Taiwan Jingu

Emergence of Contestation: 1901

Taiwan's general protector shrine, Taiwan Jinja, was established six years after Taiwan came under Japanese control. The three Pioneer Kami were enshrined in the first seat of the shrine, while a second seat enshrined Prince Kitashirakawa-no-miya Yoshihisa, who had died in Tainan in 1895 of malaria, after leading a successful pacification campaign against the remaining Qing loyalists in Taiwan. Like others in Taiwan, the shrine itself was handed over to the Republic of China after 1945, but remained largely unaltered until the 1970s. Then, as part of a broader policy of removing the traces of Japanese colonization and fostering patriotism, the shrine was razed and replaced with the towering Taipei Grand Hotel in 1973, which showcased northern Chinese (as opposed to southern Chinese or Taiwanese) architecture.

Desecration or Veneration: The Legacy of Shinto Shrines at the Borders of Imperial Japan - Karli Shimizu

Kuskus Shrine

Emergence of Contestation: 1939

Kuskus Jinja (高士神社), a shrine in the indigenous area of Mudan, practices veneration using Shinto ritual. Built in 1939, indigenous villagers going off to war promised to meet again in spirit at this shrine. The shrine's building was destroyed in 1946 by a typhoon. Although local villagers had long wanted to rebuild the shrine, it wasn't was not until 2015 that the shrine was rebuilt, with financial help from Japanese donors. The newly built Gaoshi shrine venerates the village's war dead, rather than Amaterasu. It is not associated with any Shinto organisations in Japan, but the rites are conducted by a Shinto priest from Japan who is training a local man as his successor. Although the ritual is conducted in a Shinto-style, indigenous and Chinese customs are incorporated into the ceremony,and the shrine is an adaptation of Shinto rites to meet the needs of the community to memorialise their war dead.

Desecration or Veneration: The Legacy of Shinto Shrines at the Borders of Imperial Japan - Karli Shimizu

Kaizan Jingu

Emergence of Contestation: 1896

Kaizan Jinja was established by renaming a seventeenth century site dedicated to the veneration of Koxinga, the Japan-born Ming loyalist and merchant-pirate who drove the Dutch from Taiwan and established his own short-lived kingdom. By request of the new Japanese governor of Tainan, the Taiwan Governor-General swiftly recognised the site as an official Shinto shrine, but retaining the southern Chinese-style buildings. In the late 1930s, a new Japanese-style shrine was built at the site, but the old building was preserved within the shrine garden. The ROC government tore down both the Japanese shrine and the old Chinese building. In its place, a new shrine now part of the Koxinga Museum, was built in a northern Chinese-style of architecture. The koma inu statues and stone torii gate were kept, although the gate's top bar was knocked off and the symbol of the ROC was added to it.

Desecration or Veneration: The Legacy of Shinto Shrines at the Borders of Imperial Japan - Karli Shimizu

Ainu Remains

Emergence of Contestation: 1869

The Ainu human remains stolen from Hokkaido gravesites for scientific purposes in the period of the Japanese colonisation of Hokkaido are presently still housed in museum collections across the globe, provoking protest from Ainu activists who demand their return. The remains themselves have become sites of memory through which Japanese colonial amnesia is challenged.

Stolen Ainu Remains as Sites of Memory - Michael Roellinghoff

Hokkaido Jingu

Emergence of Contestation: 1869, 1895, 1945, 1949-1987

The Shinto shrines built over time along the expanding Imperial Japanese border carried different associations in different locations across varying points in time. While the shrines in Hokkaido retained a religious association even after the war and were linked to the pioneer narrative, in colonial Taiwan the shrines were primarily locations of patriotic worship of the dead, and, as they became set as secular after the war, they transformed into symbols of a multicultural Taiwan.

Desecration or Veneration: The Legacy of Shinto Shrines at the Borders of Imperial Japan - Karli Shimizu