Facing criticism from the opposition over the omission of the word “national” in promotional posters for its exhibition in Japan, National Palace Museum museum officials yesterday called their resolving the issue a “breakthrough” in Taiwanese diplomacy because the Tokyo National Museum complied with the nation’s request to correct the error.
The exhibition opened at the Tokyo National Museum yesterday after the Japanese institution replaced all the incorrect posters at the National Palace Museum’s request.
The show opened yesterday and is to stay in the Japanese capital until Sept. 15, when it is to move to the Kyushu National Museum in Dazaifu, where it is to run from Oct. 7 to Nov. 30.
Photo: CNA
The National Palace Museum said in a press conference that its demands for Japan to adhere to the agreement the two institutions reached regarding the exhibit not only showed Taiwanese that their government is willing to stand up to other nations, but garnered a lot of among Japanese as well.
The “rectification” of the naming blunder is a significant moment in the nation’s cultural and diplomatic history, the museum said.
Commenting on the issue, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) said that the ministry was not directly involved and had helped only to mediate matters, adding that the establishment of the exhibit was done exclusively by the two museums.
The ministry did not reply to questions on whether anyone would take responsibility for the mistake.
Kao said it has to clarify some affairs first before making a response.
The media was initially cool to the exhibition, but after the National Palace Museum warned that it was prepared to revoke its Tokyo counterpart permission to display its artifacts over the naming issue, Japanese outlets such as public broadcaster NHK and the Asahi Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun newspapers followed the incident closely.
The Asahi Shimbun Web site said Tokyo National Museum director Zeniya Masami would be making a public apology to Taiwan at the opening ceremony, while the Sankei Shimbun linked the apology to the exhibit opening on schedule.
The site reported that a crowd of 1,500 was lining up for the show as of yesterday morning.
NHK said it would broadcast a two-day special program starting on Saturday about the exhibition, for which the National Palace Museum provided 186 artifacts.
Museum director Feng Ming-chu (馮明珠) and Representative to Japan Shen Ssu-tsun (沈斯淳) attended the opening ceremony and extended invitations to student representatives from areas hit by the March 11, 2011, earthquake to visit the exhibition.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater