THE STOLEN ROOM
A Novel by Robert Casanovas
This novel is a work of historical fiction based on real events that tells the story of the spoliation of Japanese collector Kōjirō Matsukata's collection by the French State.
Matsukata, a wealthy Japanese industrialist, assembles an exceptional collection of over a thousand works in Europe, including Van Gogh's "The Bedroom at Arles." Aided by his advisor Kōsaburō Hiōki, he dreams of creating a museum in Japan to familiarize his people with Western art. Due to prohibitive customs duties imposed by the Japanese government (100%), the collection remains stored in Europe, mainly in the cellars of the Rodin Museum in Paris and at the Pantechnicon warehouse in London. On the eve of World War II, Hiōki is alerted that the works risk being seized. A mysterious fire destroys the Pantechnicon and the London portion of the collection. In October 1944, General de Gaulle and his collaborators orchestrate the confiscation of the Paris collection. They exploit a legal ambiguity: France never formally declared war on Japan, yet uses this alleged "belligerency" to justify the seizure. On October 5, 1944, the works are placed under sequestration as "enemy property." The 1951 Treaty of San Francisco is then used to legitimize the appropriation. In 1958, de Gaulle signs an ordinance presented as "generous": France returns 300 minor works to Japan but keeps the 18 most precious masterpieces, including the Van Gogh. This "partial restitution" is celebrated as a magnificent diplomatic gesture, while it actually consolidates the theft.
The French administration methodically organizes the erasure of all references to the Matsukata collection. Curators receive directives to neutralize the provenance of the works in catalogs and labels. Compromising files are classified as "sensitive." The Matsukata heirs, scattered and disorganized, sporadically attempt to protest but hit a wall. Kenji Matsumoto, the collector's great-grandson, Harvard-educated, wages a fierce battle in the 1990s-2000s to publicize the affair, but eventually gives up, exhausted by the enormity of the task and international indifference.
In 2024, Pierre Bertier, a retired professor and founder of the NGO "Return and Restitutions," discovers the Matsukata affair. With a team of lawyers and historians, he builds an implacable case demonstrating three major irregularities: the absence of a formal declaration of war against Japan (rendering the 1944 ordinance illegal), the abusive application of the Treaty of San Francisco, and the violation of the French Constitution by the 1958 ordinance. In April 2025, he files a communication before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, invoking "negotiorum gestio" to represent the dispersed heirs. The case is deemed sufficiently solid to be declared admissible unanimously.
France adopts a strategy of systematic obstruction before the UN, multiplying requests for delays on fallacious grounds. But this temporization produces the opposite effect: the Matsukata affair becomes a symbol of state cultural spoliation.
The epilogue emphasizes that the true victory lies not in obtaining restitutions, but in transforming international public debate. The Matsukata affair has proven that a determined individual, armed with the truth, can challenge the most powerful states. The novel illustrates how state cultural spoliation works (dubious initial appropriation, retroactive legalization, erasure of traces, acquisitive prescription) and how justice, however slow, eventually triumphs. It pays tribute to all those who fight for historical truth to be restored and spoliations to be remedied.