(3 of 3)
Equally rapacious were businessmen like Takenosuke Ogura, who moved to Korea in 1903 as head of a Japanese electric power company. Much of his collectionsome 1,100 piecestoday sits in the Tokyo National Museum, including blue celadon vases, bronze Buddhas and a priceless, unique gold crown taken from the late 5th or early 6th century grave of a King from the Kaya dynasty. Koreans nicknamed Ogura the mole because he was so obsessed with buried treasure. Says Takasaki: "(Ogura) was one of the bad guys." A few dozen pieces are rotated through the display cabinets at a time, many marked "provenance unknown." Toyonobu Tani, head curator at the National Museum, says, "We take very good care of artifacts so they can be used for academic purposes by Japanese people and by Koreans and Chinese." He denies any knowledge of requests from the Korean government or individual Koreans for the return of any items.
If Koreans can only estimate how much is missing or destroyed, they are very aware of how many important pieces of their cultural heritage now reside in Japan. Many ancient Korean books and examples of celadon can be found only in Japanese collections. Laments Park Sang Kuk, director of Korea's National Research Institute of Cultural Properties: "If a Korean wants to study Korean cultural assets, he has to go to Japan. That's what I can't stand."
In Europe after the war, the Allies mounted a massive effort to restitute hundreds of thousands of paintings and other works of art seized by the Nazis. They were only partially successful. But in Asia, even less was attempted. "There were no such initiatives as far as I know taken by the Allies in Asia," says Norman Palmer, a law professor who sits on the British government's Spoliation Advisory Panel. "In a sense, because the Allies did nothing about it originally, it ceased to be an issue almost immediately."
The issue of restitution surfaced again in 1965, when Japan and South Korea negotiated a treaty to normalize relations. But the South, under dictator Park Chung Hee, was racing to build its economy. It wanted monetary reparations to finance highways and steel millsretrieving artifacts wasn't a high priority. Japan returned only 1,326 items, including 852 books and 438 pieces of pottery. Says You Hong June, director of the Yeungnam University Museum in Taegu: "The Koreans should have got up and left. It is an embarrassment that our government allowed this to happen."
Japan argues that the treaty put an end to any Korean claims against Japan, cultural or otherwise. "We agree to disagree over the nature of the returns," says Daisuke Matsunaga, a deputy press secretary for Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Matsunaga says the original "transfer" of cultural artifacts from Korea to Japan was lawful. "Our position is that it is out of friendship and goodwill, we are giving things back." But the Tokyo National Museum and Japan's major universities have shown little inclination to return items in their collections.
Given such official intransigence, the best chance of restitution rests with individuals like Kusaka, the businessman who returned the stone sculptures to Korea last summer. Kusaka started to collect Korean artifacts only after the war, in part so his wife and daughter would have beautiful bowls to use in the tea ceremony. He planned to build a museum in central Japan to house his collection of stone figures and blue celadonuntil he met Korean business tycoon Chun Shin Il, who has spent years buying lost Korean sculptures. Over cups of sake, Chun explained to Kusaka his mission to repatriate lost Korean treasures and display them at the Sejoong Traditional Stone Museum in Yongin, an hour south of Seoul, which he founded in 2000. Says Chun: "He needed a little convincing but he was touched by what I was telling him." Kusaka agreed to sell several stone sculptures and donate the rest. Giving them up was not easy, Kusaka says: "It felt like giving away my daughter to be married." Painful, yes, but Korea and Japan need much more of that kind of healing.