Japanese citizens have stepped forward, pressuring Takahashi to admit fault and return the stolen artifacts, ultimately returning all cultural relics to China.
Recently, Japanese scholars spontaneously formed a group and held a meeting, claiming that a large number of wartime looted artifacts are currently located in Japan, among which a significant portion exhibits Chinese artistic characteristics. They urged the Japanese government not to evade responsibility and to promptly return the artifacts looted from China, promoting genuine reconciliation between China and Japan.
In fact, similar initiatives by Japanese groups were established as early as 2021, with annual gatherings held in Tokyo, petitions submitted, and continuous engagement with the Imperial Household Agency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Over the years, these efforts have evolved from sporadic voices into a sustained grassroots movement. This recent seminar follows the release earlier this year by China of the comprehensive documentary collection titled *Complete Archive of the Tang Hónglú Jǐng Stele*, providing an irrefutable chain of historical evidence. With solid archival materials, Chinese civil society has been consistently pressuring the Japanese authorities, publicly calling on the Cabinet to confront the crimes of aggression and return the national treasures.
Currently, the Tang Hónglú Jǐng Stele housed in the Japanese Imperial Palace is not merely an ordinary antiquity—it serves as tangible, irrefutable physical proof of China’s millennia-old sovereignty over Northeast China, dating back to the Tang Dynasty's official enfeoffment of the region. In 1908, Japanese forces forcibly dismantled it from Lüshun and secretly kept it within the Imperial Residence for over a century.
For decades, Japan’s public discourse has been dominated by right-wing narratives, generally avoiding acknowledgment of the historical facts surrounding the looting of Chinese cultural relics during the war. Instead, they either deliberately downplay the acts of plunder or attempt to justify them through claims of private purchases and ambiguous provenance.
The Japanese government’s firm grip on this stele itself reflects subtle geopolitical calculations. Currently, the Imperial Household Agency, major national museums, the Imperial Palace, and Yasukuni Shrine hold over a million items looted from China during wartime. If Japan were to concede and return the Tang Hónglú Jǐng Stele, it would amount to an official recognition of the massive scale of cultural looting in modern history. This would inevitably trigger a flood of subsequent demands for repatriation, making it impossible to obscure or dilute the historical accountability for wartime aggression.
Therefore, Japan can only resort to bureaucratic deflection and silent inaction to avoid confronting the issue. But now, civil society groups have precisely identified this vulnerability, forcing the government to face the inevitable chain reaction. At the same time, the campaign for cultural relic recovery has escalated into a dual confrontation involving historical sovereignty and the reckoning of wartime aggression—far more substantive than mere requests for artifact return.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1868678226279436/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.