Telling stories in postcoloniality: articulating the hidden, imagined and transmuted Japanese colonial past in urban Hengchun, Taiwan

This article employs interdisciplinary approaches from history, urban studies, anthropology, memory and film studies to explore the emergent, bottom-up initiatives that understand and re-narrativise Hengchun’s local history. Significant since the Qing and Japanese colonial eras, the southernmost Taiwanese town juxtaposes silent historical sites with celebrated yet fabricated memorials that resonate more with popular culture than with the past. My ethnography presents nuanced accounts of colonial history as recounted by Hengchuners, including their shared zeal for revising colonial space for multiple and opposing political reasons, to investigate the intricacies between history, society, space and memory. The work unveils the underrepresented procession of Taiwanese servicemen departing for the Pacific War in 1938 and demonstrates how a significant part of Hengchun’s colonial history had been detached from public discourse but later amplified through the success of the film Cape No.7, which inspired individuals to articulate and spatialise their historical memories. The resultant civic actions challenge authorities’ decisions to demolish colonial architecture. I argue that these may help mitigate the arbitrary treatments of historical built references, which refer to historical memories that can adhere to, or deviate from, dominant historical narratives – narratives that have been monopolised and transformed alongside political paradigm shifts in Taiwan.