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.

Nobayashi, an expert with great interest in Taiwan’s indigenous cultures, helped the museum set up a special corner in 2004 that focuses on displaying “The Indigenous Cultures of Taiwan.”

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.