The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes) (Volume 2)

Brought for a class, and was able to read a little before classes started.Returned due to not needing it for class. But from what I read, this is a very thorough book.

excellent attempt to make sense out of a horrendous event that has too often simply become a political football

must read; brutal in it's revelation

It would seem that many, if not indeed most of the writers on this page are concerned less with the book they purportedly review than with various extraneous, political discussions. Such is probably to be expected, given the controversial nature of the subject at hand; as is pointed out in the very volume at hand, to many in China and Japan, the story of Nanjing is subject to such heated emotion as only Germany's attempted extermination of the Jews can conjure in Europe and the United States. And it is certainly understandable that those who, for whatever reason, identify with one party or other in the narrative allow themselves to become personally invested in discussing it.This notwithstanding, the hostile polemics are rather obviously less than conducive toward a sober and informative discussion of Professor Fogel's anthology and the important subject it covers. As for me, I will confine my own contribution to the said subject.As is clear from its title, this book is concerned with the historiographical debates surrounding the events at Nanjing, rather than the facts themselves. It comprises, in the main, three essays, one each by a Chinese, a Japanese and a Western scholar. First, Mark Eykholt describes in broad strokes the Nanjing narrative in Chinese historiography; then, Takashi Yoshida supplies a like summary of the Japanese debate, from the 1960s until the 1990s. Finally, Daqing Yang examines some of the wider methodological and philosophical issues confounding a proper understanding of this dark episode in East Asian history.Insofar as I, a non-specialist and a Westerner with a very limited grasp of the source languages, can tell, the authors are broadly successful in many aspects of their aim to provide a general introduction to a complex topic. The most important figures and issues in the various controversies are mentioned and briefly described in an intelligible manner and largely without overt "preaching" or emotionalism. One receives an overall impression of both empathy and professionalism, a mixture not always to be found in historians writing on highly charged questions of the recent past.Several misconceptions widely current in the United States are also tactfully corrected. For example, in his essay Yoshida correctly notes that the Japanese extreme revisionists are a small minority without official backing, whose position is deemed "politically incorrect" in present-day Japan. Those politicians who support them see their careers ruined as a result; one example among many is Minister of Education Fujio Masayuki's dismissal in 1986. Indeed, it is not wrong to state that prominent revisionists "have already risked their professional careers and even their lives," for they are under threat of death from extreme left-wing groups. (p. 117) Westerners tend to believe that "Nanjing denial" is common in Japan, but it is really a small and quite persecuted movement; not as much so, perhaps, as the notorious "Holocaust deniers" of the Occident, but certainly not mainstream.In China, by contrast, an extreme anti-revisionism very definitely dominates the intellectual landscape, holding as official greatly inflated casualty estimates and trumpeting the massacre's supposed world-historical uniqueness. But many serious individual Chinese researchers are privately far more moderate in their conclusions than the official party line; their views, however, are suppressed by the regime, which has made Nanjing a cornerstone of its nationalistic propaganda. (p. 53) This may perhaps come as less of a surprise, but it is interesting to gain some appreciation of the tensions within the Chinese historiography.The truth, of course, lies somewhere between either extreme; and this is where the book disappoints. While highlighting the extreme (and politically motivated) positions, there is very little specific information on what sensible and objective historians have felt able to conclude. We find a workable sketch of the development of the absurd and impossible Chinese propaganda story of some 300,000 murdered (which figure, interestingly enough, appears to have originated with an English journalist), and the equally untrue contentions of the Japanese extreme revisionists that only a few dozens were killed, or perhaps a few hundreds at most, are covered in even greater detail. But what about the findings of reasonable investigators? Since the discovery of a number of important sources, the most famous being German diplomat (and Nanjing eyewitness) John Rabe's diaries, scholars (moderate revisionists and anti-revisionists alike) have been able to establish what amounts to a broad consensus on the horrors, counting the number of victims from fighting and criminal massacres in the city in the range of 30,000 to 50,000. This development is not elucidated in any of the essays here assembled, and this is the anthology's main flaw. A reader wholly new to the issue might well conclude that the extremes are all there is to the debate, whereas in truth they tend to be largely ignored by creditable researchers on both sides (if not by the media).Nevertheless, "The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography" remains an in many ways useful introduction to its troubling and complicated topic. The new student will find it a fascinating and pleasant read, albeit on an unpleasant topic, for all the reasons enumerated above. Allowing for its chief limitation, it is still to be recommended -- Preferably, of course, as a starting point for further reading, as is the case with all introductory texts.

