Rating: 
Summary: Compelling
Review: This book reminds us there is not one Holocaust, there are many holocausts. Twenty five million Chinese killed by the Japanese in WWII, several hundred thousand of those at Nanking. An appalling story, well written.
Rating: 
Summary: Please be fair.
Review: There is a good reason that many Japanese are offended by this book.
Many pictures she shows are already proven to be fake or not related to Nanking. It's obvious that she never examined them closely or not examined at all. After all they are nothing but sick pictures that no one knows where it came from.
And there are countless nonsenses which I even feel lazy to point out.
I Think most Americans cant't differentiate freedom loving Japaneses who are grown up in a sophisticated society from stupid Chineses who don't know the concept of the freedom of speech, and their country is still one of the poorest country in the world (and its government constantly lies). But there is a distinct difference in those two.
You good Americans, please dont't let them advertise this kind of cr*p.
Rating:
Summary: The Worst Book in the World Ever!
Review: Chang's book has over 90 historically incorrect articles.
Chang's arguments are based on the documents with no evidence.
Chang has neglected the facts contradicting "Nanking Massacre".Before Japan's occupation, the population in Nanking was 200,000, and it increased to 250,000 after Chinese troops retreated while editorial reviews are following Chang's lie of 350,000 massacre.
Rating:
Summary: Read the book to get the real story
Review: I usually read the Customer reviews to help decide if I should buy the Product. They usually are "right on the money" concerning the item in question. However, not with this book. Some person or persons if making a concerted effort to discount the importance of this Historical work. Take a look at the Editorial reviews. This is an excellent, factual read.
Rating:
Summary: Faked pictures with misleading captions
Review: Pictures in the book are faked and associated with the captions misleading readers. Every picture is not an evidence of the massacre. On the contrary, many pictures are no related to Nanking battle.
First 5 pictures are obviously no proof of Chang's claim. As you can see, no explanation needed for that.
Let's see 6th picture with the caption "As the Japanese moved across China, they rounded up thousands of women. Many of them were gang raped or forced into military prostitution".
The original of this picture was taken on Oct/14/1937. Chang had trimmed farmers (or peasants, I do not know) off the picture who are following the line with pulling the carts full of cotton wool. Also Chang had lowered the resolusion and made the graduation coarse enough for readers to be unable of reading their faces. You will be surprised if you look at the original. People are smiling!
Rating:
Summary: Rating for this book by readers suspect.
Review: My friends and I have read this book and have found it horrifying (why was I not aware of this before?). All my numerous history books agree with what is reported (see Honda Katsuichi's first person accounts in the "Nanjing Massacre").
I believe many of the low 1 star reviews are posted by Japanese Nationals who cannot accept the truth and want the book to post a low overall rating! Like many of my fellow Americans who cannot accept resposibility for killing millions in Vietnam (or the 250,000 people in the nuclear bombs on Japan).
The country of origin can be faked in an e-mail.
The rape continues!
Rating:
Summary: Your Prejudice Comes from Tokyo Trial
Review: The Tokyo Trial was a Vivtor's justice in which the Japanese Inperial Army was falsely accused of numerous horrible crimes. The defendants had no chance to refute them since the guilty verdicts were fixed from the first. That means, the crimes now people in the world believe the Japanese Army "really" committed were never verified in the trial. Nevertheless, from academics and journalists to ordinary people have been inculcated the false assumption so hard that people plainly refuse to accept Japan's refutation by any means.
The belief has, it appears, become to the point of the Inquisitor's dissmisal of the heliocentricism. Irrationality produces nothing but productive arguments. Speculations based on propaganda makes you understand nothing other than giving you more confusion. What you need is only one thing. Fair mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Painful but necessary
Review: Did you notice that a majority of the negative, one-star reviews about "The Rape of Nanking" are written by Japanese? Many of the reviews that do not have a name attached, such as the reviews by "An Amazon.com Customer" feature grammar and wording choices that are a dead giveaway. This is not the only book on Nanking (sometimes written "Nanjing"). "The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography" an anthology edited by Joshua Fogel covers much of the same ground. Chang's book will not be published in Japan. Kashiwashobo, the company that would have published had they reached an agreement with Chang's American publishing company, asked for extensive changes in the text and photos. Chang would not agree to make the changes, for obvious reasons. Many Japanese historians have attempted to publish books concerning Japan's military past. They have often been prevented from publishing in Japan if they are in any way critical of the government, past or present. They have faced persecution and death threats from far right groups and gangsters, both of which are tacitly supported by the government. Publishers are reluctant to publish controversial books due to the danger of attacks by ultra-national right groups or Yakuza. The government openly denies the facts about Japan's military past even in the face of proof. Current government officials like Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, and Japanese ambassador to the U.S., Kunihiko Saito have called Chang's accusations in her book "baseless" or "inaccurate and one-sided" though a majority of reputable historians in Japan and abroad uphold her findings. Historian Ienaga Saburo spent over 30 years in unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the government censorship of textbooks following the rejection of his textbook in 1965, which highlighted Japanese responsibility for war atrocities. He was partially successful in that the attention he brought to these issues forced the government in the late 1990's to at least include some mention of Nanking and other war crimes whereas these were completely absent from textbooks for decades. His last lawsuit, concluded in 1997, was decided in favor of the government ministry in charge of education, Monbukagakusho, thereby officially endorsing the right of the government to censor textbooks. Authors with revisionist leanings, like Kitamura Minoru, on the other hand, have faced little opposition to publishing books denying that the Nanking massacre ever occurred. "The New History Textbook" (Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho) written by the far right Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, headed by Nishio Kanji, deliberately avoids any mention of "dark history" in