the confiscation and shipment of Japanese war record paintings

7
Kakuzō's “Japanese Attack on Nanking Castle.”
If three paintings are “missing,” 4 paintings not listed in any of the Occupation-era lists made
their way into the group of paintings now in the custody of the National Museum of Modern Art.
These paintings are Kimura Makoto's “Front View of the Stronghold at Mount Xiaozhan” and “Rear
View of the Stronghold at Mount Xiaozhan.” 17 These are paintings number 152 and 153, respectively,
in the MoMAT list. Then, two Kurihara Shin paintings, NMMA catalog number 57 “ Charity” and
catalog number 58 “Escort of Japanese Residents” also cannot be found in any of the Occupation-era
lists. So far, no documents can be found that refer to these four later additions to the list of paintings.
The only time when there were actually only 153 works in the list of confiscated paintings was
in 1947, as demonstrated by the set of photographs from which 1947 list was constructed. Thereafter,
the official number should have been 154. However, despite this, 153 seemed to be like a magic
number that kept being repeated all the time, even after a careful documentation was done in late 1951,
in preparation for the shipment of the paintings to the US. It would be tempting to conclude that since
153 paintings were supposedly confiscated and there are 153 paintings now in the care of the National
Museum of Modern Art then all of the confiscated paintings made their way back to Japan. This is not
the case, however, as the comparison of the lists shows.
V. Conclusions
A fatal flaw in the previous works on the subject of the confiscation and shipment of Japanese
war record paintings by the Occupation forces during the Allied Occupation of Japan is the belief that
only 153 items were confiscated and shipped to the US. New documents clearly show that this was not
the case.
The discrepancies found in the Occupation-era lists and the present set of paintings in the
custody of the National Modern Art Museum raises a number of important questions regarding the
confiscation of Japanese war record paintings during the Allied Occupation of Japan. Foremost of
these is how many paintings were actually confiscated and how many of these were sent to the US?
The absence of the two Kurihara Shin and two Kimura Makoto paintings in any of the listings of
confiscated Japanese war record paintings hints that these works may have been unofficially
17 The two Kimura Makoto paintings were created in 1915, many years before the 15 Years War, and are not official war
record paintings. Catalogue of Collections, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo: Watercolor and Drawings,
Calligraphy, Sculpture, Supplementary Materials, War Record Paintings, p. 211.