A statue of a former Taipei Hospital head and former dean of the Taipei Medical University is on its way back to Taiwan, exciting a bidding war among museums wanting to own a piece of art that holds special significance to the nation.
Cast by Taiwanese artist Huang Tu-shui (黃土水), the Tomoe Takagi statue is being sold back to Taiwan by the widow of Takagi’s grandson.
After Ichitaro Sakatera’s death in March at the age of 93, his widow has been contemplating a move to a smaller house, literary academic and historian Lin Ping-yen (林炳炎) said.
Photo provided by Lin Ping-yen
Lin added that Sakatera wished to sell the work to Taiwanese collectors so that it would be given the care it deserved.
Lin said that Takagi, a graduate from the former Imperial University in Tokyo, had exceptional training in the field of public sanitation and had served in Taiwan under Shinpei Goto at the Taipei Hospital and also as the second-term dean of the Taipei Medical University, which would become National Taiwan University.
Takagi had also been in charge of disease prevention across all of Taiwan, Lin said, adding that since retiring in 1919, he had been the first to head Taiwan Power Co, which the Japanese had been subsidizing with 40 percent funding.
The company had been commissioned to build the hydroelectric facility by Sun Moon Lake, but Takagi had been unable to finish the task within his 10-year term as head of the company.
He had instead managed to monopolize electricity across the nation by negotiating mergers with other civilian companies, most notably the former Taiwan Electricity Company.
Then-head of the Taiwan Electricity Co Hayanosuke Nagata had commissioned Huang to cast the statue in 1929 as a memento for Takagi when he left Taiwan. Huang passed away only a year later at the age of 35 in Tokyo.
Lin said that while the NTU has a Tagaki statue made by Japanese artist Shikai Kitamura, this had only been possible due to private investment from school alumni in 1917.
The statue had been nearly vetoed because Tagaki did not want it made, but students had persuaded him by saying that if he refused, the statue of Hidetaka Yamaguchi, the founder of the medical school would not be completed, Lin said.
Lin said that Huang’s statue was better than Kitamura’s, adding that he had been shocked at first sight.
“It was as if Tagaki had appeared before me alive,” he said, adding that the statue was one of the few larger pieces that Huang had made that was still preserved.
Whether from an artistic perspective or an historical angle, the statue is extremely valuable, Lin said.
Sources said that both the Chi Mei Museum and the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts have made enquiries about the statue.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said that NTU alumni should pool funds to purchase the valuable relic and return it to the university.
She added that the nation should also make the statue a national relic.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
RSS