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Summary: This Forum is Being Infiltrated by Deranged Japanese.
Review: 'Clint Eastwood made me think deeply about people (including myself) who have sins and are self-conscious of it, and about their lives they carry on with a burden named "guilt".If you have a sin that is unforgiven, and when you are conscious of it, your life becomes a hell. You feel stained forever. That awareness suffers you.' -A revealing quote from one of the absolutely deranged Right-Wing Japanese in this forum. Please note, they are not all this way. Some are level-headed rational members of the family of man.
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Summary: Religion is the Root Cause of the Massacres
Review: A Japanese reviewer had justified the Nanking massacre by referring the Chinese massacre of the Tibetans. A strange way of justifying indeed. Thus the Jewish treatment of the Palestinians also justify their prior (worse!) treatment by the Nazis? At any rate, while I abhor the massacre of the Tibetans which occurred during the cultural revolution, the Red Guards massacred many people of different ethnicity, including a large majority of Chinese themselves. It wasn't as racially motivated as the Nanking massacre.
A good point to note that most Japanese who denied the truth of the Nanking massacre are Shinto believers. Most Buddhist Japanese are able to come to terms with this horrendous deed of their forefathers, and have participated prominently annually in commemorative events.
Shinto believers have this problem because the root lies in the fact that the religion preaches the infallibility of the Japanese race and particularly of the imperial family. A believer would certainly be unable to accept that their own people could commit such atrocious crime, and would strenuously, furiously deny it.
Indeed it is this very belief in their infallability that led them progressively into aggressive behaviour towards their neighbours, whom they view as racially impure and inferior. In this aspect this is very similar to Nazism, only more muted, and sadly, more enduring.
Incidentally, Nanking was by no means the only massacre though it was the largest by the Japanese. In Singapore and Malaysia, tens of thousands of Chinese men were murdered during the nearly 4 years of Japanese occupation. These men were rounded up and brought in trucks to remote locations, forced to dig trenches and then gunned down by the Japanese soldiers, who then buried them in these very trenches. Numerous such places have been recovered. My parents personally know of people whom have been rounded-up and disappeared, and also of survivors who made it to tell the truth. My university room-mate's family still do not buy Japanese goods because his maternal grandmother lost all her sons this way. But the British did not pursue the Japanese for compensation they way they did with the Germans since we're just colonies, and the succeeding governments needed Japanese investments so did not see fit to offend. It is now dim memory for most of the young people, but it does not mean that the massacres did not occur.
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Summary: History is not polemics - Geraldo does Nanking,
Review: As a professional historian of East Asia, I appreciate Chang bringing the events of Japan's invasion of Nanking to a broader audience, but Chang let her personal bias and her youth/inexperience adversely affect the telling of her tale. The events are horrific enough that the reader does not need to be hit over the head with Chang's inflammatory rhetoric. Moreover, this is not a forgotten event--I learned about it in 10th grade world history in 1967.
Chang's best contribution is bringing to light the diaries of John Rabe, which with other eye-witness accounts are perfectly valid historical sources. However, Chang's insertion of herself into the narrative and her inflammatory rhetoric seriously undermine her book on an important and neglected -- but not unknown -- event. I am at a loss to understand why this book has been lauded by a number of prominent historians. Had she been my student (or I her editor), I would have required her to write with objectivity so the credibility of her account would not be subjected to the kind of criticism I see in many of these reviews.
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Summary: Historical value?
Review: Chang spends a great deal of time convincing the reader that this was a "horrible atrocity on the level of the holocost"... it had nothing to do with the holocost on practically every level. What's more, Japan has not "forgotten" anything. National educational guidelines are written specifically "to teach children what a horrible thing war is, and that it only goes to harm humanity and the world"... a fine lesson, if there was no war or hatred in the world. Many of the photographs in this book are 1: of questionable origin, 2: mislabled, or 3: proven fakes. The few that remain do not denote location or events. The overwhelming number of "eye-whitness acounts" in this book seem to be presented as having more value than any documentation from the time(little of which is presented), and for a book which upholds the Tokyo Tribunal (called a farce far and wide, in the US and elsewhere) she brushed off the evidence presented (some of which rejected by the tribunal) by the defence... This book may be a good emotional read, but it has little value as a work of historical research.
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Summary: Excellent Overview of Neglected Topic
Review: Had this book merely called the attention of Western readers to this neglected and heartbreaking topic, it would have been a very important work.
But this book is also very concise, superbly structured, and well-written (if, on rare occasions, a tad overwrought).
It is not the last word on the subject, but it is a very good introduction to it.
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Summary: Cannibal is Chinese culture.
Review: I contribute for the first time.
Various informations about Nanking Massacre are flowing, to tell the truth, I also can't understand which one is the true information.
But, I want to say only one point.
They say, Japanese soldiers ate Chinese's internal organs with pan. It's nonsense story.
Japanese began eating pig or beef about 140 years ago. All samurais were vegetarians.
I swear we don't have that kind of culture. Cannibal is Chinese culture. You can easily understand if you read Chinese history book. Obviously, it's a propaganda made by Chinese.
