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Paper short abstract

The presentation examines Indigenous Taiwan as an internal colonial frontier where warfare, medical education, and anthropology converged to transform Indigenous bodies into resources for imperial knowledge and governance, sustaining unequal belonging, colonial power, and contested memory beyond decolonization.

Paper long abstract

Human skeletal collections transferred from the Taiwan Governor-General’s Medical School to Taihoku Imperial University and later to National Taiwan University have recently been re-evaluated in medicine and anthropology as “indispensable research materials.” Under the banner of “revitalizing human skeletal collections,” new research projects have sought to restore their scholarly significance.

Anatomical dissection has long occupied a crucial place in modern medical research and education. Yet the questions of whose bodies became research materials, by whose hands, through what processes, and what kinds of knowledge were produced from them remain deeply complex.

This presentation examines early research practices at the Taiwan Governor-General’s Medical School, a subject that has received little scholarly attention. It asks how the bodies and skeletal remains of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples became available for medical and anthropological research, and what institutional, social and political conditions sustained these practices. In particular, it focuses on the intersection of medical education in colonial Taiwan, anthropological research within the Japanese empire, and colonial warfare against Taiwan Indigenous Peoples.

The presentation argues that Taiwan Indigenous bodies became a significant component of an unfinished project of “Japanese” anatomy, which emerged in response to critiques of anatomy based on the “European” body as a universal norm. Researchers sought to classify and characterize racial differences within the Japanese Empire, using Indigenous bodies as empirical evidence. As a scientific effort to demonstrate and systematize such differences, however, the project never produced definitive conclusions.

Scientific research using the bodies of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples failed to reach sufficient conclusions. Nevertheless, Indigenous bodies continued to be put to use as teaching materials for medical education, as specimens for physical anthropology, and as epistemic resources supporting colonial governance; at the same time, they also continued to meet national and social expectations surrounding the formation of a “Japanese” self-image. In this sense, this presentation sheds light on the trajectory of a project that persisted as unfinished.