If We Replace Matsu Temples with Shinto Shrines, Are We Still Taiwanese?

  If We Replace Matsu Temples with Shinto Shrines, Are We Still Taiwanese?

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)

April 13, 2017

 Translation of an Except

Recently, some say the Matsu faith is a tool for KMT rule. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are fundamental human rights, each having its own advocacies. As long as it is based on rationality and mutual respect, any discussion is permissible; even if occasionally there are ignorant or far-fetched discourses, they do not merit rebuttal. However, if someone deliberately twists the Matsu faith and glorifies Japanese Shinto shrines, then scrutiny is in order.

Matsu and beliefs in other gods and goddesses in Taiwan all have a long historical background. When our ancestors crossed the Strait and arrived in Taiwan, they transposed their original beliefs. The freedom of belief in Taiwan has a long history; iron-clad evidence is in abundance that all the important temples and shrines in various localities in Taiwan have hundreds of years of history.

The Japanese colonial government, after its arrival in Taiwan, first used its superior military force to suppress the resistance movement in Taiwan, and at the same time promoted the Shinto faith, building temples and Shinto shrines, introducing Japanese religion to squeeze out Taiwan's original beliefs. The Japanese colonial government not only suppressed specific religions, but rather thought of eradicating all the beliefs of the Taiwanese.

When the Sino-Japanese war broke out, the movement to turn the local populace into imperial Japanese subjects reached its peak; the Office of the Japanese Governor even strictly prohibited all beliefs containing national consciousness. In the name of a movement to regulate temples and shrines, it forcibly bought temples and shrines, causing the destruction of many temples and shrines. Furthermore, it ordered all statues of gods and goddesses worshipped by the Taiwanese to be crated and sealed, or even destroyed, in the name of centralized management. The Japanese colonial government, at the same time, pushed for a movement to improve the main hall in Taiwanese homes, demanding that the Taiwanese remove from the main hall statues of gods and goddesses, as well as tablets for worshipping ancestors, worshipping instead the Japanese god of gods Amaterasu Omikami. This aroused strong grievances on the part of the Taiwanese populace, causing an irreparable catastrophe to Taiwan's religion and culture.

After Taiwan’s retrocession, the bustling development of various religious beliefs, including the worship of Matsu, had many reasons. However, the crux was that, after shaking off the long-term oppression of religious beliefs by the Japanese colonial government, it led to a vibrant revival of their own original faiths.

Nowadays, a smattering of people with ulterior motives deliberately twist and smear the faiths that many Taiwanese devoutly follow, labeling it with united front tactics or as a tool of the rulers, accusations totally unwarranted. On the one hand, they proactively welcome back Japanese Shinto shrines, at the same time, maliciously slandering and twisting the original religious beliefs of the Taiwanese. This is not only a betrayal of Taiwan's identity, leaning towards the Japanese perspective of history, but is fundamentally duplicating the practices of turning Taiwanese into Japanese imperial subjects during the Japanese colonial era. According to the colonial history of the past, we are afraid that what follows will be substituting the tradition of ancestor worship of the Taiwanese. If there are truly people who conspire to push for this scheme, then it is a rebirth of the movement to turn Taiwanese into Japanese imperial subjects and could they still be called Taiwanese? Of course not!

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