1903年日本大阪第五回內國勸業博覽會開幕前夕，由東京大學人類學家坪井正五郎所策劃的「人類館」，預定將「支那人」和其他如台灣生番等七種人種以活人展出的規劃經新聞披露後，中國留學生憤怒地認定此項展出安排乃是日本人企圖將中國人醜化為野蠻人的計謀，並且斷定坪井要以纏足女性和吸食鴉片者的活人演出，以供世人參觀恥笑中國人的野蠻習俗。在經過留學生的強力抗議和清政府的外交交涉後，有關「支那人」的展出部分在人類館開幕前即被下令中止。此事件不僅引起當時的中國輿論種種評論，並成為日後反纏足運動和民族主義論述的重要歷史記憶。本研究以嚴謹的中日文文本分析入手，重新嚴格檢視留學生關於人類館展出的內容和目的論述，將它們置於當時中國思想文化界的危機意識的脈絡，進而探討這些論述和近代中國國族意識中的「野蠻情結」的密切關連性。本文認為留學生對人類館的指控在相當大的程度上是建立在「稻草人謬誤」的思維基礎上；因此，唯有回到近代中國國族意識中的「野蠻情結」的脈絡上，才能顯現其真正的複雜歷史文化意義。

On the eve of the fifth Industrial Exhibition held in Osaka in 1903, a news report revealed the plans for the "World's Natives Building," which was a brainchild of the anthropology professor Tsuboi Shogoro of Tokyo Imperial University. According to the news report, the building would hold a living exhibition of representatives of seven human races, including Taiwanese aboriginals and the Chinese race. This news infuriated many Chinese students in Japan, who saw the exhibit as a conspiracy by the Japanese to portray the Chinese people as barbarians, especially by showing women with bound feet and opium smokers as typical "barbarian Chinese." Although the Chinese part of the show was cancelled before its opening due to the protests by both Chinese students and Qing diplomats, the cident had already triggered many reactions from the Chinese news media. It thus became an important part of collective memory in the anti-foot-binding movement and nationalist discourse. Most studies of this incident have uncritically treated the Chinese accusations of the "World's Natives Building" exhibit as reasonable and objective statements. They have failed to notice that these accusations were in fact products of the students’ subjective and strong emotions. This study carefully examines documents in Chinese and Japanese in order to analyze the Chinese students' discourse in depth and trace back the possible sources for their construction and imagination of the exhibit's content and purpose. For example, I have discovered that the students built up their accusation regarding footbinding and opium smoking in light of their twisted interpretation of Tsuboi's work Ethnographic Album of the World. This important fact has never been noticed and critically investigated by previous scholarship on this issue. Moreover, after clarifying the sources of the Chinese students' discourse, I have embedded them in the context of the modern Chinese intellectual and cultural sense of crisis, investigating the close relationship between these discourses and the "barbarian complex" of the modern Chinese consciousness. I illustrate that the accusation that Tsuboi planned the exhibit to feature women with bound feet and opium smokers, thus representing the Chinese as "barbarian" was mostly a straw man. The complexity and historical significance of the students' accusations can only be explicated clearly when they are firmly placed in the context of the modern Chinese "barbarian complex."