Ceremony to Open New Sasakawa Memorial Hall at Leprosy Sanatorium in Taiwan
Published on June 8, 2026
During my visit to Taiwan in February in my capacity as honorary chair of The Nippon Foundation, I took part in a ceremony to mark the opening of the new Sasakawa Memorial Hall built in the grounds of the Losheng Sanatorium in Taoyuan County, 40 kilometers west of Taipei.
The event brought together Dr. Lin Ching-yi, Taiwan’s deputy minister of Health and Welfare, who invited me to attend the February 11 function, and many of the sanatorium’s 51 residents.
The original Sasakawa Memorial Hall was built in 1977 to commemorate my late father, Ryoichi Sasakawa. During the Japanese colonial period, he provided financial support to help build the original Losheng Sanatorium, which was established in 1930 as a long-term care facility for people affected by leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease.
The hall was demolished when most of the land on which the sanatorium stood was sold to make way for a Taipei Mass Rapid Transit System (MRT) depot. The current eight-story sanatorium was completed in 2007.
Speaking at the ceremony, I expressed my highest respect for the residents, many of whom, like me, are in their eighties. They have lived through the pain of discrimination and marginalization based on old stereotypes and superstitions about leprosy, especially in the days before WHO-recommended multidrug therapy (MDT) introduced from the 1980s made it easier to treat the disease.
Regarding a plan being considered by local residents and other stakeholders to set up an archive in the memorial hall, I said the foundation would fully cooperate with a view to preserving the history of Taiwan’s first and only public leprosy hospital.
