Fangliao Donglong Temple

A syncretic folk temple in Fangliao completed in 1998 for the deified Japanese naval officer Tanaka Tsunatsune (田中綱常), venerated here as General Tanaka (田中將軍). It was founded after a local woman, Shi Jiehao (石界好), dreamed of a Japanese soldier following a visit to the Guhua Tunnels, a wartime complex overlooking the coast on the boundary with neighbouring Chunri. An earlier sheet metal altar at the cave mouth, the Tanaka General’s Shrine (田中將軍府), reportedly still stands, abandoned, in Fangliao’s Longshan Village (隆山村); the present temple superseded it in 1998.

Tanaka heads a small group of deified figures here. The temple also enshrines Nogi Maresuke (乃木希典), the general who came ashore nearby in 1895 and later served as Governor-General of Taiwan, and a Satsuma soldier surnamed Kitagawa (北川直征) said to have fallen during the Mudan Incident (牡丹社事件); two further figures are venerated as wartime nurses (良山秋子 and 中山其美), their names apparently arising from divine revelation rather than historical records.

The historical Tanaka first landed on the Fangliao coast during the Mudan Incident of 1874, and in 1895 became one of the first Japanese officials posted to Taiwan, where he helped establish the colony’s household registration system. He had also taken part in repatriating the 69 survivors of the Ottoman frigate Ertuğrul, wrecked off Wakayama in 1890, a connection that has since drawn Turkish representatives and Tanaka’s own descendants to the temple.