Page 15 - 臺北心綠動封面封底封側封折(無出血)_Float

The Birth of Park 1

In the past 100 years, the Taipei New Park has been the birthplace of Taiwan's baseball sport.
It was once the venue of the first major exhibition in Taiwan's history (the 1935 Taiwan Expo).
This shows that the Japanese government paid considerable attention to leisure time and
made it even more important to the residents. At that time, it was the most representative and
important public gathering place and sports venue. On February 28, 1996, the 228th Peace
Monument was erected and the park was officially renamed as "228 Peace Park". It is one of
the parks with strong political meanings in Taipei City.

Setting for Political Purpose, Setting for Recreation Purpose

According to the parks’ locations in the planning project in the initial Japanese ruling period,
(the Longshansi park only was a Taiwanese residential district for the sake of Longshan
Temple’s rebuilding project in 1927), parks were mainly set in the center of the urban planning
area, close to important government offices or by the skirt of Japanese residential district. In
the beginning, parks were for the recreation purpose to improve the quality of the environment
and provide venues for citizens’ activities. We could see above that the colonial emperor wanted
to further show its colony how modern the ruling government was, reinforce the recognition
of Japanese imperialism and educate the people in Taiwan. The layout of the facilities in the
park at that time stressed on sports equipment. The music hall, horse racecourse, sumo field
and children’s recreation park added to the park provided places with specific purpose for
citizens to visit. We could see couple of examples such as The Botanical Garden of the Taiwan
Governor's Bureau and the Beitou Park with the "Beitou Public Baths"( now Beitou Hot
Springs Museum).

1 2

1. Japanese royal family to the Yuanshan Park Taiwan Shrine visits during the Japanese occupation.
2. The 1933 Taipei New Park Wild Ball Conference during the Japanese occupation period.
Source: National Taiwan University Library Collection.
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