Shu-ching Shi (alt. Shuqing Shi; 施叔青), a prominent female novelist born in 1945 at Lukang, Changhua, and renowned for her Hong Kong Trilogy, has started writing another trilogy for Taiwan, her motherland. Dust Before the Wind (tentative translation of 風前塵埃, the original title in Chinese), the second installment of her Taiwan Trilogy, is set in Taiwan's Japanese colonial period. The novel centers on the eastern Taiwan where a large population of Taiwanese aborigines live.

Mrs. Shi got her inspiration from the one-year stay she spent in Dong Hwa University as an author-in-residence. The pristine beauty of the local landscape became the backdrop of the novel, underpinning a search of identities that extended across three races and lasted for three generations.

If every story should have a starting point, this one starts with Sakuma Samata, the longest serving Governor-General of colonial Taiwan. Samata's five-year pacification plan aiming at seizing control of mountain dwelling aboriginal tribes culminated in the largest military campaign in the island's history. His final showdown was with the Truku people occupying the Taroko Gorge area. Backed by the gorge, Truku people was arguably the most untamed. Outnumbered and outgunned, Truku warriors fought fearlessly. They wound not back down until they were close to extinction.

Samata resigned soon after the campaign, claiming that his mission had completed, but he was in fact seriously injured during the campaign and died one year later. Rumor has it that Samata's injury was not an accident--he was ambushed by the Truku warriors. The name of the novel, Dust Before the Wind, is in some way the author's remark of Samata's tenure: an experienced and trusted military commander was still destined to perish. Had he really accomplished his mission? The vigor of aborigines was simply too strong to contain.

Samata's military campaign dramatically changed the lives of the Taiwanese aborigines. One the other hand, his immigration policy also changed the lives of the Japanese people who left their homeland and sought new possibilities in the eastern Taiwan. In the novel, Shinzou Yokoyama (橫山新藏) was one of the Japanese immigrants. He joined the military campaign as a police officer and prompted as the chief of a police station that oversaw the aboriginal tribes on Mt. Liwu. His daughter, Tsukihime Yokoyama (橫山月姬), was the first generation Japanese born in Taiwan, also known as Wansei (湾生). Tsukuhime fell in love with a Truku young man, Holok-Payan (哈鹿克．巴彥). The romantic relationship was of course not blessed, if not forbidden. She gave birth to an illegitimate child, Kotoko Mugen (無絃琴子), and soon the WWII was over. All the Japanese immigrants were sent back to Japan.

To Kotoko, her father was only a name on the paper. She was not even sure that the name was real because her mother seldom mentioned what her father was like. However, her mother loved to tell her the story of Mako (真子), a classmate of her mother's in Taiwan, who fell in love with a Truku young man.

Many years later, when three Taiwanese aborigines came to visit Kotoko's residence in Tokyo, they brought an invitation for her mother to join the inauguration ceremony of the repaired Ching-shiu Temple at Ji-an, Hualien. Ji-an was one of the three immigrant villages built during Sakuma Samata's tenure, and was the hometown for both Tsukihime and Kotoko. Tsukihime had passed away, but Kotoko's search of her identity was just about to begin.

Another principal character in the novel was a Hakka called Yi-Ming Fan-Jiang (范姜義明). He studied photography in Japan and returned to Fonglin, Hualien to open a photography shop purposefully named "Second Me" (二我). Fan-Jiang's persona was quite a contract to Holok-Payan's. The former wanted to speak and live like a Japanese, but the later was forced by Japanese to change his way of living. The former was civilized and living in the urban area, but the later was uncultivated and living in the mountains. The only thing in common was that they both fell in love with Tsukihime Yokoyama.

Taiwanese aborigines were a popular research subject for Japanese anthropologists. Their studies were also used as intelligence for military purposes. Photographs of aborigines wearing customary clothing even became curious souvenirs. I recalled seeing an exhibit in Harvard Museum of Natural History. A collection of photographs shot by western anthropologists and commercial photographers was on display. The subject was the Japanese people themselves, and the time was probably before the Meiji Restoration. Many of the photographs were originally used in postcards, curious souvenirs for western travelers visiting Japan.

Further Reading (in Chinese):

• 風前塵埃(AK0099)── 「台灣三部曲」之二
  
• 歷史的行腳者—女書店專訪「台灣三部曲」之《風前塵埃》作者施叔青