ABSTRACT
From a historical anthropological perspective, this chapter examines the relationships between religion and multi-layered alien powers in Taiwan, based on a case study of a day-care centre named Gyokulansou (玉蘭荘) in Taipei city, Taiwan. Gyokulansou has two remarkable features. First, all activities are conducted in the former suzerain Japanese language; and second, it is based on Christian ethos. The centre has two categories of members: the first is the so-called ‘Japanese-speaking Taiwanese’ (日本語族), raised and educated in the Japanese era, who use Japanese as their mother tongue or semi-mother tongue, to the extent that some of them were unable to express themselves without including Japanese words in their spoken discourse. The second group consists of Japanese wives (日本人妻) married to benshengren or waishengren, who continued to live in Taiwan after the Japanese era in spite of their hopes to return to their homeland. Gyokulansou may be considered as a distinctive social space, as it accepts those who experienced multi-layered alien powers in Taiwan and helps them integrate their multiple identities (Japanese, Taiwanese, and Christian) by organising multi-language services and multi-cultural events.
