Tale
蕃族調查報告書
Not translated into English
Sayama Yūkichi · 1915
Synopsis
Eight volumes devoted to the island's indigenous peoples, each devoted to one or two of them: the Amis and the Puyuma, the Atayal, the Bunun, the Paiwan and the Saisiyat, among others. For each group of villages, the investigators describe the distribution, the social organisation, the festivals of the calendar, religion, headhunting, housing, adornment, songs and dances, games, and collect the legends; the volume on the Atayal closes with a collection of the everyday words of each village.
Context
The reports appeared in Taihoku from 1915 to 1921, in eight volumes, the fruit of ten years of surveys; the first, devoted to the Amis and the Puyuma, resulted from a campaign led by Kōno Kiroku from July 1912 to November 1913. The Government-General intended to use them to establish legislation specific to the indigenous peoples, inspired by Japanese civil law. Another series by the same commission, devoted to their social organisation and kinship, appeared in the same years under the direction of Kojima Yoshimichi.
Who it is for
Eight volumes of ethnographic reports in Japanese, readable in Chinese translation; nothing in French or English. It is worth bearing in mind that they were written in order to administer these peoples.
Prizes and reception
Translated into Chinese by the Institute of Ethnology of Academia Sinica from 2007, they are also digitised by the National Central Library of Taiwan.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.