Japanese Journal of Ethnology

In Botel Tobago, a former Japanese possession off the east coast of Formosa and under Chinese administration since the War, research was carried out from the end of May to the beginning of June 1946 by Chinese scholars. The Botel Tobago Scientific Expedition consisted of Chinese scholars of both the Mainland and Formosa and Japanese scholars under the leadership of Dr. MA Ting-Yin. The writer joined the expedition from May 31 to June 10, to study how the Yamis had adjusted to transitional conditions. The change of the administrative system, especially the abolition of the isolation policy of the island resulted in the exploitation of the aborigines by foreigners in trade, with the consequent development of a distrustful attitude of the former against the latter. During the war, the Japanese garrison promoted the popularization of the Japanese language among the islanders, and after the War the Chinese made an effort to diffuse their language but without success, and the Fukien and English vocabularies were learned by the islanders through the medium of the Japanese language. In spite of the recent introduction of the "water-gun, " tobacco and an increasing taste for clothing, the substantial part of their every day life, especially the spiritual life has experienced little change, if any. Platform exposure burial which was newly found in the investigation provides a link in the series of burial forms from the Philippines to Ryukyu. Bracelets of green stone probably related to those of Formosa and Kasho-to were noted among the archaeological materials. As to folklore, a tale of the Two-Suns motif was recorded. The population is on the decrease and the Indonesian natives of Formosa are now generally in straitened circumstances.

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It has drawn the attention of many scholars that when a higher or newer culture and a lower culture exist side by side, diffusion of culture will occur from one to the other and in its acceptance there will be culture change. I want to suggest, by giving some examples, that in the process of the revolutionary acceptance of a culture there seem to be differences in the degree of resistance to accepting a new culture according to generations. Thus there are variant patterns of culture or cultural attitudes according to generations. Such examples can be found in the characteristic mode of living and the attitude toward living in each generation of the Ainu in Hokkaido who are now rapidly being Japanized. A higher or hetrogeneous culture might be accepted in its entirety by a people with a lower culture, while resistance against its diffusion and acceptance can be noted over several generations ; the form changing by stages as it is absorbed into the original cultural life. Although the diffusion of culture has often been discussed in connection with the completed process of acculturation among many ethnic groups, we have not as yet reached the stage of clarifying the processes of the revolutionary acceptance and change of a new culture and the establishment of the laws concerned. In this regard the study of the Ainu will contribute very much as they may be continued into the fourth or fifth generation of those who first came into contact with large scale immigrations of Japanese. They show us the much differentiated, discontinuous attitude of each generation toward the new culture which is to be observed and traced with our own eyes. It is, I think, an extraordinary case and would be a very interesting subject matter for investigation by our cultural anthropologists. The same but a somewhat different case is to be found in the acculturation of each generation of American-Japanese, which will present an important model case for the study of attitudes regarding social change.

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