"NHK ordered to pay damages to indigenous Taiwanese woman for defaming her"

From Japan Today, 11/30/13:

A Japanese court has ordered public broadcaster NHK to pay damages to an indigenous Taiwanese woman for defaming her by using the term “human zoo” in a program, officials said Friday.

Overturning a lower court ruling, the Tokyo High Court ordered NHK to pay 1 million yen to the woman, with presiding judge Noriaki Sudo reportedly saying the broadcaster used a term that had a “serious discriminatory meaning”.

The program looked at the “Japan-Britain Exhibition” held in London in 1910 to which Japan took several members of Taiwan’s aboriginal population, including the father of the woman, as exotic exhibits, Jiji Press and Kyodo News reported.

Taiwan was a Japanese colony at the time, and the practice of exhibiting the little-known peoples of far-flung territories was a common one among Western imperial powers.

Historians say Japan, which had emerged from self-imposed isolation just half a century earlier, joined in partly as an attempt to establish itself as an imperial power and mitigate the perceived risk of being colonised itself.

In the ruling, Sudo said NHK “repeatedly used the term without giving consideration to its discriminatory meaning,” which implied the people of the Paiwan—Taiwan’s indigenous population—were uncivilized, the Tokyo Shimbun reported.

Some of those who took part did so earnestly, and not as mere curiosities, the judge said, according to the paper.

In a statement sent to AFP on Friday, NHK said: “We are sorry that our argument was not taken up. We will decide how to deal with the issue after studying closely the court’s verdict.”

Source: http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/nhk-ordered-to-pay-damages-to-indigenous-taiwanese-woman-for-defaming-her

East Asia Image Collection at Lafayette College Libraries Digital Collections

Announcement via H-Asia:

Overview of Collections

The East Asia Image Collection is an open-access archive of digitized photographs, negatives, postcards, and slides of colonial Taiwan (1900-1945) and occupied Japan (1947-52). The Collection is built around a core of visual materials donated to Skillman Library Special Collections by the family of Gerald and Rella Warner. Images unique to this collection include the Warners' unpublished slides and negatives, made from snapshots taken during their years of US State Department service in Asia (1932-1952). Rare materials include prewar picture postcards, high-quality commercial prints, and colonial era picture books. Each record in the East Asia Image Collection has been assigned subject headings, hyper-linked metadata, and, to the fullest extent possible, historiographical, bibliographical and technical data.

Check it out:
http://digital.lafayette.edu/collections/eastasia

Chinese and Taiwanese Photo Collections

Here's an announcement about collections of photographs from China and Taiwan from H-ASIA.

1. Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images

From the web site: The galleries on display here belong to the category of documentary photography. The main subject area is China and that country's rather rapid transformation from a rural to an urban-centered society. Taken together, these galleries constitute a visual archive that for the most part is meant to capture and to preserve information (or "evidence of certain developments" perhaps). Only sometimes are these photographs speculative or interpretive. And although I do not claim to aspire towards the highest degree of objectivity (or "truth") embodied in the image as such, I do claim a certain amount of authority over and understanding of the subjects treated in this visual fashion.

http://hahn.zenfolio.com/

2. Gerald Warner Taiwan Image Collection

From the web site: The Gerald Warner Taiwan Image Collection is a photographic record of a US consul's impressions of urban and rural life in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule. Totaling 340 photographs and postcards gathered by Warner between August 26, 1937 and March 8, 1941, these images provide a snapshot of Taiwan's hybrid culture of Chinese, Taiwanese, Austronesian, and Japanese influences. The subjects represented are wide-ranging, including clothing, arboriculture, urban structures, agriculture, religious rituals, topography, highways, parks, and more. These digitized images have been researched and annotated to serve as a web-based encyclopedia of colonial Taiwan's material culture.

http://warner.lafayette.edu/

3. The Michael Lewis Taiwan Image Collection

Colonial Pictorial Works Taiwan Image Collection, Special Collections & College Archives, Lafayette College Libraries, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA

A collection of 59 sepia photographs from Taiwan from the period 1933-1938. They are digitized images from a book with the following metadata - Title. English: Taiwan, Title. Japanese: Taiwan no fuko, Format. Medium: Printed pictorial book, Creator. Maker: Yamazaki, Kinichiro, editor, Creator. Company: Publisher unknown, Wakayama Prefecture, Date. Original: circa 1939.

http://imago.lafayette.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Flewis

4. Bucklin China Archive

From the web site: In 1923, Harold Bucklin took his family on a remarkable journey from Providence, Rhode Island to Shanghai, China, where he produced an exquisite body of work of large format photographs of Pre-Revolutionary China using a Graflex camera. This website is dedicated to Harold and Hazel Bucklin and their remarkable journey. On the pages that follow, you will have an opportunity to retrace their footsteps and view this unique archive of photographs from another time.

http://www.bucklinchinaarchive.com/index.php

There are also some photos of the 1923 Yokohama earthquake included in this collection.