Only in the final decade of its 50-year occupation of Taiwan did Japan make a serious effort to introduce the Shinto religion to its colony.
After the launch in 1937 of the Kominka Movement an attempt to bury historical and cultural connections between Taiwan and China beneath pro-Tokyo sentiment Taiwanese were encouraged to speak Japanese, adopt Japanese names and embrace facets of Japanese culture, including Shintoism. In the space of a few years, the number of Shinto shrines around the island quickly rose from fewer than a score to more than 200.
At many of these places of