ABSTRACT
This chapter examines different narratives of Taiwan’s modern history by comparing the uses of martyrs’ shrines as a “realm of memory” in creating and shaping collective memory and collective identity. Historically, the martyrs’ shrines were built for State Shinto ceremonies and served as war memorials during the Japanese era. After 1945, they were appropriated and redeployed by the Kuomintang (KMT) to promote Chinese nationalism. Nowadays, they are still being used for political functions after democratization. In this chapter, I will examine how the previous sites for State Shintoism were converted into national memorials to honour the dead in Chinese wars. In their legal and architectural infrastructures, the shrines encompass the three political regimes which ruled the island since 1895. The reformulation of the martyrs’ shrines as a realm of memory should help us to reconsider the identity of the state now ruling Taiwan, which is not quite anymore the Republic of China as defined by the KMT’s Chinese nationalist narrative during the authoritarian era nor an independent Taiwanese state. We shall reconsider the identity of the state now ruling Taiwan by investigating its symbolic foundations.
