本文討論1910年代臺灣「衛生展覽會」的初期發展,釐清殖民地衛生展覽會為何以及如何出現;探討殖民地的衛生展覽會如何透過「視覺化」的方式,促成衛生科技知識的生產及流通。本文主要的發現有三:其一,殖民地衛生展覽會深受當時日本及國際的同類展覽會和日本博物館通俗教育的影響。展覽會以啟蒙近代衛生知識與觀念為目標,是殖民當局對屬民施行身體衛生的規訓,以改善殖民地的公共衛生。其二,殖民當局對於衛生展品的陳列、即衛生「視覺化」的處理,幾經轉折。從早先以機構或單位為中心的展示,轉向加入衛生知識分類的概念;最後,於1917年臺中廳教育衛生展覽會,運用「分類式陳列法」,確立以觀覽者為中心的展場規劃,建立衛生展品的邏輯及系統關係,提供觀覽者系統性的衛生認知。但此舉亦有利殖民當局操作母國/殖民地、衛生/不衛生等深富殖民意涵的展示方式。其三,在地方官廳所舉辦的衛生展覽會,展場內部及外部都摻雜商業利益。雖然一般博覽會越來越有大眾消費的色彩,但衛生展覽會則透過觀念的普及與衛生物品的消費,始終不改其「眼目教化」之目標,並因相關物品之消費活動,而使「衛生」知識或概念向日常生活滲透。
This paper studies the early development of hygiene exhibitions in colonial Taiwan. It focuses on how exhibitions promoted the production and circulation of knowledge about sanitation, and how the colonial hygiene policy was imposed on viewers through a specific visualizing technique. The author concludes that the hygiene exhibitions of the 1910s were influenced by both European and Japanese examples, particularly the First International Hygiene Exhibition, held in Dresden in 1911. Moreover, the Japanese concept of ”popular education,” which involved training viewers via their eyes, clearly had a profound impact. The author traces the evolution of the colonial government's ”visualizing technique.” Early displays followed what one might call institutional logic. But this yielded a certain redundancy, so the colonial government took to framing exhibitions by classifying hygienic knowledge. In the third stage, the government adopted a viewer-oriented strategy that dictated the logic of the displays: once viewers entered an exhibition, they were immediately placed in a systematic space of hygienic knowledge. That eventually became the dominant form of exhibition for the later period. The colonial power achieved its goal of ”education via the eyes,” as commercial interests penetrated these exhibitions, when the showcased sanitary goods were gradually adopted in the daily life of the Taiwanese.