Tokyo, Japan – The twin pandas Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei received visits from hordes of fans at their zoo home in Tokyo on Sunday ahead of their return to China at the end of the month, which comes as strained Japanese-Chinese ties make it unlikely that they will be replaced any time soon.
Their departure will leave Japan without the cuddly black-and-white animals for the first time since 1972, when China presented the country with two pandas, Kang Kang and Lan Lan, as a gift intended to mark the normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties.
Farewell visit to pandas
Thousands applied for lottery-assigned tickets to say goodbye to the 4-year-old twins, with those who won a place allowed one-minute windows to see the bears.
But even people who did not manage to pay a personal visit to the animals came to the zoo to pay their respects from a distance.
One long-time panda visitor at the zoo, 54-year-old finance-sector worker Machiko Seki, told Reuters news agency that ‘the pandas have given me so much – energy, courage, healing’, adding: “I wanted to come today to express my gratitude.”
According to Katsuhiro Miyamoto, an economics professor at Kansai University, the absence of pandas at the zoo will cause an annual loss of about 20bn yen (US$128mn).
“If the situation continues for several years, the negative economic impact of having no pandas is expected to reach tens of billions of yen,” Miyamoto said in a statement. “For panda-loving Japanese, including myself, I hope they return as soon as possible.”
Panda diplomacy
China is known for sending pandas to other countries as a sign of good will.
Since 1984, however, it has maintained ownership of the animals and any cubs they produce rather than gifting them owing to a policy change.
Xiao Xiao and his sister Lei Lei were born in the Ueno zoo in 2021.
The 1972 gift from China triggered a so-called panda boom in Japan that has continued since then, with successors to the first pair of pandas sometimes becoming national celebrities.
However, Chinese-Japanese ties have deteriorated greatly over the past few months, particularly since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in November that a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island Beijing claims as its own, could bring about a Japanese military response.
That remark was met with outrage by Beijing, and even though the return of the pandas has been planned for some time, it is now being seen as a reflection of the cooling ties between the two countries, which historically have often had fraught relations.
When asked if China might replace the twins, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun gave a circumspect answer.
“I know giant pandas are loved by many in Japan, and we welcome Japanese friends to come visit them in China,” he said.
DW
