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Our Story

A Handful of Sand

Masahito Otsuka - First Director of Otsuka Museum of Art
Through the support of many, we have established The Otsuka Museum of Art to commemorate the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company’s 75th anniversary. I remember back when I was 5 years old, my father Busaburo founded the company and carried me on his shoulders to see the factory’s construction site. Compared to the factory of his former boss, the building seemed far too small. I can still recall my father’s words when I asked him if our factory was to be this small: “Well, it might be small now, but one day it will be bigger than my boss’s factory.” That day seems like only yesterday, yet 75 years have passed since.


A handful of white sand for Tokushima

We first began developing these ceramic boards 27 years ago. At the time, I was president of the Otsuka Group’s various corporations, with my youngest brother Masatomi (currently President of Earth Chemical Co., Ltd) serving as the Technical Manager of one such company, Otsuka Chemical. One day, he came to me accompanied by Hiromasa Itagaki (now a Director of Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics Co., Ltd.), and the 2 of them began by pouring a handful of sand onto my desk.
 
“We have something to ask of you,” he said.
When I asked about the sand, he explained that it was from the Naruto Strait.
 
Our factory faces the Kii Channel, and the white sand coast continues all the way to the strait, and this is the white sand. "Actually, we are planning to make tiles with this sand. This sand is collected as a raw material for concrete, and is unloaded in Osaka or Kobe by steamboat, where it is sold by the ton for construction purposes. However, if we make this into tiles and sell them by the ton, it will become a very valuable product, and it will be good for both Tokushima Prefecture and Otsuka, so we would like to talk to the prefectural governor and get permission to collect this white sand and make tiles," he said.

Both men were prepared to leave their jobs if Otsuka did not embark on this venture, a conviction that impressed me. I spoke directly with the serving Governor, Yasunobu Takeishi, and received his permission.

Establishing technology leader Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics

These events led us to set up a kiln within the Naruto factory and begin tile production. We began with small tiles and gradually increased the size until we were capable of making 1m-square tiles without warping or cracking, creating finished products where 20 tiles out of 20 were fine, a 100% success rate.

Manufacturing large-scale ceramic products is difficult in itself, to say nothing of producing 1m-square ceramic boards without any warping. It was a great challenge. At that time, even in America production of such tiles had a failure rate within 20 boards of 19, with just 1 being sufficient. This showed that our technology was far superior, an outstanding achievement. And yet, we sought to acquire even more advanced production technologies by establishing a new company in a joint venture with Ohmi Chemicals & Ceramics Corporation (at the time, President: Takashi Okuda, Plant Manager: Minoru Okuda (current President of Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics)) in Shigaraki, Shiga. This new company was Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics Co., Ltd., with myself appointed as President.

A turning point, a world-first success

However, as you all know, in 1973 when the company was founded, the oil crisis hit, and oil prices soared 12-fold, causing an extraordinary situation in which all building construction came to a halt. Although we had established the company, we were unable to operate.
 
After deliberating on the situation, the Board of Directors raised the suggestion of transitioning towards artworks painted on ceramic boards. The first piece we produced was Ogata Kōrin’s Kakitsubata, a process that involved making several flawless ceramic boards, measuring one meter by three meters, to be arranged side-by-side.
Day after day, we continue our research efforts, creating, and often breaking, pieces in the pursuit of perfecting our artworks. Before long, we were able to produce even larger ceramic boards. Next, we put our efforts into tackling the challenge of color,
They developed nearly 20,000 colors. Originally, these works of art, especially famous paintings by internationally renowned artists such as Picasso and Miro, were reproduced on ceramics at full size, something that had never been seen before in Japan or anywhere else in the world. Otsuka succeeded in developing this large-scale ceramic art board.


A new opportunity

Also, in 1975, when I went to Moscow on a contract for an anti-cancer drug for Taiho Pharmaceutical, I visited a cemetery on the outskirts of the city and saw a photograph of Khrushchev on his grave, and on another grave there were business-card-sized photographs of Soviet soldiers and nurses who had died in the war.
This photograph of Nikita Khrushchev was about the size of a Japanese magazine. Naturally, it was printed not on tile but paper. While being protected from the rain by a plastic cover, the surface was exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays; despite being relatively recent, the photographed face was already sunburnt and faded to a dull color.
This made me realize that, if we could manage to print photographs on our ceramic boards, the result would be a splendid image that could be preserved for eternity without fading.

While it is said that “A tiger dies and leaves his skin; a man dies and leaves his name”, the names actually immortalized by posterity are extremely few. On the other hand, preserving one’s image for eternity on a ceramic board is something that anyone can do.
In the past, Dutch merchant ships carrying Chinese Jingdezhen porcelain and Japanese Arita ceramics to Europe sometimes encountered storms en route and sank in the Indian Ocean. When the cargo of such ships was brought to the surface centuries later, those ceramics still retained their original color and form. While ceramics made during that period were fired to 1,000˚C, our ceramic boards are now produced using specialized technology that raises the temperature to 1,300˚C. This ensures that they maintain their appearance for as long as 1,000 or 2,000 years. 
 
