People from an Aboriginal community in Hualien have been restoring an abandoned Shinto shrine, built during the Japanese colonial era, in an effort to reconstruct a past forcefully erased from history.
Payi, a senior member of the Qowgan (加灣) community of Truku people in the county’s Sioulin Township (秀林), said: “Restoring Qowgan Shrine is not to re-enact historical trauma, but to recover an unforgettable piece of collective memory dear to the [Truku] people.”
As part of a Japanese expansionist doctrine to exploit colonial resources in Southeast Asia, the then-Japanese government began the Kominka movement in Taiwan in 1936 to Japanize Taiwanese by asking them to worship at Shinto shrines and observe Shinto rituals at home.
Photo: Wang Chun-chi, Taipei Times
A campaign was carried out to set up a Shinto shrine in every town, and many shrines were erected in Aboriginal communities across Taiwan.
The Japanese left Taiwan in 1945 following Japan’s surrender in World War II, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War.
Most Shinto shrines were either demolished or fell into disrepair after the Ministry of the Interior announced the removal of structures associated with the Japanese regime in 1974, two years after Japan severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1972.
Qowgan Community Association director Kao Wei-ning (高維寧) said the Qowgan Shrine, built in 1938, was abandoned to the same fate and had been left unattended since the KMT government decree.
She said she volunteered to lead the community to preserve the shrine, and that the community would apply to the Council of Indigenous Peoples for a subsidy to rebuild the structure and recreate a forgotten past.
To preserve the ruins, the community has refrained from machine-aided excavation, instead digging the buried structures using only hand tools, she said, adding that the excavation has proceeded to the main hall of the shrine.
The shrine is to be reconstructed in accordance with the seniors’ accounts, and the community hopes that they can also recreate the sacredness and tranquility that used to encompass the shrine, she said.
The 83-year-old Payi said he used to steal glances at Shinto priests where a decrepit torii — a structure marking the entrance to a Shinto shrine — stands, and the sight of a priest, in tailing white robe and a peaked black cap, had terrified him.
Although the Truku people hold a different belief to Shinto, the shrine should be preserved to commemorate that episode of history unique to the community, he said.
Historian Huang Chia-jung (黃家榮) said there are nearly 60 Shinto shrines in Hualien, and the Qowgan Shrine, with its torii, worship hall, main hall’s altar and stone fences around the main hall still remaining, is the most completely preserved shrine among those built in Aboriginal communities and is worthy of preservation.
He said he was greatly moved to see that the Qowgan community volunteered to restore Qowgan Shrine, which he hopes could attract more assistance with their reconstruction efforts, as well as a renewed recognition of history between the Aborigines and Japanese.
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