ放送と植民地台湾の大眾文化"。貴志俊彥、川島真、孫安石（編）, 戰爭ラジオ記憶. 東京都: 勉誠出版.
國科會補助專題研究計畫項下赴國外(或大陸地區)出差或
研習心得報告
日期： 100 年 09 月 28 日
一、 國外(大陸)研究過程
99 年七月底接獲 MediAsia2010 研討會主辦單位來信通知已獲錄
取，於 10 月 28-30 日在日本大阪舉行。另經料蒐集得知位於大
阪的國立民族學博物館藏有日本昭和時代廣播、唱片錄製的重要
研究資料「植民地主義と録音産業－日本コロムビア外地録音資
料の研究」，因此一併變更申請出國目的，多停留兩天（10 月 26
日至 27 日）蒐集資料，但使用之出國經費不變。
二、 研究成果
計畫編號
NSC
99-2410-H-004-171-計畫名稱
媒體科技與現代性：回顧台灣 1930 年代消費社會的成型出國人員姓
名
王淑美
服務機
構及職
稱
國立政治大學新聞學系
出國時間
99 年
10 月
26 日至
99 年
10 月 27
日
出國地
點
日本大阪
趁國際研討會地利之便赴國立民族學博物館影印相關文獻。然
因人生地不熟，在交通往返上費了很多時間金錢：國立民族學
博物館位於佔地巨大的萬博紀念公園內，徒步走需要耗費許多
時間，加上不瞭解大阪市運輸系統，買錯了車票，也多花了不
少冤枉錢。可惜因為時間不充裕，無法在館內詳讀其他可能有
用的資料。
三、 建議
實際出國研究前應請教熟悉當地的人士，以節省摸索時間。
停留時間太短以致無法再查閱其他有助於研究的相關資料。
能夠兼顧參與研討會與蒐集資料，是節省時間與金錢的方式，
以後可多留意。
四、其他
國科會補助專題研究計畫項下出席國際學術會議心
得報告
日期： 100 年 9 月 27 日一、參加會議經過
在國際研討會訊息佈告上得知此研討會消息，由於其主題設定為
亞洲區域媒體相關研究，與本研究計畫密切相關，但提出研究計
畫申請時並未列入，因此進行計畫變更申請。七月底接獲主辦單
位來信通知已獲錄取，於 10 月 28-30 日在日本大阪舉行。另經資
計畫編號
NSC99-2410-H-004-171-計畫名稱
媒體科技與現代性：回顧台灣 1930 年代消費社會的成型出國人員
姓名
王淑美
服務機
構及職
稱
國立政治大學新聞學系
會議時間
99 年 10 月
28 日至
99 年 10
月 30 日
會議地
點
日本大阪
會議名稱
(中文)
(英文)
MediAsia 2010: The Asian Conference on Media and Mass Communication發表論文
題目
(中文)
(英文) Media technologies and Modernity - Tracing the formation of a consumer
society in the 1930s Taiwan料蒐集得知位於大阪的國立民族學博物館藏有日本昭和時代廣播、
唱片錄製的重要研究資料「植民地主義と録音産業－日本コロム
ビア外地録音資料の研究」，因此一併變更申請出國目的，多停
留兩天蒐集資料，但使用之出國經費不變。
二、與會心得
本次參與國際會議獲得兩項收穫，一是趁地利之便赴國立民族學
博物館影印相關文獻。然因人生地不熟，在交通往返上費了很多
時間金錢：國立民族學博物館位於佔地巨大的萬博紀念公園內，
徒步走需要耗費許多時間，加上不瞭解大阪市運輸系統，買錯了
車票，也多花了不少冤枉錢。可惜因為時間不充裕，無法在館內
詳讀其他可能有用的資料。
第二收穫是在會議上發表論文，同場次有來自日本、巴基斯坦的
學者針對不同主題發表，與會者對於 1930 年代台灣電影的語言使
用、以及當時消費社會與後來戰時緊縮以及戰後戒嚴的對照甚感
興趣。會後有國際期刊 Journalism and Mass Communication 來信表
示對於所發表的 paper 相當感興趣，並邀請投稿，目前正在改寫
中。
三、考察參觀活動(無是項活動者略)
四、建議
能夠參與國際學術會議並趁地利之便收集研究資料，確實可以一
石二鳥，節省時間精力，達到多重目的，可列為日後規劃的參考。
五、攜回資料名稱及內容
「植民地主義と録音産業－日本コロムビア外地録音資料の
研究」中與研究相關篇目
MediAsia 2010 會議論文集電子檔
六、其他
投稿摘要以及大會接受信函請見附件。
Media technologies and Modernity - Tracing the formation of a consumer society in the 1930s Taiwan
Abstract
In the 1930s, media technologies, including films, phonographs, music records, and radio broadcasting, became novel attractions to the public in Taiwan, then an emerging consumer society under the Japanese colonization. The Taipei branch of Nippon Phonograph Company Co. turned ‘Peach Blossom Weeps Blossom’, a song originally created to promote the debut of Shanghai production’s silent movie, into the first hit single in Taiwan’s history.
