Chapter 36 The Destruction and Looting of Chinese Libraries by Bandits on the Tenth Day

China and Japan are separated by a narrow strip of water, and cultural exchanges have a long history. Many Japanese love Chinese culture and cherish Chinese classics very much.During this period, some cultural robbers also appeared, and they never forgot to get Chinese classics and cultural relics to Japan.Historically, China was a big and powerful country in the world, and such coveting often failed.After the Sino-Japanese War, due to the corruption of the Qing government, Japanese cultural bandits took this opportunity to start plundering ancient Chinese classics.Stealing Dunhuang scriptures and buying rare and ancient books of Songlou is the beginning of this action. After the "July 7th Incident" in 1937, the Japanese army often adopted three methods to achieve their goals.

First of all, in the Japanese-occupied areas, the precious cultural relics and books of our country were frantically plundered by means of seizure and confiscation.The Japanese army inspected the books of publishing houses and libraries in the occupied areas, and confiscated any good books they saw under various pretexts. For example, in 1941, they confiscated 213,000 books at one time when inspecting the Commercial Press.After the Japanese army occupied Nanjing in 1938, in addition to carrying out the "Nanjing Massacre" which shocked and condemned the whole world, the Japanese government also sent various scientists and edition experts to carry out investigations on more than 70 places including Nanjing Central Library and Academia Sinica. During the search, 310 trucks were used to rob 880,000 books to Japan.Among the books that were robbed this time were the complete communiqués of all levels of government in China before 1938, the investigation and planning of China's industries at that time, and more than 3,000 volumes of memoirs of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty.Many upright Japanese think this is a "cultural massacre".

As for private libraries, the Japanese army still looted them.The Japanese army ordered Chinese book collectors to "automatically submit the deposit", and entered private libraries under the pretext of helping to submit the deposit, searched for books by item, and looted wantonly.Famous libraries such as Wuxing Jiayetang and Changshu Tieqin Tongjian Building were often harassed by Japanese cultural spies, and many books were copied. Secondly, try to burn books and documents that are too large to be transported at the moment. Jiangsu Guoxue Library has a collection of rare books from the Song and Yuan dynasties. During the Anti-Japanese War, in order to prevent the Japanese from looting, the library stored these books in Xinghua County, northern Jiangsu, but they were discovered by the Japanese. Burned by the enemy.In addition, 6,486 archives of the Jiangnan government offices of the Xianfeng, Tongzhi, Guangxu, and Xuantong dynasties of the Qing Dynasty preserved in the museum have been cleaned up, and the 60 large baskets that have not been cleaned up have all been destroyed without leaving a single word. In 1944, when the Japanese army invaded Guilin, all 200,000 volumes of the Guangxi Provincial Guilin Library were burned.

Finally, during the war, the Japanese army also shelled and bombed libraries and burned books and classics. After the "July 7th Incident", the Japanese army bombarded schools recklessly and indiscriminately, disregarding the provisions of public international law that do not use force against cultural facilities, schools, hospitals and civilians.The Nankai University Library was razed to the ground by Japanese artillery fire in July 1937. During the Battle of Songhu in August 1937, the library of Jinan University was reduced to ashes under Japanese artillery fire. In November 1938, Japanese planes dropped 50 bombs on Hunan University. Within half an hour, the library with more than 80,000 volumes and the entire school were turned into ruins.The most distressing thing is the burning of the Oriental Library of the Shanghai Commercial Press. The Eastern Library of the Commercial Press, with a collection of 500,000 volumes, was attacked by Japanese marines on the night of January 28, 1932. On the 29th, the plane Intensive bombing, the Japanese plane dropped six bombs on the Commercial Press, and when they learned that the Oriental Library had not been fundamentally damaged, they sent ronin to sneak into the library and set fire to it. It is an Oriental library with modern equipment, rich collections, and many rare treasures. The library was destroyed.

