The CollectorHow revenge was spark for one of Japan’s greatest private art collections

Ryutaro Takahashi is a successful Tokyo psychiatrist – founder and chief executive officer of the Kokoronokai Group of psychiatric clinics. But there is a chip on his shoulder when it comes to art. In his youth, he failed as an avant-garde filmmaker and that spurred him to amass one of Japan’s largest private art collections.

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Since the 1990s, Takahashi has been earning enough to buy art and he has done so obsessively, using practically all his clinics’ income. He now owns more than 2,500 pieces by more than 70 artists.

“Buying artwork is like revenge for me,” he says. “I’m not like those rich people who buy art in order to contribute to society, to establish social status. For me, it’s an exchange. I give artists everything I own and in return, I realise my lost dream by living through them.”

That’s not to say Takahashi hasn’t made money from it. Visitors to the recent Japanese collectors’ exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre would have seen two massive sculptures of a dog and a girl by Yayoi Kusama at the entrance of Pao galleries. These were loaned by Takahashi.

“I was already buying Kusama’s works in the 1990s, as well as artists such as Makoto Aida and Akira Yamaguchi. Those two were not very big names then so I used to go to their solo exhibitions and ask the galleries to sell me two-thirds of what they had. Today, an Aida would be worth around 50 times more than what I paid,” he says.

Last year, he came under some financial pressure and sold a Yoshitoto Nara that he bought 19 years ago – for 300 times the amount he paid for it.