Page 209 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

208 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

Konan, Nagasawa Kikuya which contained descriptions of them collecting books in China. A
variety of books on Chinese cultural education have mentioned the looting and destruction of
library materials. For example, The studies on Chinese modern universities written by Jin Yilin has
a chapter about Japan’s destroying Chinese universities by bombing and plundering books, The
China’s intelligentsia of 1937 (S. Ma, 2005) describes the losses of Chinese knowledge industry
with particular cases during Anti-Japanese War, and The cultural history of the Republic of China
(second part) depicts the efforts of Chinese libraries, museums, schools to fight against Japan.
Those studies have promoted early research although lacking systematic and comprehensive
research and analysis. The number of research papers on book plundering has kept growing since
1980s. At the same time, the research is becoming more and more mature. In the rest of this article,
we summarize five significant topics of current studies: 1) time and territory of plundering; 2)
organizations carrying out plundering; 3) methods of plundering; 4) preservation activities for
books; 5) the losses of books.

3.1 Time and territory of plundering

The history of Japan’s plundering of books from China is complex because of the wide time
span and territorial scope. For this reason, it becomes very important to choose the right method
to retell this history. Following specific research clue can help us gain a general idea of this
history, and will make it easier to integrate all the scattered and messy related historical events.
Time and geographic territory have often been served as useful focal clues to historical research.
Combining these two aspects, we can divide the history of Japan’s plundering of books into three
pieces: 1) in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, the Japanese acquired lots
of Chinese books by using immoral means, such as buying books illegally, smuggling books
to Japan, and forcing the book price down to an unfair level; 2) before the Marco Polo Bridge
Incident (Jul. 7, 1937), Japan robbed book resources of Taiwan and northeast China when they
colonized these areas; 3) after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Japan started robbing books from
public libraries and the private collections of bibliophiles in north China and southeast China (P.
Y. Li, 1998).
A majority of recent studies concentrate on the period of the Anti-Japanese War rather than the
period of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. As the most representative one
of those articles, The Chinese literature resources were stolen and robed by Japanese in the end
of the Qing Dynasty and at the beginning of the Republic of China (P. Y. Li, 1998) has filled a gap
in studies on this field. During this period, possessing antiques and ancient books from China had
become fashionable in Japan. The Japanese paid more attention to Chinese oracle bones, Dunhuang
manuscripts, and archives of Qing Dynasty. Those activities are reflected in Kozui Otani and his
three expeditions into Central Asia (W. Song, 2010) and The situation of overseas Qing Dynasty