Aboriginal treasures due back from Japan

The selecting team will lay a special emphasis on the collections and research by four prominent Japanese experts — including Torii Ryuzo, Mabuchi Toichi, Kano Tatao and Sekawa Kouichi — according to Chen Wen-ling, who is the sole expert from Taiwan taking part in the team.

Chen is a contract researcher at the N. W. Lin Foundation for Culture and Education, which founded the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines in 1994.

With a hope that the 2009 exhibition will be a great success, Yu said that despite the fact that his museum is confronting difficulties of the limited budget and resources, he will try every effort to bring out more presentations of Taiwan’s indigenous cultural assets. He also expressed his hopes for more international loans from abroad.

The Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, noted for its architectural design and located near the National Palace Museum in Taipei, is Taiwan’s first private museum dedicated to its aboriginal cultures. It houses exhibits relating to the cultures and histories of the Taiwanese aborigines. The museum displays both permanent and rotating exhibits around the island. It opens daily from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Yu also said, in order to attract more visitors, the Shung Ye Museum and the National Palace Museum have started to sell a joint entrance ticket for both two museums at a reduced price since April this year.

Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology has held several exhibitions specifically focusing on Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. They include “Asia Viewed by Torii Ryuzo, a Pioneer of Ethnology” in 1993; “Indigenous Peoples and Cultures in Taiwan” in 1994; and “Taiwan Aboriginal Peoples and Their Languages in the 1930’s: Text, Sound and Images from the Ogawa-Asai Collection” in 2006.

The specific “The Indigenous Cultures of Taiwan” corner of Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology shows off articles related to Taiwan’s aboriginal cultures, mainly artifacts collected by prestigious Japanese naturalist Kano Tadao.

Kano, fascinated by Taiwan’s unique indigenous culture at the beginning of the Showa era, was a researcher active during the period from the end of the Taisho era and through the Pacific War. He started his research on a small island east to Taiwan which is called “Lanyu,” where he established close ties with the Yami people and gradually became strongly interested in their culture. That island was called Kotosho in Japanese, at the time.

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