The Life, Restoration, and Faking of the Bust of Nagayo Matarō

Nagayo Matarō (1878–1941) was one of Japan's elite medical professors in the first half of the twentieth century, his father having been one of the founders of Western medical administration and education. Nagayo was a student of pathology at the Imperial University of Tokyo under Yamagiwa Katsusaburō (1863–1930), the great pathologist who first demonstrated carcinogenesis. After studying in Heidelberg, Nagayo became a professor at the University of Tokyo, dean of the Medical Faculty, and finally chancellor of the Imperial University of Tokyo from 1934 to 1938. Busts of Nagayo were sculpted twice—in 1934 and 1937—by Hinago Jitsuzō (1892–1945), Japan's leading sculptor.

Today, the 1937 bust of Nagayo welcomes visitors into the Medicine galleries of Intermediatheque, a public facility operated by Japan Post and the University Museum of the University of Tokyo, situated close to Tokyo Station. The bust is elegant, with an academic air and a bright patina (Fig. 1). But this is actually a substitute, because the original has been damaged over the decades and, in fact, possessed a different color. The present-day curators have created something which looks like the original and which is not even a restoration but simply a different object, a "fake." Just like with Da Vinci's Last Supper, you meet a restored and/or faked bust at the Intermediatheque. On the cover, you witness a new and original mixture of busts in the past and the present.

Another dimension is that there exists an almost identical but still undiscovered bust, which should be identical in shape to the restored bust at Intermediatheque. This is a bronze bust, while the museum bust is of cement (a fashionable material around that time). The duality of the material was due to the political situation in the 1940s. The Asia-Pacific War created a serious shortage of metal for the war effort, and the government asked both individuals and institutions to donate metal to the military through the Revised Metal Collection Act (1943). The University of Tokyo was asked to hand over bronze busts of eminent professors. Nagayo's was one such, and there was a series of discussions between the university and the government. We do not know how the story ended. Some have guessed that the bronze was taken to the government and the cement bust cast as a substitute, but this is somewhat unlikely. The bronze bust was perhaps not given to the government at all and still lies stashed away somewhere at the University of Tokyo. If you ever happen across it, you might be excited by the final reappearance of the original, but then again you will have another original, another restoration, or another fake. And this might be the essence of life, science, and power in the history and politics of Japan in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Fig. 1.

The bust of Nagayo Matarō, Intermediatheque.