Panda lovers in Tokyo bid an emotional farewell on Sunday to a hugely popular pair of giant pandas set to return to China this week, a departure that will leave Japan without the beloved black-and-white bears for the first time in nearly 50 years.
The pandas, Lei Lei and Xiao Xiao, have been on loan to Japan under China’s long-running “panda diplomacy” program, which uses the animals as symbols of goodwill with foreign nations. Since the normalization of diplomatic ties between Beijing and Tokyo in 1972, pandas have played a quiet but powerful role in representing friendship between Asia’s two largest economies.
At Tokyo’s Ueno Zoological Gardens, where the four-year-old twins have lived since birth, some visitors were visibly teary-eyed as they watched the animals calmly munch bamboo during their final public viewing. The pandas are scheduled to leave for China on Tuesday.
“I feel like seeing pandas can help create a connection with China too,” said Gen Takahashi, a 39-year-old Tokyo resident who visited the zoo with his wife and two-year-old daughter. “So in that sense I really would like pandas to come back to Japan again. Kids love pandas as well, so if we could see them with our own eyes in Japan, I’d definitely want to go.”
The pandas’ return was announced last month, against a backdrop of increasingly strained ties between Japan and China. Relations cooled after Japan’s conservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested Tokyo could intervene militarily if China were to attack Taiwan — a comment that angered Beijing, which views the self-governed island as its own territory.
On Sunday, access to the panda enclosure was tightly controlled. Around 4,400 people won an online lottery granting them brief viewing slots, while many others gathered nearby, wearing panda-themed shirts and carrying panda dolls and bags.
Mayuko Sumida traveled several hours from Japan’s central Aichi region despite failing to win the lottery. “Even though it’s so big, its movements are really funny — sometimes it even acts kind of like a person,” she said, adding that she was “totally hooked.”
“Japan’s going to be left with zero pandas. It feels kind of sad,” Sumida said.
While the pandas’ departure may not be officially political, their possible return could carry diplomatic meaning. “If there are intentions of improving bilateral ties on both sides, it’s possible that pandas will be on the table,” said Masaki Ienaga, a professor and expert in East Asian international relations.
