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Paper short abstract

This study analyses Yasukuni-type shrines built by Imperial Japan in China and Taiwan and their post-1945 conversion into Chinese Martyrs’ Shrines. It argues that these sites functioned as shifting instruments of sovereignty, memory, and political legitimacy across imperial and nationalist regimes.

Paper long abstract

This study examines a distinct category of Shintō shrines established by the Japanese Empire in mainland China and Taiwan to commemorate imperial war dead from the late nineteenth century through the Second World War and its aftermath. It introduces the analytical concept of “Yasukuni-type Shrines in China” to define these sites as spatial and institutional embodiments of imperial Japan’s “Yasukuni Thought”—an ideology that sacralised death for the emperor and embedded war commemoration within imperial sovereignty. Rather than viewing these shrines as marginal colonial installations, the study argues that they were integral components of Japan’s imperial ritual order and in-struments for constructing an imagined imperial community that encompassed both Japanese settlers and selected local populations.

Adopting a comparative and transregional approach, the study traces how Yasuku-ni-type shrines functioned as mechanisms of political mobilisation, moral legitimation, and social integration within colonial and occupied territories. It demonstrates how shrine rituals and commemorative practices were deployed to naturalise imperial author-ity, mobilise wartime participation, and materialise claims to sovereignty in contested spaces. Drawing on multilingual archival sources, visual materials, and site-based anal-ysis, the research shows that these shrines operated as transferable infrastructures of imperial governance rather than static monuments.

The study further explores the post-1945 trajectories of these shrines following Japan’s defeat and imperial collapse. Particular attention is paid to the Republic of China’s early postwar policies of appropriation and reinterpretation, whereby former Japanese shrine sites were converted into Martyrs’ Shrines (Zhonglieci) commemorating Chinese sol-diers who had died for the nation. In Taiwan, these processes assumed distinctive sig-nificance: during the early Cold War, shrine sites were architecturally and symbolically reconfigured to project the Republic of China as the legitimate “Free China” in opposi-tion to both Japanese imperialism and Chinese communism.

By tracing the ideological and material afterlives of Yasukuni-type shrines across impe-rial and nationalist regimes, this study advances a new framework for understanding war commemoration as a dynamic arena of sovereign contestation. It contributes to broader debates on nationalism, imperialism, religion, and memory by demonstrating how commemorative landscapes functioned as enduring instruments in the making and remaking of political legitimacy in modern East Asia.