Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore, 1870-1940. By JAMES FRANCIS WARREN. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1993. xvi, 434 pp. $65.00.
Ah Ku 和 Karayuki-san：新加坡的卖淫，1870-1940 年。 作者：詹姆斯-弗兰西斯-沃伦。 新加坡。牛津大学出版社，1993 年： xvi, 434 pp. $65.00.
研究有组织女性卖淫的社会史学家发现自己至少面临两个难题。 首先，如何确定和控诉卖淫活动中更具压迫性的方面，而又不使卖淫妇女沦为这一制度的棋子。 其次，如何从当事人的视角描绘她们的日常生活和世界，同时又能勾勒出影响这些生活的宏观背景问题，如不断变化的政治经济、国家结构和性别意识形态。 为了解决这些问题，詹姆斯-沃伦将其著作一分为二。 前半部分提供了新加坡妓院卖淫的宏观历史；后半部分则侧重于日本妓女和中国妓女（分别称为卡拉月小姐和啊库小姐）的实际生活细节。
从题为 "父权制、贫穷与繁荣 "的章节开始，沃伦指出了在中国和日本招募中国和日本妇女卖淫并将她们运往新加坡的根本原因。 然后，他描述了新加坡妓院的地理、人口和组织情况；供应和控制这些妇女的代理人和机构；以及英国政府在试图管理这种被视为必要的社会罪恶时不断变化的殖民政策。 本书的后半部分重点介绍了 "啊库 "和 "karayuki-san "的真实生活，并参考了各种口述历史、验尸官报告和其他观察者的记录。 沃伦从中国和日本的村庄开始叙述，描述了年轻女性前往新加坡的旅程、她们作为妓院居民的日常生活、她们所服务的男性客户、通过婚姻或买断退出这一行业的机会，以及她们晚年的前景。
与他的前一本著作《人力车苦力》（新加坡：牛津大学出版社，1986 年）一样，沃伦渴望写一部另类的新加坡历史。 他指出，"新加坡社会的历史记忆不是由一根单一的丝线构成，而是由一条纠缠不清的纱线构成。 有一种是能言善辩、位高权重者的主流记忆，这些记忆被精心记录下来，往往是有选择性地记录给后人的；还有一种是'底层人民、弱势群体和战败者的历史'的见证，他们对过去的记忆是无数的另类记忆"（第 388 页）。 当然，他所选择的主题和他所宣称的目标都很重要，但他试图为这些 "黑夜中的女人 "的记忆发声的努力并不完全成功。 他的散文风格各异，既有称职的历史描写，也有试图唤起读者共鸣的段落，但却给读者留下了戏剧化的印象。 例如，在讨论验尸官文件的使用时，我们读到："这一资料来源和方法让历史学家对新加坡过去重要的、几乎无法提及的主题--卖淫、妇女地位和从属地位、性与爱以及死亡--进行了深入的思考"（第 14 页）。 同样，使用口述历史的困难 "被语言揭开这些妓女生活中沉默面纱的巨大力量和奇迹所抵消"（第 15 页）。 此外，"卡拉尤基山和妓院的照片既是功能性的，也是象征性的，可以让人惊叹、狰狞或微笑；这些黑白照片是新加坡生活本身的无价片段，每张照片都在讲述自己的故事"（第 17 页）。
这本书也太长了；分为两个不同的部分导致了冗余和一些混乱，在书的后半部分，同一妓女的故事被一章又一章地重述，因为讨论的是她们生活的不同方面。 沃伦也没有充分区分中国和日本女性不同的社会和性风俗，他经常将自己的解释归结为 "父权制 "这个并不十分具有启发性的术语。 令人惊讶的是，尽管他声称自己受到了人种学的启发，却没有提到约翰-恩布里的经典著作《Suye Mura》（芝加哥大学出版社，1939 年），该书讲述的正是他声称要讲述的地区和日本妇女的口述历史。
尽管存在这些不足，但沃伦的书中有大量关于新加坡历史的资料，而这些资料往往被其他历史学家所忽视。 我们还能在书中找到对社会历史学家的教益和告诫，因为社会历史学家试图为那些一直保持沉默的底层人民讲述他们的故事，这是一项艰巨的工作。 这样的写作需要一种微妙而复杂的方法，不易掌握。
夏伦-卡斯滕斯 波特兰州立大学
Social historians of organized female prostitution find themselves faced with at least two dilemmas. First, how to identify and indict the more oppressive aspects of prostitution without making the women appear as mere pawns of the system. Second, how to portray the daily lives and worlds of the people involved from their own perspectives while also delineating the contextual macro-issues such as changing political economies, state structures, and gender ideologies that shaped these lives. James Warren addresses these problems by dividing his book in two. The first half offers a macrohistory of brothel prostitution in Singapore; the second focuses on details in the actual lives of the Japanese and Chinese prostitutes, known, respectively, as karayuki-san and ah ku.