As Giddens(1991:24) indicated, ‘Modernity is inseparable from its own media’. Popular and consumer culture is also inseparable from the industrialized mass production, the increase in the mediation of experience, and the interpenetration of global capitalism. By employing an archival research, this paper aims to explore how media technologies became embedded in people's everyday life in the 1930s Taiwan. In tracing back to the birth of Taiwan’s first hit single in 1932, I intend to show that the formation of Taiwan’s consumer society is entangled with
individualization, urbanization, colonialism, capitalism, and the introduction of media technologies.
In addition, I argue that modernity is not a standardized condition diffused from Europe to the rest of the world. Modernity is considered to be ‘a condition experienced by people who live in a modern society’ (Taylor 1999:5) and hence there are multiple modernities. My special attention is paid to the colonized people, particularly the Taiwanese women, to investigate and demonstrate how their experience of becoming modern might be complicated and contradictory, involving excitement and frustration, opportunity and oppression.
Medi
Asia
2010
iafor
The Asian Conference on Media and Mass Communication
October 28-30 2010, The Ramada Osaka, Osaka, Japan The International Academic Forum www.mediasia.iafor.org www.iafor.org
iafor
iafor japan,14-1 Ohishi Kataba, Kitanagoya Aichi, 481-0002 Japan www.iafor.org
Mr Takayuki Yamada
Chairman, IAFOR Japan Prof. Sumei WANG
National Chengchi University, Taiwan
July 24, 2010 Contact Email: [email protected]
Submission Reference: 0121 Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Submission Title: Media technologies and Modernity - Tracing the formation of a consumer society in the 1930s Taiwan Authors: Sumei Wang
Dear Prof. WANG,
On behalf the MediAsia 2010 conference chair, Professor Gary Swanson, I am pleased to write that your proposal “Media technologies and Modernity - Tracing the formation of a consumer society in the 1930s Taiwan”, having met the accepted international academic standards of blind peer review, has been accepted for Oral Presentation at the Asian Conference on Media and Mass Communication 2010.
The Conference will be held in Osaka, Japan, at the Ramada Osaka Hotel, from the evening of Thursday October 28 through Saturday, October 30 2010. The keynote speaker and plenary session will be on Friday morning and parallel panel sessions begin Friday afternoon and run for the duration of the conference. Panels run for 90 minutes, with generally three presenters per panel, so each presenter has 30 minutes total for presentation and Q&A. For more detailed information about the conference, and accommodation, please visit the conference website.
Please note that if you cannot attend for any reason, please notify the conference administration team at [email protected], remembering to quote your submission reference number. Also, if you observe special religious holidays during the conference, please let us know on which day(s) you must not present. Not everyone can be accommodated with preferential dates and time, so presenters should limit any request of this nature to unavoidable situations.
A PDF of the full Conference Programme will be placed on the MediAsia website by Octber 5, 2010. Your name and paper title will be listed in the Programme upon payment of your registration fees. Please check the Programme at that time to make sure all information pertaining to you is included and correct.
Thank you for participating in the Asian Conference on Media and Mass Communication 2010. All of us affiliated with the organization aim to make this inaugural conference a success.
