The other day, Longtan Elementary, an established school in Taoyuan, offered an award of NT$10,000 for a locksmith capable of opening an old safe that had apparently been sealed for decades. Locksmith extraordinaire Wu Kun-hao accepted the challenge. It took him two hours to do it, but he finally broke the layers of codes. In the end, however, the safe turned out to be empty. According to the school, the “Feng-an safe” was an artifact left over from the Japanese colonial period, and the fact that it didn’t have anything inside did not detract from its value as a historical artifact. After it has been cleaned up it will be placed in the school history room as a display piece.
According to school principal Yang Ya-fang, the school janitor had discovered the over 200kg, meter-high, half-meter wide safe in the corner of a storage room. The front of the piece was decorated with a motif of a pair of phoenixes with outstretched wings, with the characters feng an ku written on the lower part. Neither the principal nor her predecessor had any idea about its existence, and nor was it listed in the school’s inventory record.
The Feng-an safe is unique in that, in addition to the conventional lock, it was also fitted with a rotating disc bearing 25 Japanese phonetic characters, instead of the Roman numerals more common nowadays. The school did some research and determined that it would have been made between the 10th and 20th years of the Japanese Taisho period, and estimated it was over 90 years old.
Photo: Hsu Cho-hsun, Liberty Times
照片:自由時報記者許倬勛
Going through some historical records, Yang discovered that Japanese-language educational directives and staff records would originally have been kept inside the safe, and that at the time there was a rule that, should any disasters such as fire or flooding occur, the Feng-an safe would have been the first thing to be rescued. The school authorities realized that it was an extremely important historical object, and this only made it more intriguing. Given the curiosity surrounding the safe, and frustrated that she couldn’t find any local locksmiths able to crack the lock, Yang was introduced through a friend to Wu, a locksmith from Taipei who had been able to crack many antique safes before. Wu traveled to the school to see what he could do.
Wu, 69, used a variety of tools to remove the damaged lock and then, relying now on his sharp hearing, unlocked the combination lock of three dials, each written with 25 Japanese katakana symbols. According to Wu, breaking the code was the most challenging part of the process, because there were a total of 8,000 possible combinations, and he had to put his full concentration on the clunking and noises coming from the dials as he turned them. In the end, it took him two hours, until he finally heard a click, and the heavy door swung open, to the gasps of everyone in the room.
The school representatives could hardly wait to see what was inside the safe after the doors were opened, and they opened the five wooden drawers inside one by one, only to find that they were all completely empty.
Photo: Hsu Cho-hsun, Liberty Times
照片:自由時報記者許倬勛
(Translated by Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
桃園百年老校龍潭國小日前祭出一萬元獎金,徵求各地鎖匠挑戰塵封數十年的古老保險箱。開鎖達人吳坤浩昨受邀應戰,費時兩小時,終於破解層層密碼,不料箱內卻空空如也。校方表示「奉安庫」本身就是日治時代留下的珍貴文物,無損其價值,整理後將置放於校史室對外展示。
校長楊雅芳說,日前工友打掃校園時,意外在儲藏室角落找到這個高一百公分、寬五十公分,超過兩百公斤重,外觀正面有一對展翅鳳凰圖樣,下方寫著「奉安庫」字樣的保險箱,向校友、前任校長打聽,均無人知曉它的存在,也未列在學校財產清冊內。
與一般的保險箱不同,「奉安庫」除有制式鎖頭,轉輪上的密碼寫的是二十五個日本五十音,非現代常見的阿拉伯數字,校方查證資料後,確認是日本大正天皇十至二十年的產物,推估有九十多年的歷史。
翻遍史料,楊雅芳確信箱內應存放著以日文書寫的教育敕語及職員資料──當時規定,校舍一旦發生火警、水災,奉安庫是首要搶救目標,因此它被校方視為重要文物,更勾起大夥的好奇心。無奈當地鎖匠無人會解,楊雅芳便透過友人找到多次破解古老保險箱的台北師傅吳坤浩前來解密。
六十九歲的吳坤浩利用各種工具,將遭毀損的鑰匙鎖頭取下,接著靠著敏銳的聽力,解開分別寫有二十五個片假名的三道輪盤。吳坤浩說,解碼才是最難挑戰,因為密碼的排列組合有二十的三次方,必須全神貫注觀察輪盤的震動與聲音,最後花了兩個小時,終於「卡」一聲,厚重的保險箱門終於開啟,現場一陣歡呼。
校方迫不及待打開保險箱內三道門後,逐一確認內部的五個木質抽屜,但裡頭卻空無一物。
(自由時報記者許倬勛)
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