Deified Outsiders in Taiwan

Across Taiwan, communities have occasionally enshrined outsiders and folded them into the local pantheon. Folk religion holds that those who die far from home or by violence may linger as restless spirits, potentially causing mischief or worse, part of the wider practice of venerating the unclaimed dead (有應公). Regardless of origin, if a spirit can be appeased and proves efficacious to the community it can be promoted from ghost to god. The result is a small but striking assortment of temples and shrines to deified outsiders, most prominently Japanese policemen, soldiers, and airmen of the colonial era, with isolated cases reaching back to figures from the European colonial period. Veneration of this kind is less an endorsement of the figure’s life or values than a way of creating peace in the local community.