Yours Sincerely,
國科會補助計畫衍生研發成果推廣資料表
日期:2011/09/27國科會補助計畫
計畫名稱: 媒體科技與現代性：回顧台灣1930年代消費社會的成型 計畫主持人: 王淑美 計畫編號: 99-2410-H-004-171- 學門領域: 文化研究無研發成果推廣資料
99 年度專題研究計畫研究成果彙整表
計畫主持人：王淑美 計畫編號： 99-2410-H-004-171-計畫名稱：媒體科技與現代性：回顧台灣 1930 年代消費社會的成型 量化 成果項目 實際已達成 數（被接受 或已發表） 預期總達成 數(含實際已 達成數) 本計畫實 際貢獻百 分比 單位 備 註 （ 質 化 說 明：如 數 個 計 畫 共 同 成 果、成 果 列 為 該 期 刊 之 封 面 故 事 ... 等） 期刊論文 0 1 100% 撰寫中 研究報告/技術報告 0 0 100% 研討會論文 0 0 100% 篇 論文著作 專書 0 0 100% 申請中件數 0 0 100% 專利 已獲得件數 0 0 100% 件 件數 0 0 100% 件 技術移轉 權利金 0 0 100% 千元 碩士生 0 0 100% 博士生 0 0 100% 博士後研究員 0 0 100% 國內 參與計畫人力 （本國籍） 專任助理 1 1 100% 人次 期刊論文 0 1 100% 撰寫中 研究報告/技術報告 0 0 100% 研討會論文 1 1 100% 篇 已 發 表 於 MediAsia 2010 國 際研討會。 論文著作 專書 0 0 100% 章/本 申請中件數 0 0 100% 專利 已獲得件數 0 0 100% 件 件數 0 0 100% 件 技術移轉 權利金 0 0 100% 千元 碩士生 0 0 100% 博士生 0 0 100% 博士後研究員 0 0 100% 國外 參與計畫人力 （外國籍） 專任助理 0 0 100% 人次其他成果
(
無法以量化表達之成 果如辦理學術活動、獲 得獎項、重要國際合 作、研究成果國際影響 力及其他協助產業技 術發展之具體效益事 項等，請以文字敘述填 列。) 無 成果項目 量化 名稱或內容性質簡述 測驗工具(含質性與量性) 0 課程/模組 0 電腦及網路系統或工具 0 教材 0 舉辦之活動/競賽 0 研討會/工作坊 0 電子報、網站 0 科 教 處 計 畫 加 填 項 目 計畫成果推廣之參與（閱聽）人數 0國科會補助專題研究計畫成果報告自評表
請就研究內容與原計畫相符程度、達成預期目標情況、研究成果之學術或應用價
值（簡要敘述成果所代表之意義、價值、影響或進一步發展之可能性）
、是否適
合在學術期刊發表或申請專利、主要發現或其他有關價值等，作一綜合評估。
1. 請就研究內容與原計畫相符程度、達成預期目標情況作一綜合評估
■達成目標
□未達成目標（請說明，以 100 字為限）
□實驗失敗
□因故實驗中斷
□其他原因
說明：
2. 研究成果在學術期刊發表或申請專利等情形：
論文：□已發表 ■未發表之文稿 □撰寫中 □無
專利：□已獲得 □申請中 ■無
技轉：□已技轉 □洽談中 ■無
其他：（以 100 字為限）
3. 請依學術成就、技術創新、社會影響等方面，評估研究成果之學術或應用價
值（簡要敘述成果所代表之意義、價值、影響或進一步發展之可能性）（以
500 字為限）
本研究採取歷史分析法，特別著重的是廣播、唱盤、報紙、電影等傳播科技在日治時期引 進，以及咖啡廳、車站、舞廳等公共場所的普及，促成大眾消費社會的成型，1930 年代台 灣首度進入媒體中介的現代社會，也首度出現了影響跨全島的流行歌曲與電影。1930 年 代的台灣是一個「空前絕後」的特殊時期，因為之前消費社會的條件尚未成熟，而之後進 入戰爭時期，日本殖民政府的統治方式趨於嚴峻，也扼殺了消費社會的空間。 本研究特別著重於探討新興傳播科技在 1930 年代的台灣社會是被哪些人、哪些空間消費， 消費這些傳播科技又有什麼意義。在當時能夠近用蓄音機、電影、廣播等傳播科技的群體， 以都會、年輕、受教育的男性為主，場所多在都會娛樂公共空間，如跳舞場、料裡亭、咖 啡廳為主。相對於男性做為消費者，在這些場所提供服務的女性，包括藝妓、女給、舞女 等，也是流行文化的共同創造者。在女性工作機會稀少的年代，這些女性能夠經濟自主， 並有機會接觸最新的傳播科技，不過在令人稱羨的表面下，仍難掩其作為性服務提供者、 被剝削的陰暗面。這些衝突的特質，乃是台灣殖民地現代性的本質之一。 在學術成就方面，本研究聚焦於媒體科技與現代性的關連性，探討電影、蓄音機、廣播仍 為新興科技的時代，台灣社會如何接觸、理解這些新媒體，這些近用方式又如何反映當時 的階級、性別、種族、貧富、權力關係。這是以往傳播學界甚少留意的面向，因此在學術系大一必修課堂上，介紹 1930 年代的社會與新聞業的發展，並且讓學生透過指定作業， 增進對該年代歷史背景的瞭解。 這個研究領域仍屬於初探階段，還有許多值得深入探討的地方。計畫主持人未來仍將持續 投入精力鑽研，包括正在進行的兩年期研究計畫，第一年的研究重點試圖探索 1930 年代 廣播在日常生活中的運用如何反映出當時人們的生活韻律。另外，本研究關注當時女性所 面臨的變化與處境，也因此對當時日本興起的「新女性」思潮、「摩登女性」與「消費」 之間的關連性深感興趣，是目前研究寫作的重點方向之一，預計經一段時間的累積後可完 成適合發表於期刊的學術文章 1-2 篇。
