Coined in France by historian Pierre Nora in the early 1980's, the concept of realm of memory (lieux de mémoire) became one of the most influential references in the growing field of memory studies. Thought as a conceptual framework able to renew French historiography and built on inquiries specific to France national history, the realm of memory have since been adapted to different national contexts, mostly European and American. There are however very few publications drawing on East Asian examples articulated on Pierre Nora's concept.
This contribution is an attempt to reinvestigate the continuity between the different sequences characterizing Taiwan's modern history through a realm of memory, the martyrs' shrines. The main quality of these sites is that they were first built for State Shinto ceremonies and served as war memorial during the Japanese era, before being reused for the same commemorative aim by the Kuomintang (KMT) after 1945 and still host commemorative ceremonies nowadays even though their legal framework has known significant changes during the democratization. The critters ruling the admission of a deceased are specific to each era and reflect the moral values the State tries to promote and therefore an essential part of the political imagination of the time.
In their legal and architectural infrastructures, the shrines encompass the three political regimes which ruled the island since 1895. The reformulation of the martyrs' shrines as a realm of memory should help us to reconsider the identity of the state now ruling Taiwan, which is not quit anymore the Republic of China as defined by the KMT's Chinese nationalist narrative during the authoritarian era but not an independent Taiwanese state, by investigating its symbolic foundations. The choice of this particular type of memorial is made in light of German historian Reinhart Kosellek's work on war memorial. As this contribution will show, the affirmation of the nation-state in Europe and in East Asia led to comparable transformations in national commemorations.
