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The issue of missing cultural property remains one more unsettled and emotive thorn in the tortured relationship between Japan and both Koreas. The North has put the return of stolen cultural artifacts high on the agenda in its on-again, off-again talks with Japan on normalizing relations. Even after decades of relatively cordial political relations between the South Korean and Japanese governments, the lack of mutual understanding is staggering.
The Japanese point out that other colonial powers such as the French and British filled their museums with booty collected from their sprawling empires. Japanese officials and scholars contend they rediscovered and helped to preserve the glories of ancient Korea, which the Koreans had long forgotten. Says Lee Sungsi, a professor of Korean literature at Tokyo's Waseda University: "The Koreans keep accusing Japan of stealing but the Japanese think they did something good. They think they should be thanked."
The Koreans, on the other hand, see the Japanese as a ruthless wartime occupation force comparable to that of Nazi Germany, Japan's World War II ally. They point to Japan's draconian policies of the 1930s and '40s: the kidnapping of thousands of girls and women to act as so-called comfort women for Japanese troops, the dragooning of 4 million Koreans to work as slave labor in mines and factories, and the often brutal dismantling of Korean cultural identitythe forced use of Japanese names and language is one notorious example. "It is very clear that Japan tried to wipe out Korean culture," says Lee Ku Yeol, an author on the colonial period. "As a Korean, I feel ashamed we were not able to protect it."
Today on the grounds of the Kyoto National Museum stands a rest pavilion, the roof of which is supported by four 2-m-tall stone pillars. Visitors relax or chat on its benches. To Koreans, the torch-shaped pillars are sacred: they once were placed in front of royal tombs to symbolize the King's power. Ten kilometers away, granite sculptures of Korean scholars line a road that leads to the entrance of a tofu restaurant. Two years ago when curator Jang visited, he found the eatery had planted Japanese flags in front of each sculpture. He was incensed. "The truth is, I wanted to kill them," he says. "Stealing in the first place is bad, but when you take something and misuse it, it's outrageous." (The restaurant no longer displays the flags.)
Early in the 1900s, Japan began sponsoring excavations in Korea for two purposes: to bring back valuable objects and to use these artifacts to justify its eventual annexation. Says Waseda University's Sungsi: "What the Japanese wanted to stress was that Japanese and Korean roots are the same and that Korea became less prosperous only after it parted ways with Japan." The University of Tokyo's Saotome says, "They did this to justify Japanese colonization." By the time Japan declared Korea a protectorate in 1905, hordes of Japanese treasure hunters were making a living excavating tombs and selling the loot. They had dreams of striking it rich, digging out tombs as if they were gold mines, according to a contemporary interview with Akio Koizumi, the Japanese director of the Pyongyang Museum during the 1930s. They were spurred on by tales about golden chickens that would crow from the tombs every New Year's Day.
Kyoichi Arimitsu, born in 1907, is one of the few remaining eyewitnesses to what happened during the Japanese occupation. A respected archaeologist, Arimitsu went to Korea in 1931 to do graduate work. "We wanted to know the history of the Korean peninsula, not from reading but from excavating the actual sites," Arimitsu says in an interview at the small museum in Kyoto where he works. The Japanese sent scholars to itemize Korea's cultural heritage, the first such effort in Korean history. Colonial officials produced a 15-volume series on everything from roof tiles and temple architecture to porcelain and royal jewelry: it is still the most comprehensive catalog of Korean culture. Arimitsu said looting was rampant but insists that individual researchers like himself had nothing to do with the transfer of antiquities. Still, he concedes, "Once we found something it went to the Governor General, and then he would choose what went to the Emperor."