How Does One Imagine the Arrival of a Soul?

Hongmaogang Bao’an Temple is a major temple where Taiwanese and Japanese architectural and ritual traditions converge. Among its three principal deities, Marshal of the Sea (Haifu Da Yuanshuai) is believed to have once been a Japanese naval officer who perished during the Second World War. In 1946, his spirit is said to have drifted across the sea to Taiwan in the form of a severed head, discovered by the residents of Hongmaogang and brought back to the temple for enshrinement.
Through spirit-medium revelations and years of scholarly research, his identity was confirmed in 2018 as Takata Matao, captain of Patrol Boat No. 38. In the same year, a ritual was held at Kaohsiung Harbor to summon the 145 souls lost aboard the vessel back to Bao’an Temple, in the hope that one day they might return to their homeland in Japan.

An ancient yet youthful island—time flows endlessly through this land. Countless eras encounter one another again, turning toward each new sunrise. The Return Passage, the outcome exhibition of this residency, takes Hongmaogang Bao’an Temple as its point of departure. It gathers the processes through which local devotees formed bonds with Marshal of the Sea, alongside the ways Japanese descendants remember their forebears. The arrival of a soul from the past opens new relationships for those living in the present; today, Bao’an Temple has become an important site of grassroots exchange between Taiwan and Japan.

Imagine a journey of the soul that traverses time and space. The port of Kaohsiung carries innumerable arrivals and departures—serving both as a vessel of historical memory and as a passage toward what is yet to come. Through the interweaving of documents, poetic texts, and moving images, this exhibition approaches a single question: how is a soul received, how is it remembered, and how, after arriving here, does it continue its passage—flowing onward without end.