The Rape of Nanking

Rating:
Summary: Scholarism at its worst
Review: First of all, as a Japanese, I recognize the fact that there was a massacre at Nanjing in 1937. Let me say for the record that a large majority of fellow Japanese also admit to this fact. Let it also be known that the Japanese government has admitted and apologized for the Nanjing massacre as well as for past acts of imperial aggression. With that said, reading Iris Chang's book was an extreme dissapointment for me. I found the book inaccurate in many areas on the actual facts surrounding the events. The lack of verification of her sources is unprofessional and her sweeping generalizations on the Japanese and Japanese society is grossly inaccurate. The book is far from a piece of scholarship and is more in line with crass propoganda that has a lot in common with the anti-Japanese shrill which emanates from the present day Chinese communists. My suggestion: if one wants to read an objective as possible first hand account of the Nanjing massacre, then try the German John Rabe's diary of the events. Rabe was afterall a German who at least on paper were relatively friendly to the Japanese at the time and therefore had no reason for a start to be anti-Japanese.Chang is a good writer.Its a shame that Chang could not control her emotions and take the time to do some objective scholarly research.

Rating:
Summary: A Haunting account of WW II's "other Holocaust"
Review: Unlike Germany, Japan as a nation has never fully accounted for its sins of the Second World War. "The Rape of Nanking" shows in graphic detail that the country has plenty for which to be sorry. Chang details the grusome carnage that followed Japan's takeover of the city that was then China's capitol. The Japanese were so brutal in fact, that the top local Nazi official on the scene was horrified. Chang is a gifted writer whose personal involvement in this story (her parents are survivors of the Sino-Japanese War) is clearly evident. This is a book that DEMANDS to be read.

Rating:
Summary: The Rape of Nanking
Review: "The rape of Nanking" tells the Japanese Soldiers atrocities in Nanking. More than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered within weeks.It's death toll even exceeds the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

The book "The Rape of Nanking" was excellent. It's story deserves to be heard. The book was a compelling piece of history that speaks about humankind's inhumanity. In places it is almost unbearable to read,but it should be read because only if the past is understood can the future be navigated.

Rating:
Summary: Not As Good As I Had Hoped
Review: I finally read this book after hearing so much about it, but I was greatly dissapointed by what I found. The main ideas that are expressed in the book are 1) That the Japanese people are butchers, who place little value of the sanctity of life because of a strong military tradition, and 2) That the "Rape of Nanjing" was never acknowledged first by the Japanese, and second, by the rest of the world. Neither of these ideas are valid. Chang does an excellent job of detailing the graphic murders of so many people and of enlightening us on the depravities of human bahaviour. What she does not provide is any sort of tenable explanation for it, either in terms of individual psychology or the mechanics of groups. the Japanese have a strong military tradition that emphasises ruthlesness and the nihil value of human life, do they? And the Chinese don't? Remember the cultural revolution? how many people were murdered in that little farce? And what of the "liberation" of Tibet and the murder of the 15 th Dalai Llama (a six-year old boy)? thanks to the Chinese "liberation" of Tibet, the seat of Tibetan culture is now in India, while Tibet is overrun with the Red Army. Russians? 40 million dead in the Stalinist purges. Nazis? Six Million dead. Americans? The number of American Indians murdered and blacks enslaved is still not known. Spanish? But need I go on? the sort of savagery that the Japanese visited upon Nanjing was not uniqely Japanese . . . it is all-too human, to use a phrase of Nietzsche's. What Change did not ask was a very disturbing question to all of us (particularly the finger-pointers): "Under what circumstances could I have been among those who engaged in such atrocities?" The "what" of what occurred is admirably dealt with; the "why" remains a mystery. And she goes as far as to compare the massacre at Nanjing to the Holocaust. This is ridiculous. 800, 000 dead cannot compare to 6, 000, 000 dead, to say nothing of the different sizes of the respective opoulations involved. I am not saying that it is OK to kill even a single person; just that the effect that the Nazi Holocaust had upon the Jews was a far greater threat to their people than was the effect of the massacre at Nanjing to the Chinese. A substantial proprtion of the Jewish people were annihilated; if the Nazi threat were left unchecked, they would have been eliminated entirely. The future of Chinese culture was not threatened by the Japanese attack. ironically the gravest threat to Chinese culture was Mao -- a Chinese himself who obviously felt that human life had no value (at least OTHER humans' lives). This is part of what happens in war. And what nation . . . what people, has not engaged in war. innocent people die, children are butchered. If you don't like it, put an end to war. There is no other solution. This means aggression that comes from home as well as from abroad. And the effect of this writing? Look at the other reviews. One reader even suggested that the dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was deserved. Of course, that did not kill any innocent or undeserving people. Remember that it was not the Japanese people who made the decision to enter WWII, but the emperor. Also, the notion that this atrocity was unknown to others and unadmitted by the Japanese is untrue. the Japanese HAVE admitted this. But what can they do? They cannot resurrect anyone. the atrocity was mentioned in the move "Pearl" as well as in one of Auden's poems. How then is it unknown. Change also has, it seems, a very liberal notion of what history is, using whatever photographs seem bloody enough. Although the massacre undoubtedly happened, it has not had as big an impact on western history as the Holocaust for good reason, as I have desribed above. Read the book, but do so with great discrimination.

