The record
Segment 28 from Checkpoint Charlie, bought through a Berlin partner firm as a seventieth birthday present, and held at Japanese customs while officials decided whether it was rubble or art.
Jiro Takagi was chairman of the pharmaceutical firm Maruho Co. Ltd. at Hikone for several decades. Watching the border open on television in November 1989, he decided that his company should have a share in what was happening — chiefly for the sake of his younger employees, as a symbol of freedom and, as the Foundation records his intention, as something that might also prompt thought about Japan's own recent history in the Second World War.
When the GDR began selling wall elements in the spring of 1990, Takagi approached his partner firm Dr. Kade in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The two companies had done business together since 1923, the year after the Berlin firm's breakthrough on the world market. Kade acted at once, and in April 1990 bought segment number 28, from the former crossing at Checkpoint Charlie, from the GDR trading company Limex. It was meant as a present for Takagi's seventieth birthday and reached the port of Kobe in June.
There it stopped. Japanese customs refused to release the freight because nobody could say whether duty was payable on building rubble or on a work of art — a question the whole trade in the Wall raises and mostly avoids. The segment was finally unveiled in the Maruho garden on 20 November 1990. It was moved indoors later to keep the weather off it, and stands in the entrance hall with a map explaining in Japanese the line the Wall took between the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie. The Limex certificates of authenticity, in Japanese and German, hang beside it.
The position of this record is withheld. The imported coordinates put it near Osaka, about ninety kilometres from Hikone; the catalogue's other Hikone record carries the correct position for the town.
Maruho's own website tells it a little differently. It calls the segment a gift (kizō) from Dr. Kade in June 1990, the 28th wall counted from Checkpoint Charlie, and says it now stands in a corner of the factory building, facing west, as a symbol of the value of life, a society without war, and freedom. The Foundation has Kade buying it for the chairman's birthday and the piece standing in an entrance hall. The two readings of the purchase and of the present position are kept.
How did it get here?
Segment 28, from the former Checkpoint Charlie crossing, bought from Limex in April 1990 by the Berlin firm Dr. Kade for its Japanese partner Maruho, as a seventieth birthday present for the chairman Jiro Takagi.
Sources
Listed by the Federal Foundation as #248 and by the Berlin Wall Archive as #175.
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, site entry ↗
Jiro Takagi's decision after watching the border open, the long business relationship between Maruho and Dr. Kade dating to 1923, the purchase of segment 28 from Checkpoint Charlie from Limex in April 1990, its arrival at Kobe in June and the customs dispute over rubble or art, the unveiling in the works garden on 20 November 1990, and the later move into the entrance hall with the map and Limex certificates.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17
Maruho Arts — ベルリンの壁 (Maruho Co., Ltd.) ↗
Maruho's own account: the 28th wall from Checkpoint Charlie, a gift from Dr. Kade of Berlin in June 1990, now standing in a corner of the Maruho factory building facing west, as a symbol of the value of life, a society without war and freedom.
Institutional sourceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 248
Berlin Wall Archive ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 175
Source-reported segments: 1. This is not a separately verified count.
No photograph of this one has been published. If you have taken one, or know when it arrived or who gave it, we would like to hear. Contribute to this record