Beginning with a chapter titled "Patriarchy, Poverty, and Prosperity," Warren identifies underlying causes behind the procurement of Chinese and Japanese women for prostitution in China and Japan and their shipment to Singapore. He then describes the geography, demography, and organization of Singapore's brothels; the agents and agencies who supplied and controlled the women; and the shifting colonial policies of the British government as it attempted to manage what was seen as a necessary social evil. The book's second half focuses on the actual lives of the ah ku and karayuki-san, drawing on a variety of oral history accounts, coroner's reports, and other observer's records. Beginning the narratives back in the villages of China and Japan, Warren describes the journeys of the young women to Singapore; the routines of their daily lives as brothel inhabitants; the male clients whom they served; the opportunities to leave the trade by marriage or buying themselves out; and their prospects in old age.
As with his previous book, Rickshaw Coolie (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), Warren aspires to write an alternative history of Singapore. He notes that "the historical memory of Singaporean society is constituted not of one single strand, but of a tangled skein. There is a dominant memory, carefully and often selectively recorded for posterity, of the articulate and powerful, and there are the numerous alternative memories of the past from the testimony of 'the under-classes, the underprivileged, and the defeated the history of the powerless" (p. 388). Certainly the subject matter he has chosen and his stated goals are important, yet his attempt to give voice to the memories of these "women of the night" is not entirely successful. His prose style varies from competent historical description to passages that attempt to be evocative, yet strike this reader as melodramatic. For example, in discussing use of the coroner's documents, we read, "this source and approach involves the historian in the intimate contemplation of important, almost unmentionable, subjects in Singapore's past-prostitution, the status and subordination of women, sex and love, and death" (p. 14). Similarly, the difficulties of using oral history "are more than offset by the awesome power and wonder of language lifting the veil of silence from around the lives of these prostitutes" (p. 15). And "photographs of the karayuki- san and the brothels were both functional and symbolic objects which can make one gasp, grimace, or smile; the black-and-white images are priceless snatches of Singapore life itself, each telling its own story" (p. 17).
This book is also too long; the division into two distinct parts leads to redundancy and some confusion, and in the second half of the book, stories of the same prostitutes are retold chapter after chapter as different aspects of their lives are discussed. Warren also does not keep the different social and sexual mores of Chinese and Japanese women sufficiently distinct, often lumping his explanations under the not terribly illuminating term of "patriarchy." Surprisingly, though claiming ethnographic inspiration, he makes no reference to John Embree's classic, Suye Mura (University of Chicago Press, 1939), which deals with the very region and Japanese women whose oral histories he purports to tell.
Despite these shortcomings, Warren's book is rich in data on aspects of Singapore history too often neglected by other historians. We find here, too, lessons and admonitions for the social historian who attempts the difficult job of speaking for heretofore silent underclasses. Such writing requires a delicate and sophisticated approach that is not easily mastered.
SHARON CARSTENS Portland State University