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Summary: One Always Shudders At A Terrible Truth Revealed....
Review: For the last fifteen years I have become something of a private world war two scholar, and have read many too many books to recall or even remember. Often in all this time I have had to stop abruptly from reading particular passages in whatever book I happened to be reading to collect my thoughts about what seems to be yet more undeniable proof of the innate murderous impulses of the human animal. This is true, it seems for all combatant entities in all wars. It seems to hold true for every war, for every army, for every conflict. War is the ultimate de-humanizing experience, and it is a central lesson in understanding the constraints and limitations inherant in evaluating mankind's destiny. We are none of us immune from such blood-lust, whether we be Germans, Serbs, Vietnamese, Russians, Americans, English, Italian, French, Polish, Czech, Chinese, or Japanese (witness, for example, our own murderous treatment of the American Indian populations). Yet the magic of "The Rape Of Nanking" is to describe in excruciatingly and horrific fashion the wanton brutality and murder of so many innocents, and all for such very little cause. There was no rational reason for the slaughter other than blood lust. Japanese excesses and war crimes during the WWII era are legend, and are quite well documented, and can hardly be credibly denied. Yet the best description by far I have read to date of such individual and collective acts of state-sponsored barbarism lay in the pages of this book, written as it was by a non-historian lay-person. One may well take exception to the author's empassioned and emotional subjectivity, or find fault with her lack of scholarly discourse, or for any of a dozen other vaild reasons, yet one can hardly deny the truthfulness, accuracy and sheer power of the terrible human drama she documents and brings so vividly to life as she writes. Buy the book, put it at the top of your "to read" list, throw whatever else your reading in a distant corner, to be collected later, and sit down to read. But be prepared to be amazed by the events she describes. And next time you go out to get in your Toyota, remember it was made by the same country that was instrumental in bringing us World War Two, the same people who recently complained loudly, bitterly, and publicly that the Americans had never properly apologized for their horrific behavior in using the atomic bomb to end the war. Yet to this day the Japanese have never apologized for the horror they visited on Pearl harbor, the American people, or the whole Asian hemisphere and a whole generation of combatants and non-combatants alike. Let the Japanese teach each other pleasant fairy tales; I will settle down instead to study such evidence as is provided in books like these, which for me still remain the best hazard at the truth available for a generation of people like us who were not actually there.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book of Historical Truth !
Review: The Rape of Nanking is a great book indeed ! Iris Chang has revealed to us the very truths the japanese have tried to hide and that is their beastly war crimes committed during World War Two against the innocent Chinese. I like this book because it is indeed very rare of its kind. There are just too few books on Japanese War Crimes against China during WW2. Another reason is that the book excellently reveals to us the horrifying truths of diabolical japanese behaviour against the Chinese. It gives detailed yet true accounts of the massive tortures, rapes and humiliation against the Chinese by the japs. I also learnt a lot of how the japanese have tried to evade the truth by their constant cowardly denials of the truth and the methods they use (even up to today) to escape their deserved punishment.Indeed Iris Chang deserves praise for painstakenly collecting all historical records to write this book. 5 Great Stars to be given to this book which is well written with well documented facts for it fills the reader with horrified and sad emotions. This book also forces us especially the japanese to turn ours and their minds back to WW2 and to reflect back on the suffering of the innocent. Some japanese readers may disagree with my comments and even condemn this great book but no matter how many lies they tell, the truth remains: The japanese were the aggressors during WW2,the Rape of Nanking did indeed take place,their 'imperial' army did indeed torture and violate the people of China and the rest of Asia and lastly, the Asians and not japanese were the real victims of WW2

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: A sophmoric, maudlin romp through something requiring much more thorough analysis. It is emotional, and like most low-mid brow atrocity/holocaust literature, it degenerates into vapid op.ed. piece moralizing. (Yes, shoving a bayonet into a woman's uterous is a bad, bad thing. Are these men? Are these monsters, etc. ) This is unfortunate, but sales and reader reaction indicates that such treatment (and violence-porn.?) goes down disturbingly well with the reading public. Critical readers may be bothered by the inflation of causualties, but that goes with the territory of counting the dead in virtually any conflict or massacre. Tone and treatment are unprofessional, but then again IC is no scholar, nor does she pretend to be. Conclusions are spurious to say the least, and someone should have taken a red pencil to her introductory musings on human behavior.

