Word: celadon
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...their part, Japan's top officials eagerly participated in the cultural pillaging, amassing enormous personal collections. When the first Governor General, Ito Hirobumi, was assassinated after a four-year reign, he owned more than 1,000 pieces of celadon. The third Governor General, Masataka Terauchi, assembled 1,855 works of calligraphy, 432 books and 2,000 pieces of celadon, mirrors and other artifacts. Terauchi's collection ended up at Yamaguchi Women's University, according to Nam Yong Chang, a Japanese academic of Korean ancestry, who says only a fraction of the collection was later returned to Korea. Everybody knew what...
...World War II, Japanese colonial officials and private collectors amassed at least 100,000 artifacts and cultural treasures from all corners of the Korean peninsula. Japanese looters and government-sponsored archaeologists violated the tombs of Korea's Kings and Queens, plundering finely worked gold jewelry, jade pendants and delicate celadon bowls. They carted off stone carvings, pagodas and priceless reliquary caskets from Buddhist temples and removed tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts from libraries. The choicest booty was often bestowed on the Emperor?like the prized blue celadon ceramics found only in the tombs of the Koryo dynasty nobility around...
...Equally rapacious were businessmen like Takenosuke Ogura, who moved to Korea in 1903 as head of a Japanese electric power company. Much of his collection?some 1,100 pieces?today sits in the Tokyo National Museum, including blue celadon vases, bronze Buddhas and a priceless, unique gold crown taken from the late 5th or early 6th century grave of a King from the Kaya dynasty. Koreans nicknamed Ogura the mole because he was so obsessed with buried treasure. Says Takasaki: "(Ogura) was one of the bad guys." A few dozen pieces are rotated through the display cabinets at a time...
...Koreans can only estimate how much is missing or destroyed, they are very aware of how many important pieces of their cultural heritage now reside in Japan. Many ancient Korean books and examples of celadon can be found only in Japanese collections. Laments Park Sang Kuk, director of Korea's National Research Institute of Cultural Properties: "If a Korean wants to study Korean cultural assets, he has to go to Japan. That's what I can't stand...
...Korea last summer. Kusaka started to collect Korean artifacts only after the war, in part so his wife and daughter would have beautiful bowls to use in the tea ceremony. He planned to build a museum in central Japan to house his collection of stone figures and blue celadon?until he met Korean business tycoon Chun Shin Il, who has spent years buying lost Korean sculptures. Over cups of sake, Chun explained to Kusaka his mission to repatriate lost Korean treasures and display them at the Sejoong Traditional Stone Museum in Yongin, an hour south of Seoul, which he founded...