When the intention of the Japanese invaders was very obvious, in order to preserve the precious cultural heritage, the library industry in our country started the work of moving and evacuating books. In the "September 18th Incident" in 1931, the Northeast fell.Immediately afterwards, the Japanese army ordered the traitors to plan the "Autonomous Movement of the Five North China Provinces", and it seemed that North China would fall into the clutches of the enemy. In 1934, the government decided to move the national treasures of Beijing to the south. At that time, apart from the rare books of the Beijing Library, there were also precious cultural relics from the History Museum and the Palace Museum.The Beitu rare books moved to the south include more than 5,000 kinds of rare books and more than 60,000 volumes originally in the two warehouses of A and B. In addition, there are more than 9,000 volumes of Dunhuang scriptures and hundreds of gold and stone inscriptions, which have arrived in Shanghai. Finally, it was stored in warehouses in the International Settlement. In November 1937, Shanghai fell, and the Japanese concession in Shanghai had not yet been occupied and became an isolated island.At that time, Yuan Tongli, deputy director of the Beijing Library, contacted Hu Shi, the ambassador to the United States, and wanted to ship these rare books to the United States, and entrusted the Library of Congress to keep them in order to avoid war losses. At the beginning of 1941, Yuan Tongli secretly went to Shanghai to arrange arrangements. Xu Senyu and Wang Yousan selected some of the most precious essence of rare ancient books, including 20,970 volumes of 2,954 titles, and packed them into 102 boxes.Among them, there are 72 kinds of Song editions, 12 kinds of gold editions, and 120 kinds of Yuan editions, which are handled by Qian Cunxun of Beitu Shanghai Office.In order to avoid the eyes and ears of the Japanese and safely pass through the customs, the boxes were divided into 10 batches, and a batch was declared to the customs every few days.The last batch was shipped out on December 5, 1941. Two days later, on December 7, the Pearl Harbor Incident occurred and the United States and Japan declared war.Although the multiple departures attracted the attention of the North China Xingya Institute in Japan, but the books had already been shipped away, and there was nothing but hopelessness.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, there was a motion in Beitu to ship the books back, but because of the resurgence of the civil war, the proposal was postponed. In February 1965, Yuan Tongli, the former curator of Beitu, died of illness in the United States. Jiang Fucong (Cong Cong), the curator of the Central Library of Taiwan, suggested that these books should be transported to Taiwan for preservation by the library.After obtaining approval from the U.S. State Department and the Library of Congress, these precious books arrived in Taipei in November 1965.The Central Library of Taiwan released a message stating that it will be preserved on behalf of the Beijing Library and will be returned to the Beijing Library when the conditions are ripe.

During the Anti-Japanese War, many libraries moved important and precious classics inwards in order to preserve the national cultural heritage.On August 15, 1937, after the Japanese planes attacked Nanjing, the National Central Library immediately stopped reading and packed 263 boxes of important books for storage and evacuation. In November, he was ordered to move westward, from Nanjing to Wuhan, then to Changsha, and finally to Chongqing. After the "July 7th Incident", the Japanese army began to attack North China. On July 30, Pingjin fell.Peking University was in the city, and all the books fell into the hands of the enemy. The books and documents rushed out of the Tsinghua Library were bombed by enemy planes on the way, causing heavy losses.The Nankai Library has been completely burned down by the Japanese artillery fire.Therefore, when the three schools initially formed a temporary university in Changsha, there were only more than 6,000 books in Chinese and foreign languages.At the same time, the libraries of Shandong University, Tangshan Institute of Technology, Central University, Fudan University, Shanghai Medical College, Wuhan University, etc. were all moved.Some losses during the relocation were very heavy. For example, when the library of Central University moved to Chongqing in 1937 with 400,000 volumes, a civilian ship sank on the way and suffered a lot of losses. Later, it was bombed and strafed by enemy planes, and part of it was burned.Until 1948, there were only 180,000 books in the school's collection, and the original number has not been restored.Libraries in eight provinces, including Guangdong, Anhui, Hubei, and Hunan, were relocated. On the way, a large number of books were lost due to rain, sun, wind, and pests.The iron hooves of the Japanese invaders trampled on our land, shot our people to death, and burned the ancient books that recorded Chinese civilization. However, there is a Chinese heart beating in the chest of the Chinese sons and daughters, and they are always fighting against the war of aggression and the prosperity of Chinese culture.