「南無警察大菩薩」——日治時期臺北州警察衛生展覽會中的警察形象

Abstract

一九二五年，在臺北州警察衛生展覽會中，展出了一幅「南無警察大菩薩」的海報。這幅畫給人的第一印象，彷彿是要以警察來取代觀世音的角色。然而，若真的是如此，何以警察的左手要拿著一串念珠，右手卻又要同時拿著一把劍呢？另外，在「南無警察大菩薩」身後的六隻手，分別指向警察的六大任務：「左側通行」、「思想取締」、「犯人逮捕」、「救助救護」、「蕃人授產」、「惡疫豫防」。透過這些不同的任務，展覽會的策展者，究竟想要營造出何種特殊的警察形象？而它又與當時人民對於警察的實際認知形成多大的落差？一般來說，現今人們所熟悉的警察，乃是歐洲近代初期為了因應現代主權國家而出現的特殊權力機制。本文在最後，則想要順著警察在歐洲近代初期的發展脈絡，來比較當時日本殖民統治者是如何透過警察機制的引介來治理臺灣。

From November 21 to 25, 1925, the Taipei Prefecture held a five-day “Police and Hygiene Exhibition.” The organizers made a special poster: “Buddha Police.” In his right hand the policeman holds a sword, and in his left hand he holds a string of Buddhist beads. Although his eyes and mouth are closed, he appears to be quietly murmuring. What he is meditating on, can be deduced from the three hands to his left and right, the subjects he contacts, and the four-character phrases surround-ing the contacts: “Passing from the Left,” “Banning Ideology,” “Arrest-ing Criminals”, “Rescue and Aid”, “Improving Aboriginal Living Con-ditions” and “Disease Prevention.”\\r In contrast to the unique background of the rise of early modern European police mechanisms, the police system in Taiwan during Japa-nese governance was established because of the colonizers’ need to dominate, despite the fact that in this period, colonizers wanted a civi-lized, enlightened, unselfish, and sacrificial image created to save the people from all hardships. But the colonizers, with their mentality of ethnic and cultural superiority, were only rewarded with sarcastic refer-ences to police politics, the police state, and the all-powerful police by the colonized as a reprimand to the lawless actions of the colonizers. Ultimately, they even wished to establish a constitutional system to monitor and control the exercise of power by the police.