A Century of Taiwanese Arts and Letters Arrives in Tokyo

(translated from Taiwanese Hokkien)—from the song “Thinn-tshinn phuānn Kiōng-sî” (“Stars Together in Time”)

At the opening of Synchronic Constellation, the musical group Taugether started the program with “Thinn-tshinn phuānn Kiōng-sî,” a Taiwanese Hokkien song it created for the exhibition. Inspired by Lai Ho, often called the father of Taiwan’s New Literature, the troupe includes a descendant of Lai’s among its members. For this performance, it also invited Tatsurō Okinai, the great-grandson of Iwao Kataoka, author of Taiwan Fūzokushi (An Account of Taiwan’s Customs), to join the ensemble on electric guitar. This cross-generational Taiwanese-Japanese gathering gave stirring musical form to the song’s lyric “breaking through frozen time.”

Inspired by the writer Lai Ho, the musical group Taugether includes a descendant of Lai’s among its members. The troupe also invited Tatsurō Okinai, great-grandson of Iwao Kataoka, author of Taiwan Fūzokushi, to perform at the opening. (photo by Richie Chan, courtesy of Taugether)

Beyond a linear view of history

The “constellation” in the exhibition’s title refers to stars coming together. In his opening remarks, Masaya Ninomiya, chairman of the Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, said the exhibition seeks to illuminate diverse life practices that cannot be encompassed by established linear views of history. Guest curator and filmmaker Huang Ya-li noted that the project was first presented at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in 2019, and has finally reached Tokyo after the global pandemic and nearly three years of cross-border coordination between Taiwanese and Japanese teams.

The gallery design by Taiwan’s emerging design team UxU Studio uses reflective materials and open circulation routes to break down conventional boundaries, creating an immersive interplay between the space and its visitors. Pictured is Huang Tu-shui’s sculpture Sakya (Bronze).

In 2012, Huang Ya-li began exploring Tainan’s Le Moulin Poetry Society, which formed in the 1930s during the era of Japanese rule in Taiwan, and went on to make Le Moulin, winner of Best Documentary at the Golden Horse Awards. The project opened a new way for him to imagine the prewar intersections of Taiwanese and Japanese history and the arts. Reflecting on the work, he said this cultural memory fell silent after World War II amid political and linguistic ruptures. Bringing the exhibition to Tokyo was not about demonstrating one-way influence, but about opening a “synchronic dialogue” between Taiwan and Japan. Huang emphasized: “Only by approaching the efforts made by our predecessors in difficult times with reflection and empathy can we return, in the present, to a profound exploration of art’s value—and truly understand how precious democracy and freedom are today.”

Carrying forward the spirit of the film Le Moulin, the exhibition centers on the Le Moulin Poetry Society, a modernist literary group active in Taiwan in the 1930s, and extends the film’s montage approach into the physical gallery.

Nearly 800 treasures across six chapters

The exhibition carries forward the spirit of Le Moulin. Centered on the eponymous Poetry Society, it extends the film’s montage approach into the physical gallery, recomposing the material into six compelling chapters of Taiwanese cultural history.

The galleries bring together approximately 200 Taiwanese artworks, around 500 multi-disciplinary historical materials, and about 100 contemporaneous Japanese works. Together, they form an unprecedented assembly of nearly 800 objects.

Visual-art highlights include Chen Chin’s glue-color (Asian gouache) painting Leisure, being shown to the public for the first time; Liou Jin-tang’s oil painting Portrait of the Artist’s Wife Holding an Orange; Hong Jui-lin’s Nioubuzai Grassland; Chen Ching-fen’s Rooftops of Paris; Huang Ching-cheng’s A Portrait of Ludwig von Beethoven; and postwar works including Lu Ghi-cheng’s Clouds Surging over the Peaks and Hsu Shen-chou’s Rising Sun over Yushan.

(left) Ran In-ting, Temple Door Gods, 1926–1940. Tinglu Cultural and Arts Foundation collection.

(right) Chen Chin, Leisure, 1927–1932. Private collection.

In terms of photography and music, the exhibition features Peng Ruey-lin’s Still Life, made with a three-color carbon-transfer natural photographic printing process; Deng Nan-guang’s Stereoscopic Photography—Shinjuku; and scores by Jiang Wen-ye. The display also includes a 78-rpm shellac disc of Jiang’s composition Formosan Dance, which received an honorable mention in the arts competition at the 1936 Olympic Games, and a shellac disc of Tsai Pei-huo’s Taiwan—Our Beautiful Island, a landmark expression of Taiwanese identity.

The exhibition also extends into theater, literature, and archival materials. It presents writer Liu Na-ou’s emblematic modernist urban publication Trackless Train, along with important creative documents from the Le Moulin Poetry Society, Long Ying-zong, Weng Nao, and Wu Yongfu. Other exhibits include programs from shows by playwrights and musicians such as Lin Tuan-chiu, Wu Jin-huai, and Hsu Shih at Tokyo’s Moulin Rouge Shinjukuza; rare production photographs from the plays Mother House and The Adit; Lai Ho’s Prison Diary; and deeply felt letters that Tsou intellectual Uyongu Yatauyungana (Kao Yi-sheng) sent to his wife from prison. Together, these materials convey the profound spirit of their time.

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Deng Nan-guang, Stereoscopic Photography—Shinjuku, 1929–1935. Soka Art Museum collection