Overview
- Kyodo reports that Ueno Zoo’s twins, Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei, will be returned to China in late January under a lease that runs to February.
- Their departure would leave Japan without any giant pandas for the first time in roughly 50 years.
- Japanese media say Tokyo’s metropolitan government sought to keep the pair longer, but China declined, and a new loan before their return is seen as unlikely.
- Reporting links uncertainty over future loans to strained relations following Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Nov. 7 comments about a Taiwan contingency.
- The twins were born in 2021; their parents were sent back in 2024, and four pandas at Adventure World in Wakayama left for China in June 2025.