During the past 20 years, along with the democratization of Taiwan, the Japanese public, the tourism industry and the academic world rediscovered with an incredible pace its former colonial subject, Taiwan. Taiwan reappeared on the scene not only as part of the Chinese World in East Asia, but also as something fundamentally different from it. Taiwan bears memories about its Japanese past. The democratization of the island also made possible the public reappearance of these memories hence oppressed during the Kuomintang-era, and they were brought into the scope of various Japanese civil, religious and conservative political groups, friendship associations and prolific voyage writers. Many of them established/re-established its channels to Taiwan. In my presentation I analysed the issue of memory in the Taiwanese-Japanese relations by focusing on the Koizumi and Abe's era and the Yasukuni shrine debate.
