The “improvement of funeral ceremonies” movement and the creation of “modern” Japanese subjects in Taiwan during Japanese rule

This paper is a historical inquiry into the movement for the “improvement of funeral ceremonies” in Taiwan under Japanese Rule as it unfolded from the 1930s. The traditional funerary culture of Taiwan has been researched and analyzed thoroughly by cultural anthropologists, but there were only few insights into how the political and colonial configuration of society changed and in turn influenced the contents of funeral ceremonies and the attitudes of those involved in them. In later colonial Taiwan, where the majority of the Taiwanese population was comprised of Han Chinese who shared cultural ties and values with China, a “modernization” (= Japanization) of funeral ceremonies was achieved by the ruling Japanese authorities according to their own values. In order to prove this in detail and to understand the entire process, it is necessary to look at this topic also from an historian’s standpoint. In this paper, various source material from colonial Taiwan is used to identify and inspect the movement for the “improvement of funeral ceremonies”, see what it aimed at and how new practices were realized. Also, changes in the tendency of cremation rates and the use of public graveyards are scrutinized. Finally, this paper analyzes the conflicts and discontinuities caused in Taiwanese mentality by the denial of the traditional funeral rituals by Japanese authorities, and considers how such changes were perceived in literary works of Taiwanese who published in the Japanese language at that time.