Rare Book Preservation Society
[citation needed] After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1940, the full scale Japanese invasion of China began.
These rare books and manuscripts were not only threatened by wartime destruction but owners of these libraries felt pressured to sell due to financial needs.
Agents for Japanese institutions and organizations such as Harvard Yenching had the goal of buying the cream of the crop.
In his memoirs 求书日录, Zheng Zhenduo wrote: "I discussed the situation many times with those scholars still remaining in Shanghai such as Zhang Jusheng 张菊生、Zhang Yongni 张咏霓、He Bingsong 何炳松、Zhang Fengju 张凤举 and others.
We jointly sent several telegrams to Chungking requesting government help to rescue and preserve this national cultural treasure.
"According to Jiang Fucong's memoirs 蒋复璁 珍帚斋文集, "Joint telegrams from Shanghai scholars to the Education Ministry and the British Boxer Indemnity Fund directors requested prompt help to acquire and save these books and manuscripts.
For example, Zhang Fengju liaised with the Jiayetang 嘉业堂 and Siyuan 适园 libraries as well as part of the authentication efforts.
The Nationalist government gave this priority and the Education Ministry issued secret directive 18543 with the seal of Minister Chen empowering the Society's work.
In this span of two years, they acquired 4,864 groups of books and texts consisting of 48,000 volumes, as recorded in Zhang Fengju's diaries.
[citation needed] Current research does not agree upon the total number of books acquired.
Due to wartime conditions and the physical moves of the library, the records are incomplete and scattered.
[citation needed] The books were successively shipped in crates to Hong Kong (a British Colony at the time) for safekeeping.
The Japanese overran the colony after the Pearl Harbor incident and looted the entire crated collection, shipping it to Tokyo.
Zhu Jiahua 朱家骅 became Minister of Education and sent Zhang Fengju 张凤举 to Japan April 1946 as part of the Occupation Mission to recover this collection among others.
Since he took part in the original acquisition and was fluent in Japanese, English, and French, it took less than a week to identify and locate the main collection in the Ueno Imperial Library.
An image above is a screenshot of a unique 17th-century proof manuscript of the Tang Poems 唐诗 for use by the Kangxi era imperial editing committee of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries 四庫全書 compendium.
