I recently asked and got good recommendations for references on the Japanese equivalent to “Last Days of Berlin” stories recounting the endgame of WWII.
Folllowing along in my curiosity about parallels among totalitarian regimes:
Did the Japanese do anything similar to systematically removing art, historic objects of their conquered lands and shipping them back for the delectation of the elite in the Home Islands?
There’s no reason (other than to the victor belongs the spoils) that they necessarily would have done whatever the Germans so systematically did. Probably some reasons they would not (my vague impression is that a good bit – but not all – of the German looting was from the personal predilections of Goering and a few other high-ranking officers who fancied themselves connoisseurs, and I don’t know if Imperial Japan also contained such would-be sophisticates). I can also see the Japanese maybe not having much use for the art forms of countries or cultures they considered inferior. And medieval antiquities or objets d’vertu might have been thin on the ground in Truk or Borneo or some of the other places the Rising Sun graced with its visit.
So: apart from scooping up any stray sacks of doubloons, or inviting some young Korean ladies back to visit the homeland and service 3000 of the general’s closest and lonely friends in the ranks, was there any systematic cultural pillage by the Japanese forces?
Not directly related to the OP, but there is a particularly ornate water tower at Hickam Airforce Base in Hawaii (next to Pearl Harbor) that the Japanese apparently avoided damaging during their raid because they thought it was a shrine. Barracks buildings nearby still have machine gun holes in them, but the water tower is unscathed.
There is one work of art in particular . . . It’s called 몽유도원도 [夢遊桃源圖] and it’s currently in the posession of the Tenri Library in Japan. No one’s really sure how the Japanese got their hands on it though. It was most definitely before the occupation started. They still refuse to give it back - big surprise.
There might be some more information on Korean art history sites - I’ll dig around a bit if no one else comes up with anything.
Yes, that is the piece. The Koreans are still frothing at the mouth over that. It was looted long before Japanese colonization, though. The Japanese do have a bunch of our stuff, but how much of it was taken during the occupation is the question, I suppose. There’d been invasions dating back to the 16th century, I think. The peach blossom painting is the only major work that comes to mind, though.