Taiwan’s aboriginal cultural assets, treasured by the Japanese from 1896 to the 1970s, will be brought back to their homeland for a public display next year. After a three-year planning, Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines will hold an exhibition showcasing Taiwan’s indigenous cultural relics on loan from Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology. The exhibition is being specially organized to celebrate the Shung Ye Museum’s forthcoming 15th founding anniversary in June next year.
Makio Matsuzono, director of Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology, and Yu How-yi, director of Taiwan’s Shung Ye Museum, announced the joint exhibition during a recent press conference held in Osaka, Japan. The exhibition, entitled “A Gaze Over One Hundred Years — Viewing Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples Through Japanese Researchers’ Eyesights,” will be slated for a four-month run starting from June 10, 2009.
Matsuzono said more than 100 precious pieces of Taiwanese indigenous objects are being selected from the museum’s collection of 5,600 for next year’s exhibition in Taiwan.
“This is the first time the museum will have such a great amount of precious works on loan for an overseas exhibition,” Matsuzono said. He also told of the museum’s efforts over the past 31 years in collecting the cultural treasures from around the world since it opened in 1977.
Matsuzono said he is delighted that the two museums has worked intensely on the joint exhibition with an aim to promote cultural exchange between Taiwan and Japan.
He pointed out he was deeply impressed by Shung Ye Museum’s efforts in collecting and preserving Taiwan’s indigenous culture during his visit to Taiwan in March of this year. The organizers of the exhibition have held detailed discussion and proposed a wide selection from the Japanese museum’s massive collections of treasured Taiwanese objects.
Among those works to be on loan, eight items are already chosen, including three back-pack baskets which have been listed as Japan’s “National Important Tangible Folk Cultural Properties.” In Japan, only 90 pieces are qualified to be ranked as such treasures.
All the works due on loan are being selected by a five-member Japanese planning panel led by Pro. A. Nobayashi, researcher at the Japanese museum’s Research Center for Cultural Resources.
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