Japan is going to return twin panda cubs to China today, leaving the country without any pandas for the first time since 1972. The departure comes at a very tense moment in relations between Tokyo and Beijing, which have sharply deteriorated after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan would get involved militarily if China attacked Taiwan.

 

As a result, thousands of people flocked to the Ueno zoo in Tokyo on Sunday, some waiting as long as three-and-a-half hours, to see the country’s last two giant pandas one last time.

 

Emotions ran high as visitors sobbed and recalled witnessing the twins’ growth since the twins Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei were born in 2021, both on loan for breeding research. China retains ownership of all pandas it loans abroad, with host countries paying about one million US dollars per pair annually, and the prospects of a new panda loan to Japan remain uncertain amid the escalating row.