It was written by a young American female freelance journalist of Chinese background, and it reads like it. Nanking, and its dead, deserve better than this. However, if you know little about China, the Japanese occupation of Korea, atrocities in general, or any of the various 'rapes' and 'holocausts' that pepper the 20th century, reading it won't hurt. If you enjoy reading about what sadistic Japanese troops can do, you'll love it. If you are of an historical bent, you'll grind your teeth. If you are Japanese it might make you realize that there was more to WWII than two A-bombs. NOTE: The best part about this book is the Japanese reaction to it (here @Amozon.com. Some of their reviews are a hoot, albiet a frightening hoot at that). Maybe someone should write a book about that...

Rating:
Summary: A good account but incomplete
Review: Like the author's family, my own family survived the horror of the Nanjing Massacre (as known in Chinese), and the accounts I have heard from relatives all pointed to a much more macabre picture than Miss Chang paints in her good book. The way the Japanese army soldiers (many of whom, I should point out, came from Korea and Taiwan) committed the atrocities were simply unheard of. Having lived in Japan for a few years, I can clearly see how the Japanese mentality is pre-disposed toward cruelty -- just witness all the S&M movies out of Japan, which are ten times as sick as anything you find here in America.

Rating:
Summary: Why this book must be read
Review: I am elated that finally a book in English has appeared on the atrocious rape of Nanking, committed by the Japanese nation against the Chinese nation. I have waited long and hard for such a book to appear and am happy to say that I have not waited in vain.

Armies do not appear out of nothing. The people form the army. In this sense, the Japanese Imperial Army are (or at least were) the Japanese people, although the reverse is not necessarily true. Just how it is possible that unspeakable acts of barbarity can be committed by the state of Japan against the state it owes much of its cultural heritage to - China, defies belief. It is as if the Japanese are trying to forget they learnt from China by trying to obliterate every Chinese in sight at Nanking. This profound hatred of a fellow Asian is truly shocking. In its quest to modernise and "westernise" - i.e., to join Europe and leave Asia, Japan was trying to prove it was the superior race. By wanting to "liberate

Asians from Western imperialism", Japan became a most violent and bloodthirsty substitute, leaving behind traces of horrific massacres, rapes and other gruelling details that will be in the minds of many Asians for centuries to come.

Iris Chang has demonstrated to us the reason why Nanking is important. Even as the book is being read, Japanese right-wing activists are attacking her for her "fabrication" of the Nanking massacre and all that she stated in her book. Iris must be

really glad she was not there when Nanking fell to those bastards; otherwise, she might well have been traumatised, brutalised and violated, and if she lives to tell the tale, she would be "raped" again by Japan because these bastards would continue to deny her story and to call the Nanking massacre a "conspiracy" against Japan.

Judging from the fact that the Japanese do not feel at all sorry for their invasion of Asia and that less than 2% of Japan's war criminals were purged during General MacArthur's occupation of Japan from 1945-52, one could hardly expect Japan to come to terms with its past as these murderous people were in power and were "whitewashing" history. In addition, Hiroshima and Nagasaki turned Japan into a "victim" of the atomic bomb and thus the other victims of Japan are conveniently sidelined or forgotton. The West, being reminded time and again that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "crimes against humanity", were also ignorant about Nanking.

This is the reason why Iris Chang's book is important: it reminded the West that Japan was an aggressor, not a "victim" in the Sino-Japanese war and the second world war; it also reminded the Japanese that unless they own up and face their less than savoury past, one day it will all come back to haunt them big time. It reminded the Chinese that unless they have a strong and prosperous state, Nanking could happen again. Finally, it showed the world how a helpless city,

abandoned by its government and the world, was razed to the ground and was raped to the core. The sorrow of Nanking continues today, readers are well-advised to visit it, if only to recount the process of the tragedy.

Rating:
Summary: A Mirror Reflecting Chinese Traditional Butchering Style
Review: What is worth called History reflects the past as it was, while disguised history reflects its authorfs mind only. Excellent readersf insight can penetrate and distinguish. In this point, Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" is very interesting, not as a history at all, but as a supply-demand phenomenon coming up with two syndromes. First, those descriptions about many appalling ways of slaughter including rape are exactly the same as that Chinese traditional artistry for city-slaughter (called "Tu Cheng", that has no matching idiom in Japanese, meaning to slaughter the inhabitants of a captured city), which have been developed through its long history and still practiced in its Cultural Revolution. In strong contrast, the cities in Japan traditionally never had any big walls around, except for castles and strongholds, the fact disproving existence of the@tradition like gTu Cheng.h This book is a propagandist allegation produced by the cultural gDNAh of a Chinese American writer, about the atrocities far beyond the Japanese' imagination. Second, the book has shown how people (even knowledgeable ones) are easily provoked into witch-hunting syndrome, simply by hitting their lowest emotion, the cradle for the worst-suspicions. Every qualified juror must listen to suspect's case as well. But how so many readers rush to "guilty" without reading any disproving books! It is called "lynch". The more shocking the descriptions the more reality it gets, as people like finding the wrong to feel themselves right, the tragedies to feel happy, the devils to feel sinless. I am very much interested in how small percentage of the readers has read even one disproving book on the topic before writing a review. Not a few of the in-depth books@disproving the facticity of so-called Nanking holocaust have been published in Japan.