Japan's past by emphasizing "light history" instead. It characterizes Japan's modern wars as attempts to liberate Asia and presents Japan's foundation myths as fact, just as the ultra-nationalistic state religion did during the war years. It is also one of the eight Ministry-approved texts for teaching history at the junior high school level, despite protestations from Japanese and international historians that it is completely unfit to be used as a history text. The International Scholars' Appeal concerning the flaws of this textbook includes a list of signators that goes on for pages. Some of the more recent revisionist books ("The Alleged 'Nanking Massacre': Japan's rebuttal to China's forged claims" by Tadao Takemoto and "What Really Happened in Nanking" by Tanaka Masaaki for example) rely almost entirely on notoriously unreliable Japanese source documents, ignoring independent documentation, while Chang takes her information from various different sources. (See political commentaries "The Enigma of Japanese Power" by Karel Van Wolfren and "Dogs and Demons" by Alex Kerr for details about official distortions of truth in the Japanese government). This is not to say that Chang's book is perfect. She demonstrates an obvious bias in her writing, which leads her to sensationalize many situations, and the book is at times repetitious or otherwise tedious. Many of the people and complex situations are flattened and two-dimensional in her treatment. Chang also does not understand Japanese culture well at all, as her comments on and questions about the possible reasons for the massacre clearly demonstrate. A few of her facts have been refuted by reputable historians. However, the _majority_ of her facts are unassailable, as is obvious considering how many people have tried, and largely failed, to refute her book. Her most prominent critics are themselves given to distortion of facts. Hata Ikuhito's criticism of Chang's book is insightful and he raises some questions that "The Rape of Nanking" does not address. He also claims that only around 40,000 "unauthorized killings" occurred, when most historians would agree that that figure is far too low, probably by a factor of five. He challenges the authenticity of eleven of Chang's photographs, but is able to demonstrate proof with only two, about which Chang herself was mislead. You must take a critic's credibility into account when dealing with his criticisms. Chang's book should not be used as a bible for what happened in Nanking, but as a starting point for continuing research. During the War Crimes Tribunal, the Nanking massacre was only one of the many atrocities being investigated. In the years after the active occupation of Japan ended there has been a systematic attempt by the Japanese government to deny this and other war crimes. The details of the horror perpetrated in Nanking do not make for easy reading, but I think it is absolutely necessary. Just as we read reputable history books to counteract denials about the Holocaust in Europe, we must read this book, and others, to remember what truly happened in Asia during the first half of the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely disappointed in this book
Review: I was so disappointed in this book that I did not even finish it. (I have moved on to a far superior book, Rick Atkinson's "An Army at Dawn." I highly recommend that book, by the way). I found this book to be really lacking in detail and in background facts. There was little more than a cursory effort to explain why this event happened. A detailed analysis of the Japanese military itself and its background would have been enlightening and interesting, for example. Instead, this book seemed to be little more than a series of short horrific stories about what the military did in Nanking. In addition, I question the historical accuracy of a lot of what is in the book. Many, if not most, of the stories were unattributed and came across as hearsay or as probably apocryphal to me. Please don't get me wrong, I am not questioning that it happened. I am questioning the accuracy of a lot of the stories and the facts the book provided. The book also came across to me as overly opinionated and excessively driven by the author's agenda. I also did not like the structure of the book. It is written in several sections that purport to present the entire story anew from different points of view. But to me, it just made the book redundant and served to emphasize its lack of detail within each section. In short, if you are looking for a detailed, historically accurate account of the Rape of Nanking that tries to do anything more than recount a bunch of sad stories, this is not the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: New York Times, Dec. 9, 1937 by Hallett Abend
Review: Foreign military observers remaining in Nanking are amazed by the extent of the Chinese destruction of everything within the zones they still control. Most of this destruction is said to be purposeless, serving no military use for the advantage of the Chinese or to the disadvantage of the Japanese except to force invaders to use tents instead of billeting in buildings........ "Not since the armies of Genghis Khan turned the sites of once-populous cities of China into grazing lands has there been any such systematic destruction as that going on in the lower Yangtze area at the hands of the Chinese themselves," a neutral military observer told the writer. "Japanese aerial bombings and artillery fire have been destructive in comparatively narrow ranges, mostly military objectives, but all such damages combined will not equal one-tenth the destruction achieved by the Chinese armies. From the way the Chinese are behaving you would think they did not expect to recover any semblance of control in this part of China in the next century. You would think they were laying waste land belonging to some bitter foe. "It is incredible that they are adopting this 'scorched earth' policy against forces which must certainly be only temporary invaders and are not going to attempt to colonize Chinese soil. What is being destroyed represents the savings of thrifty generations of hard-working Chinese. "Those who advocate the policy of frenzied destruction of towns, cities and country side do not pause to think that they are utterly wiping out hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of accumulated wealth and that this property, if not destroyed, could have been taxed by the Chinese Government at no distant future, thereby helping the nation to refinance its rehabilitation. This rich area, which had been one of the most thickly populated in the world, will need vast sums to rebuild what is vanishing in flames." The only acceptable explanation seems to involve the ancient Oriental idea of "saving face," the Chinese believing they enchance their prestige if their retreat leaves only a barren wilderness of smoking ruins for the invaders to occupy. This policy ignores the welfare of millions of Chinese who have fled from this fighting zone. How the millions of refugees are to be fed and housed through the Winter is a serious problem because their own government cannot do anything for their relief.
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