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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Temple, City, Island, Region

The physical spaces that appear in this module exist at four distinct, yet intimately linked, levels of scale. At the top, in terms of geographic extent, was the region that, at its broadest conception, encompassed Japan, China, and Taiwan, with some connections to areas further south. Rather than being a natural geographic entity, it was bound together by histories of interactions, exchanges, colonization, and war. Below this, in terms of spatial reach, was the island of Taiwan. More clearly defined as a physical space, its existence as part of the region depended upon the historical processes that had brought it within the Qing Empire, the Chinese cultural sphere, and the Japanese Empire, processes that, in turn, facilitated the creation of the Taiwanese ethnic group. Beneath and within the island was the city, Jilong, a scale level at which it was possible to see, on a daily basis, the practical manifestations of the histories that created the region, and the forces that transformed the island. At the bottom was the temple, the physical manifestation of sacred geography. The temples of Jilong were, and are, small, covering only narrow segments of the city blocks that surround them amidst the cramped urban terrain. Even the Shinto shrine, situated up two long staircases above the city, and one Buddhist temple built in the hills just to the south, occupied relatively diminutive plots of land. Yet, they were physically and conceptually prominent relative to most other pieces of the built environment, and their status as sacred geography gave them added significance in people’s lives. Moreover, even though the temple occupied the smallest area, it linked city, island, and region together, because it drew people into the city for annual festivals and periodic markets, knit the island together through incense-division and pilgrimage networks, and extended its connections to parent temples in distant parts of the region.

As you read through this module, consider which scale(s) are prevalent at each turn and how they affect your engagement with the content. Where are you situated as you wander through the sacred and physical geography? What does that position mean?

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Jilong's Pre-colonial Sacred Geography
“In regards to the leadership of the people’s hearts,” said an article in the Taiwan nichinichi shinpō from November, 1896, “this is something that must have originated with the long-established system of temples. Now that Taiwan has become a part of Japan, we must of course maintain this system.” For the small town of Jilong, with a population of at most around 9,000 in 1895, that system contained a number of small institutions representing cults to local and imperial deities and quasi-Buddhist sects, many of which bordered on the heterodox. At its core were three temples, the Qing'an gong, Dianji gong, and Chenghuang miao, all of which sat within a few blocks of each other in the heart of the area settled by Chinese from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou counties in Fujian Province. Although these temples themselves were not all that "long-established," they nonetheless constituted the most significant pieces of sacred terrain when Taiwan was transferred from Qing to Japanese imperial sovereignty. Once the Taiwan Government-General reached the conclusion expressed in the news article above and allowed temples to reopen, these three institutions, plus a few others, played increasingly important roles as leaders of the people's hearts.

As readers move through this pathway, they should be attentive to the roles of the islander/Taiwanese elites who established the temples, the deities that they enshrined within them, and also the overlapping scales of temple, city, island, and region that characterized both physical and imaginative geography. Also consider which perspectives operate, and dominate, on each page: The state or the everyday? The god's-eye or the person's eye?