Though there are Japanese slaughter events committed by Chinese, too. If those are not seen, it is not impartial.
(...)
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Summary: Tragic
Review: I had only heard about Japanese atrocities in China during WWII in general, yet had never read a detailed account (unlike the massive amounts of material you are exposed to in school about the Holocaust). The Rape of Nanking taught me much about the politics, motivations, and tragedies associated with Japan's occupation of parts of mainland China in the late 30's. While the book is fast paced, informative, and well written, do prepare yourself to be exposed to descriptions of the most horrific acts that your imagination can muster. I felt the book could have been edited down a bit as certain sections get repetitive, but this is my only complaint about an otherwise amazing book on a little covered chapter in history. One that everyone should read. Not learning about The Rape is like being clueless about the Holocaust, and it's truly a tragedy that this event has been lost on most of the western world. It's fantastic that Iris Chang has brought it to light, yet tragic that she took her own life last year. Bottom line, if you can stomach some of the most gut wrenching horrors of The Rape being described in brutal detail (and some being pictured), then you owe it to yourself to read this book.
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Summary: Next Fascism Comes with Anti-Fascism Movement?
Review: I have never seen a good, solid-based counter-argument to those denial theories of so-called Rape of Nanking was made not only by ignorant amateur people but by the supposedly-decent scholars alike.
It is matter of course that they never be able to do so considering the fact that this story of the Rape of Nanking is mere propaganda. They should well know that they have no evidence that supports the massacre really happened in Nanking in December 1937. Because, on the contrary, many circumstantial evidences from the neutral foreigners in the city, which, most crucially, have been used as the very evidences for the massacre, point that soon after the capture of Nanking peace was in fact restored by the Japanese Army and genuine Chinese civilians (apart from those civilian-disguised Chinese soldiers, of course) gave them welcome rather eagerly. Anyone can read can see this from contemporary documents like "The Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone" and letters and diaries of those foreigners who remained in Nanking at the period in question which anyone can obtain anytime from Amazon.com book store most of the time.
So, naturally, instead of trying to make a counter-argument on what exactly the denial theories say, what they always do is to distort and deride those denials or to make a forced analogy between the Rape of Nanking denials and the Nazi Holocaust denials so that other uninformed people think that those deniers are all evil fascists and ultra-nationalists, therefore, they should never be listened to. They need to keep people out of those good resources because, once people read those contemporary documents by themselves, they will certainly know what really happened in Nanking and, more exactly, what really not happened in Nanking.
With those aggressive words, some people really are imbuing people's mind with false assumptions on those Rape of Nanking denials that can lead to prejudice to the Japanese culture itself. I cannot help thinking that, although we should be living in a democratic society in which people should have a right to speak freely, somehow we are under a covert speech control. It seems that once you are labelled as an ultra-nationalist or a neo-Nazi, you can never refute anything. I feel as if I am being told that: the left is right and the right is ALWAYS, PROFOUNDLY and INDEFINITELY wrong. Does this not sound like fascism/totalism?
Incidentally, Amnesty International Report in 1978 says that in Communist China at that time history teachers were assigned to the post not by their achievement in history study but by fine understanding of the ideology of communism. I just wonder if it is still true to this day.
(By the way, the reviewer below called chaconnesque"chaconnesque", the Chinese who were killed in the South East Asian countries in the WW2 by the Japanese Army were mostly guerrillas in civilian clothes which is supposed to be illegal worldwide and, therefore, the commanders who ordered the executions of those guerrillas were acquitted in the war crimes courts by the Allied powers after the war.)
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Summary: Compelling account of a Culture of Murder
Review: In a day and age when Japan's Prime Minister still annually makes pilgrimages to "honor" Japan's "war heros", books like this provide some insight into the cultural underpinnings of racism and utter brutality.
Japan's forced enslavement, torture, and rape of Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, and others in WW2 has been well-documented; and yet, curiously, it takes explosive books like this to bring this documentation out of stale academia and into modern light.
Even today, those who were borne and live in Japan from those Koreans forcibly kidnapped and raped by Japanese are not Japanese citizens... despite the fact that they are now 3rd generation Japanese, speak no Korean, and have never been to Korea. As this book amply demonstrates, Japan breeds into its people a robotic disregard for human life and suffering, and a racism that, to this day, is remarkably disturbing. In the US, we tend to focus on occidental sins... it's time we also cast our eyes eastward.
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Summary: What an amazing young scholar!
Review: The Nanjing Massacre has been witnessed by hundreds of thousands despite the clear attempt by Japanese soldiers to kill all those in view. It's sick that the Japanese are not taught the truth regarding the past. Clearly, young Japanese today are not at fault at what happened back in World War II, but we should all recognize our past mistakes. As Chang shrewdly highlights, Germany is a better country today because they recognized their dark past and the South are better today because they now recognize that slavery is unethical and simply disgusting. Shame on those who refuse to admit that the Nanjing Massacre occurred. I wonder if they even read Chang's book, not to mention the now many documentaries and texts regarding this subject matter.
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