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

of A dictionary written in five languages (Wu Ti Qing Wen Jian) (Manchu language, Tibetan
language, Mongolian language, Uighur language and Chinese characters). These materials were
confidential records at that time and were not to be disclosed let alone duplicated. In a sense, Naito
Konan’s activities can be regarded as a kind of theft. His “exploits” were clearly documented in his
memoir called Talking about the experiences of searching for books in Mukden. With the support of
the Japanese military, Naito Konan bought the precious Tripitaka in Mongolian language at a very
low price, which then was brought to Japan with Tripitaka in Manchu language (W. Y. Qian & Y.
Song, 2006). In 1916, Mitsubishi Zaibatsu purchased the Morrison Library for 35 000 pounds. The
Morrison Library’s extensive collection of books, periodicals, and graphs concerned about China
became the majority of the collection of Toyo Bunko (a famous Japanese library with the most
books on Asian studies) (P. Y. Li, 1999). In 1929, Japan took advantage of the Boxer Indemnity to
buy 47 137 books from Xu Zexun’s private library. To the great detriment of Chinese culture, these
materials are now kept in the Institute of Oriental Culture of the University of Tokyo (Ba, 2008).
In the 1930s, Japan escalated their campaign to plunder Chinese books. Japan not only bombed
schools and libraries, but also expropriated and burned anti-Japanese books. In cold weather,
some Japanese soldiers even burned books to keep warm. According to The big disaster—The
destruction to Chinese culture by Japanese invasion, Japanese soldiers burnt about 6 500 000
books from March to July in 1932.
There is another situation in which book losses were indirectly caused by Japan. In order to
escape from bombardment, many universities and cultural organizations chose to remove to the
west of China. During that process, book losses were caused by aerial bombing and accidents. To
sum up, the destruction caused by Japanese can be divided in three ways: 1) aerial bombing;
2) plundering and burning books in enemy-occupied areas; 3) bombing and plundering books
when removing westward.
It is important to note that there are three methods of expropriation ignored by researchers.
1) Japanese scholars asked for Chinese books in the name of academic communication. Professor
Anthony I. Sanda of Kyushu Imperial University asked the puppet government for 76 kinds of
economics books and government bulletins for research without returning them back (Meng, 2010).
2) Japanese robbed books and then sold them in occupied areas during the Anti-Japanese War. For
example, 126 political books were robbed by Japanese Puppet Association of New Democracy
in Peking. More than 3 700 Russian books and magazines from the Peking University Library
were robbed and sold by Japanese soldiers (S. Ma, 2005). 3) Japan asked the puppet government
for duplicate books when transferring robbed books to the puppet government. The Japanese
gathered too many books to be well-arranged. So Japan chose some books to “return” to the puppet
government creating a false impression that the relationship between China and Japan was changing
better. In fact, the distribution of duplicate books was another disguised method for plundering.
Because the books were not actually returned, they were still under the control of Japan. Matsumoto
Tsuyoshi likened this sham to shifting books from the left hand to the right hand (Meng, 2008).