佐藤春夫是日本來台作家中，建立旅行文學的擘建者。以佐藤春夫在日本文壇的知名度，他的台灣相關作品不僅開啟許多日人的殖民地想像，也成為日人作家的台灣書寫之典範。因此本文將以佐藤春夫的旅行書寫為主題，就此檢驗近代旅者的文化視域，以及他對殖民地的詮釋。可以說，佐藤來台後的行程，完全出自人類學者森丑之助的規劃，透過森丑之助的台灣導覽，我們可以從博物館學的角度來詮釋佐藤的旅行書寫。所謂殖民地的隱喻，乃是指佐藤春夫對台灣的文化詮釋，透過這些隱喻所蘊含的意義，他的台灣相關作品具有了再閱讀的重要性。佐藤春夫營造的帝國文本，在後殖民理論盛行的今天，仍然具有豐富的，無窮的文化暗示。

Satou Haruo (1892-1964) was a leading writer who produced travel writings in Taiwan during the early 1920’s. Due to his high literary reputation in Tokyo, these writings set an initial model of writing about Taiwan, and thus stirred the colonial imagination of Japanese writers of his generation. The itinerary of Satou’s trip to Taiwan was arranged entirely by his friend, the anthropologist Mori Ushinosuke, who had worked at a natural museum in Taipei for years. Consequently, under Mori’s guidance, Satou’s travel experience in colonial Taiwan was inevitably tinged with the rich color of museology. Centered upon Satou’s experience in Taiwan, this article examines how Satou’s writings helped to form the Japanese imperial imagination of this island colony, which became a metaphor of coloniality and modernity in Japanese literature.