Let us consider our ancestors; I know about my family as far back as my great-grandfather’s generation, but not the forefathers and mothers that came before. The same would likely be true for most people. This is because no photographs exist. Similarly, while painted portraits exist, we have no photographs of Emperor Jinmu, Amaterasu or other ancestors of Japan’s imperial family, or historical figures such as Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Mōri Motonari. Had these portraits been produced as Otsuka’s ceramic boards, their true forms would be preserved semipermanently, possibly altering the very history of Japan.
  
Our duty is to convey the true face of Japan today to future generations and respect our familial forebears by caring for our parents and honoring our ancestors. To this end, we produced ceramic boards with splendid color or monochrome photographs (portraits).

Establishing the Otsuka Museum of Art – With Gratitude to Tokushima

Our success in producing large-scale ceramic art and photograph boards coincided with the 50th anniversary of Otsuka’s founding. We began to discuss creating something for future generations, not only for ourselves but to be shared by all. Unfortunately, this wish was not yet fulfilled when my father passed away at the age of 80.
 
25 years have passed since then, and from just 17 employees at the end of the war we have grown to 23,000 employees today, with 7,000 employees in Tokushima Prefecture in particular. As a way of expressing gratitude to Tokushima Prefecture for all the support Otsuka has received over the years, and as this was my father's final wish and something I felt as well, I decided that we absolutely had to build a museum in Tokushima as part of our 75th anniversary project, so we founded the Otsuka Museum of Art at our current location, on the Naruto Strait, with the idea of ​​building a museum displaying only famous Western paintings that everyone could view.

Changing Colors – Ceramic Reproductions Preserve Masterpieces for Eternity

With construction proceeding smoothly and the number of works exceeding 1,000, we were able to complete the exhibits and open the museum to the public as planned. Under the leadership of Professor Masanori Aoyagi, Vice-Dean of Tokyo University, the museum showcases a selection of past and present Western masterpieces, with the basic aim of educating various students about art.
 
We hope that a student viewing these images might, in the future, seek out the original works while honeymooning overseas.

After all, this painting is made of pottery, so it will not change at all. Genuine paintings change over time, so I think that the colors and appearances of the actual paintings and the ceramic masterpieces will naturally differ over the next 50 or 100 years. However, we wanted to convey the true form forever, and preserve it as a legacy for future generations, so we decided to establish the Ceramic Board Masterpiece Museum. 

On your visit, please let us know if you find any imperfections so that we may correct them, as we work to make a contribution that will last for millennia. This museum is also our contribution to the people of Tokushima Prefecture.

In writing this, I hope to convey how ‘a handful of sand’ became the foundation for establishing the Otsuka Museum of Art. Thank you for your continued guidance and support. 

March 1998
First Director of Otsuka Museum of Art
Masahito Otsuka (deceased)
(Former consulting director of all Otsuka Group companies)

Past additional display

■April 25, 2003 *5th anniversary event
Leonardo da Vinci "The Last Supper (after restoration)" (Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Italy)
 
■April 29, 2004 
Vermeer "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (Mauritshuis, Netherlands)
 
■April 1, 2007 *10th anniversary event
Complete reproduction of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling painting (Sistine Chapel, Vatican)
 
■October 1, 2014 
Van Gogh's mythical "Sunflowers" (Destroyed in fire in Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture in 1945)
 
■March 21, 2018 *20th anniversary event
Van Gogh "Sunflowers" (Private Collection)
Van Gogh "Sunflowers" (Neue Pinakothek, Germany) 
Van Gogh "Sunflowers" (The National Gallery, United Kingdom) 
Van Gogh "Sunflowers" (SOMPO Museum of Art, Japan)
Van Gogh "Sunflowers" (Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA)
Gauguin "The Painter of Sunflowers" (Van Gogh Museum, Netherlands)
 
■November 3, 2018 
Van Gogh "The Painter on the Road to Tarascon" (disappeared in 1945, Magdeburg, Germany)
 
■March 30, 2019
Israels "Woman Standing in Front of Van Gogh's Sunflowers" (Van Gogh Museum, Netherlands)
 
■April 20, 2019 
Vermeer "Lady Standing at a Virginal" (The National Gallery, United Kingdom)
 
■October 1, 2019 
Vermeer "The Geographer" (Städel Museum, Germany)
Vermeer "The Girl with the Wine Glass" (Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Germany)
 
■April 21, 2020
Leonardo da Vinci "Lady with an Ermine" (The Czartoryski Museum (annex of the National Museum in Krakow), Poland)

■March 14, 2023 ※25th anniversary event
Van Gogh "Café Terrace at Night" (Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands)

■July 11, 2023 ※25th anniversary event
Vermeer "Lady Seated at a Virginal" (The National Gallery, United Kingdom)

■October 7, 2023 ※25th anniversary event
Vermeer "The Music Lesson" (The Royal Collection, United Kingdom)
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