ABSTRACT
Many shrines were constructed overseas in the pre-war period and there are two patterns observable here. The first relates to shrines constructed in Asia for Japanese living overseas either in colonies, such as the Korean peninsula or Taiwan, or as part of Japan’s overseas military expansion in places like Manchuria, the Chinese mainland and Indonesia. There was a Daijingu¯ shrine to the Sun Goddess in Korea and another in Taiwan. The second pattern was of shrines built at the request of Japanese emigrants to North and South America and Hawaii. Emigration to Hawaii began in 1868 and, as the number of emigrants grew, so too did the demand for birth, marriage and death rites according to traditional Japanese practice. In Hawaii, there were also the Hawaii Daijingu¯, Hilo Daijingu¯, Maui Jinja, and the Hawaii Izumo Taisha. Shrines then sprang up in North America. South America’s shrines date from a later period. The war transformed the fate of these shrines fundamentally. Shrines throughout Asia were destroyed at the end of the war, but those that originated in Japanese emigration endured in some places, in Hawaii and parts of South America, for example. One new shrine has been built in post-war North America.