In 1997, historian Iris Chang resurrected American memories of what was once a sensational scandal. In "The Rape of Nanking," she gathered stories and pictures of the Imperial Japanese Army's conquest of that city in 1937, when it was the capital of China.Her book was a best-seller, and other Chinese-Americans also were documenting and publicizing these events, though with less impact than Chang's.But if Americans had almost forgotten the Rape of Nanking, neither the Chinese nor the Japanese had. "The Nanjing Massacre" brings together essays by three young historians exploring the historical interpretations of the event in China (by Mark Eyholt), in Japan (by Takashi Yoshida) and in the academy (by Daqing Yang).Chang's book was attacked by Japanese militarists. "The Nanjing Massacre" is a good place to start evaluating these criticisms, which were mostly unfounded.What Yoshida calls "Japanese conservatives" have denied the massacre, or, if admitting some small atrocities occurred, claim they were no worse than things done to the Japanese.None of the essayists doubts the Japanese slaughtered, raped, looted and burned their way across Nanking (or Nanjing) city and province. But they do doubt the honesty, clarity and reliability of the writing of the event's history on all sides.Eyholt reports that Chinese governments, both Nationalist and Communist, have generally found reasons to play down the massacre. The Communists have preferred to ignore it, and declined to seek compensation, because the regime has wanted economic cooperation with Japan.The level of cynicism displayed by the People's Republic government and the Chinese Communist Party is hardly surprising but nonetheless breathtaking: In the early '50s, the Communists blamed westerners in Nanking for aiding the Japanese. The truth was, any Chinese who survived did so because the Japanese were afraid of Western public opinion.In the '80s, Chinese students began investigating the massacre and publicizing it. Throughout the 20th century, from the May 5 movement in 1919 to the pressure on Chiang Kai-shek to resist the Japanese invasion of 1937, Chinese public opinion has been uniformly anti-Japanese and far more nationalist than the governments have been.The situation in Japan, as reported by Yoshida, is as would be expected. Japanese public opinion is overwhelmingly against admitting or apologizing for the massacre.The governments, the courts and what Yoshida calls "progressives" (a jumble of democrats, old socialists and decent people) hold the formal control of organs of "public opinion." Government ministers who say the massacre never happened are forced to resign.But books exonerating Japanese war criminals outsell books telling honestly of the war in China by a hundred to one.Americans have invested a thousand times as much effort in understanding the Holocaust as they have in understanding Japanese war crimes. But editor Joshua Fogel warns against easy comparisons between the two forms of genocide. They are, the essayists agree, not directly comparable crimes.A great deal of the controversy has surrounded the exact total of rapes and murders. China has settled on a figure of 300,000 slain.Japanese revisionists have attacked this statistic. They argue that if they can show that the numbers were inflated, that would prove the massacre never happened at all.Anyhow, the relevant answer is not a number. The answer to "How many Chinese were killed at Nanking?" is "all of them."All three essayists miss this point, which is, after all, the main one. Yang, in particular, surrenders to the fascists on the question of responsibility.Now that the story is falling out of the hands of the participants and into the hands of the professional historians, the fundamental problems not only do not receive better answers, they are being wrongly answered.The most egregious example concerns the extent to which higher levels of the Japanese army and government were aware of and tolerated or ordered the rampage.Historian Yang looks for a piece of paper either implicating or exonerating some group or other, though the answer is obvious to anyone. The fact -- and it is a fact -- that the Japanese exterminated almost a whole province, except about 200,000 Chinese who managed to crowd under the shelter of American and European flags, proves as much as anyone could want that the Rape of Nanking was calculated, deliberate policy of the army and the government.