Organizer: Daqing Yang, George Washington University
Chair and Discussant: Joshua A. Fogel, University of California, Santa Barbara
The year 1997 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the event known as the Nanjing Massacre. In recent decades, this most infamous Japanese atrocity of World War II has caused museums and monuments to be built, films made and television programs aired, books and articles published, and paintings exhibited. Although the broader subject of wartime atrocities continues to preoccupy Asian historians and make news in Asia, there has been little serious historiographical research on the subject in the United States.
It is now time to pose the question, not so much what we have learned about the Nanjing Massacre itself, but what it illuminates about the history and memory of the Asian war which remain so alive today. Our panel represents a collective effort at exploring the meaning of this atrocity and its place in the postwar historical consciousness.
Mark Eykholt traces how the Chinese have come to perceive this atrocity in its larger historical context, while Takashi Yoshida situates the Nanjing Massacre within the Japanese revisionist agenda of rewriting prewar history. Pondering what the event means for the present, Daqing Yang offers a critique of some of the dominant interpretations in China and Japan. Finally, Nancy Tong discusses her recent film, offering insight into how to render the incident into public history.
All four panelists belong to the postwar generation and share the same goal of striving to transcend narrowly nationalist perspectives. By placing such a highly emotional subject in a critical and comparative light, we hope to provide a starting point for further studies.
The Nanjing Massacre and the Chinese Perception of History
Mark Eykholt, University of California, San Diego
Why is the Nanjing Massacre not only still a topic, but one that is growing in popularity among the Chinese?
Until the end of the war, Chinese knowledge of the Japanese atrocity in Nanjing consisted of disconnected stories and brief reports in newspapers, journals, and books in unoccupied areas. Preoccupied with fighting the devastating war, the Chinese could afford little time to investigate this particular atrocity. Citizens in Nanjing did not forget the atrocity, but the requirements of occupation life pushed it back in their minds. As a result, not until the War Crime Trials after the Japanese surrender did evidence coalesce into the larger picture that lives on today.
From the very start, the Nanjing Massacre took on important political significance for the Chinese people. The Massacre symbolized the brutal victimization of China by an imperialist power. It also came at a time when the Chinese population was still unified against the foreign invader of Japan. Postwar Chinese remembrance of this event evolves around such important perceptions.
As Japanese and Chinese contacts have increased, so has attention to the Nanjing Massacre. For example, after the textbook controversy in Japan, the Chinese Government opened the Nanjing Massacre Memorial in 1985. The Memorial focuses not on individual and group accounts of the Massacre, but rather on China as a nation at the mercy of Japanese forces. As the Massacre has become enshrined in the collective national memory, it plays a role in how the Chinese represent themselves today.
A Battle Over History: Revising the Nanjing Massacre in Japan
Takashi Yoshida, Columbia University
The fundamental issue at stake behind the battle over the Nanjing Massacre is prewar Japanese history in the postwar period itself. For revisionists, prewar Japanese history is "un-Japanese" and intolerable because it was written by "the other" and tells history from "their" side. Many revisionists consider the Nanjing Massacre as a fiction fabricated by Americans who demonized Imperial Japan and totally denied Japan's positive "contribution" to Asia in the prewar period.
Challenges by revisionist historians to the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, at which the Nanjing Massacre was written into the verdict, surfaced soon after the end of the American occupation. From the early 1970s, as Japan moved toward a position as an economic superpower, opponents to the orthodox interpretation have taken the offensive and the issues have frequently erupted into public debate with political overtones. In the 1980s and early 1990s, as conservative politicians have tried to restore pride and patriotism in Japan, revisionists have became alarmed by what they perceive to be "foreign interference" into Japan's domestic issues such as textbook revisions. Failing to convince the public that the Nanjing Massacre was simply an "illusion," they have shifted their attacks to the numbers of those actually "massacred." What they would like to achieve, ultimately, is to remove a major blemish in Japan's recent past.
The Nanjing Massacre, then, has become a battlefront for the revisionists and reverberates with current political and ideological trends in postwar Japan.
Pondering the Meaning of the Nanjing Massacre
Daqing Yang, George Washington University
Philosopher Karl Jaspers' taxonomy of German guilt in World War II, made some fifty years ago, is still useful today as we ponder the meaning(s) of a traumatic event like the Nanjing Massacre. For me at least, the meaning of Nanjing consists of three inter-connected dimensions: empirical, political-ethical, and humanistic. Most existing interpretations of the Nanjing Massacre in Japan and China lack one or more of these dimensions.
The particular set of circumstances that led to this event constitutes the "empirical dimension." We need not excuse the Massacre, but we must understand how it happened. Many Chinese accounts understandably emphasize the role of Japanese militarism and aggression, but often at the expense of careful attention to historical details. Objectivity, elusive as it may be, should still remain a goal for historians.
The "national-ethical dimension" dictates that establishing categories of victim and perpetrator are not only still necessary but important. Failure to make the distinction amounts to injustice. For example, some Japanese revisionists have described themselves as peace-loving humanists equally concerned with the loss of Japanese and Chinese lives in Nanjing. Other Japanese historians take pains to argue over the extent of atrocity in Nanjing. Without first acknowledging Japan's responsibility for these war atrocities, however, the claim to universal mercy sounds insincere, while obsession with historical particularities can appear to be excuses for Japanese behavior.
Lastly, the "humanistic dimension" reminds us that, ultimately, the Nanjing Massacre is a product of war and racism, over which no single nation has a monopoly.
The Nanjing Massacre: A Documentary Filmmaker's Challenge
Nancy Tong, Independent Filmmaker
The biggest challenge of documentary filmmaking is being faithful to the truth. However, we all know that truth is elusive sometimes, and has different interpretations according to different perspectives. For more than fifty years, the facts of the Nanjing Massacre have always been a topic of great debate, not only among politicians, but also among scholars. We decided earlier on not to get caught in this quagmire. From the diaries and the eyewitness reports, we knew that a massacre occurred. Based on these records, the film strives to present the story with maximum objectivity.
To make the issues contemporary, the film also includes footage showing how today's Japan is dealing with the massacre. Rather than narration, the threads that tie the story together are the black and white inter-title cards which give statistical figures. Cold facts. Among the hours and hours of interviews, I chose to use those that tell a story, an incident, rather than feeding an emotion. The only hint of emotion in the film is the "comfort women's" anger toward the Japanese government. That short clip then becomes the filmmakers' statement. Less is more.
On the basis of screenings at many different occasions, audience reactions can be divided according to ethnic and national background, with some exceptions, of course. Film critics generally liked the film for its objectivity.
Fifty-two minutes is not long enough to tell the whole story of the Nanjing Massacre. We tried in this film to present the facts as honestly as possible, hoping to allow viewers, the public, to make up their own minds about the truth.