He might as well have proposed turning the Tour d’Argent into a sushi bar. The staid daily Le Figaro splashed SCANDAL across its front page. The director of French museums huffed that “even the most pharaohesque of pharaohs took care of the art works that were buried with them.” More explicit Japan-bashing came from the Tribune de Geneve, a Swiss daily: “Masterpieces in Peril-the Yellow Peril,” ran the caption below its cartoon of a bucktoothed Asian man tossing paintings into an open coffin.
Saito, 75, the honorary chairman of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co., couldn’t understand all the ruckus. “What I really wanted to [express],” he said, “was my wish to preserve the paintings forever.” Saito, his aides explained, was using a figure of speech: threatening to torch the oils was just an expression of intense affection for the masterpieces. Later, Saito said he would consider giving the paintings to his government or a museum.
