A religious organization, Sinnyoen, was the true bidder of the sculpture attributed to Unkei

As I wrote in the previous entry , a Wooden Buddha sculpture attributed to Unkei was sold for $14,377,000 at Christie's last week to Mitsukoshi Co. Ltd. However, Japanese news reports at the time reported that Mitsukoshi bought the sculpture being asked by an anonymous person to buy the sculpture.

On March 25th, a religious organization, Sinnyoen, held a press conference in the Ministry of Education to announce that the organization was the client of Mitsukoshi. According to a report [Japanese] on Jiji.com, Sinnyoen is planning to allow Japanese government to investigate the sculpture and after that they will publicly exhibit it at a museum that they are now constructing.