Half a century of Showa model collection from Inami
Yasumasa Matsui says, “I want people to go back in time to the Showa era and feel nostalgic,” in front of plastic models he has collected over half a century, at the Inami Sculpture Museum in Inami, Nanto City.
Exhibition of free TV announcer Matsui
Yasumasa Matsui, a 60-year-old freelance announcer who retired from TV Asahi in March, is from Nanto City. Monozukuri~” will open on the 12th at the Inami Sculpture Museum in Inami, the same city. Until September 17th.
Mr. Matsui is known as a global collector of plastic models made by Tamiya (Shizuoka City), a major model maker, and is called “Japan’s number one Tamiya fan” by the company’s chairman, Shunsaku Tamiya. He fell in love with models when he was in the third grade of elementary school, and even after joining TV Asahi, he continued to collect them at model stores and auctions nationwide.
This is the first time for Mr. Matsui to exhibit his collection. We exhibited more than 700 items, including some of the models that we have collected so far and dioramas that we assembled ourselves.
Boxes of Tamiya plastic models from 1965 to 1975 are piled up high like a toy store at that time and displayed. In addition to the elaborately reproduced Tamiya classic tank series, there are also valuable wooden kits that even Tamiya does not own. There is also a 1/144-scale diorama of the 2015 Kinugawa levee breach that Matsui covered.
Mr. Matsui said, “I think you’ll be surprised if you just come here. I want you to slip back in time to the Showa era and feel nostalgic.”
The admission fee is 500 yen for high school students and older, and 250 yen for elementary and junior high school students. Second and fourth Wednesdays off every month. (Kazuya Hirota)
Source of article in Japanese language: Chunichi Shimbun Web