Richard K. Diran
| Richard K. Diran | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
November 3, 1949 United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Ethnography |
| Website | |
| www |
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Richard K. Diran (born November 3, 1949) is an American adventurer and gemologist who has also been a painter, trader in gemstones, restaurateur, and art dealer. He is most notable as the author and photographer of the book The Vanishing Tribes of Burma, which was published in 1997.
Diran is the son of Edward K. and Dorothy Diran of San Mateo, California. He graduated from San Mateo High School in 1968. Diran was in the first graduating class of the California Institute of the Arts in 1972. He moved to Japan where he earned a Black Belt in karate in 1974, after which he returned to California, where he graduated from the Gemological Institute of America in 1978 Later Diran and his Japanese wife, Junko, owned the Fuki-ya Japanese Restaurant in the Japan Center (San Francisco) (1978–1989). An article in The Goldsmith magazine claimed that it was the first Robatayaki restaurant in the United States.
Jerry Hopkins and Andy McCoy have mentioned Diran in their published books. Both remember him as part of the business and social scene in Bangkok in the early 80s.
Diran, who first visited Burma in 1980 as a buyer of gemstones, traveled throughout Myanmar and Cambodia for more than two decades, exploring the art, the then still rarely-visited temples, and visiting still remote tribal peoples as he took photographs and acquired antiquities and gems.
In 1994 Diran relinquished his claim to an 11th-century Buddha statue from Pagan that he purchased in Thailand for $18,000 and brought to the United States in 1990; no criminal action was pursued against him. Diran had scheduled the statue to be auctioned by Sotheby's in October 1991, expecting to begin bids between $15,000 and $25,000. The government of Myanmar filed a civil suit against Diran in 1994. The sandstone Buddha, which had been stolen from a pagoda near Bagan in 1989 along with three other artifacts, "is widely regarded by scholars as an integral part of Myanmar's Buddhist heritage", and according to Jack Daulton, the attorney representing Myanmar, "was of the utmost rarity, a national treasure". After being confiscated by the FBI, the statue was secured at Northern Illinois University (NIU) during the times of unrest in Burma, until 2012 at which point it was moved to Paris for a few weeks en route to being repatriated and stored in the National Museum of Myanmar by November of that year. Diran's attorney has insisted that Diran had been forthcoming throughout the process, having "declared it through U.S. Customs" when transporting it to the United States, and relinquishing his claim to the statue at a substantial financial loss when its ownership was challenged by the FBI and the government of Myanmar. Daulton counters that there are many clear indications that the statue was not obtained legitimately, including the fact that "It's an extremely rare piece of sculpture, and an object like this has not appeared on the market for years." A publication from NIU on the repatriation of historical artifacts stated that the case "set a legal precedent in the United States for litigation related to the international transport of antiquities."
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