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