1

2009

dearciao@gmail.com
1

Venereal Disease, Prostitution, and the Politics of Colonial

Difference: The Case of Lock Hospitals in Colonial Taiwan

Chiu-Hung Liang
PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University

Abstract
In Taiwan, the state regulation of sexuality began with Japanese colonialism. A
close look at the imperial logic of regulation will reveal that the political rationale was
race protection in colonies. Behind the colonial social hygiene discourse were specific
gender and racial priorities. Lock Hospital as colonial disciplinary institution thereby
imposed regular inspection and juridical treatment on Japanese registered prostitute
inpatients. For the resistance to genital examinations and the limits of institutional
operation, there was once an alternate model to Taiwanese prostitute outpatients.
What is more, to consider the venereal diseases as a politic economical issue, for the
colonial authority, it had the economic loss of production and the price of medical
expense. The colonial Lock Hospital supported by the official, the capital and the
prostitute patients provides a reasonable institutional arrangement as a self-financing
system. The specific financial framework elucidates why the medical inspection of
prostitutes in colonial Taiwan workable but in Western colonies not.

Keywords: colonial medicine, medical inspection, Lock Hospital, venereal disease,

prostitute.

3
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http://smdb.infolinker.com.tw/
http://db1n.th.gov.tw/sotokufu/
http://tbmc.ncl.edu.tw:8080/fjomapp/start.htm

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