Robert Thomas Marcell
Matriculating Graduate Student
University of Chicago
Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Japan carries not only the legal burden but the moral obligation to acknowledge the evil it perpetrated at Nanking.
— Iris Chang
In
April 2007, the Premier of the People’s Republic of China, Wen
Jiabao, visited Japan. It was the first such visit to Japan by a
Chinese leader in nearly seven years, and it was, in the
Premier’s opinion, a success.1
The trip saw Wen jogging with the elderly, playing baseball with
University students, chatting it up with a local farmer, and delivering
a speech before the Japanese parliament, called the Diet. The speech
that Wen delivered is as noteworthy as the visit itself, for it had
been twenty-two years since a Chinese leader spoke before Japan’s
Diet. Given all this, one might justifiably conclude that the visit was
an important first step in improving Sino-Japanese relations. Summing
up his feelings of optimism, Wen ended one of his speeches with a poem:
“Spring has come. The sun shines brightly. The cherry trees
blossom proudly and the snow and ice have melted.”2
Nevertheless,
lying just beneath the apparent success of Premier Wen’s visit
was very real tension. Security was tight throughout the
Premier’s stay in Japan, and, as if to justify the high security,
Japanese ultranationalists drove through the streets with loudspeakers
decrying China and the Chinese. Moreover, judging from interviews
conducted in both China and Japan, the visit also seems to have had
little affect on the popular attitudes each country holds towards the
other. Many people wrote the visit off as being little better than a
publicity stunt, or otherwise treated it cautiously. It is telling
though, that, despite his optimism, Wen made it clear that China
remains wary of the possible reemergence of Japanese militarism,
especially in light of certain recent developments in the political
culture and government of Japan.
Meanwhile,
Japan’s Prime Minister, Abe Shinzo, desires that Japan play a
larger role in global affairs. The idea of Japan having not only its
economic strength, but strong political, or worse yet, military
influence in international affairs has met with staunch resistance from
Japan’s Asian neighbors. Indeed, the fact that Japanese troops
are in Iraq has even split the country of Japan itself with
controversy, as having such a force seems, to many, to be a
circumvention of the Japanese constitution, wherein Article 9 renounces
the country’s right to wage war.3
In any event, it is clear that without continued and earnest efforts on
the parts of both nations, a cloud of distrust will overtake Premier
Wen’s brightly shining sun, hate will wither his proudly
blossoming cherry trees, and mutual antipathy will dirty his melting
snow.
When
considering the current state of affairs in East Asian politics, the
question that naturally seems to arise is “why is it that Japan
and its neighbors seem so polarized against one another? Why
can’t they just get along?” The roots of the political
problems of today, however, are more than one hundred years in the
making, harkening back to the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Even
more important than this first war, however, in terms of its modern
reverberations, is the Second Sino-Japanese War, beginning officially
in 19374
and lasting to 1945. The Japanese invaded China and killed, looted,
burned, and raped their way across the country for approximately
fourteen years, but have, to this day, failed to give an acceptable,
official apology for their aggressions, nor have they made more than a
pittance worth of compensation to their numerous victims. Instead,
Japan has denied and downplayed its actions in China and the rest of
Asia. With concerns to their 1937-1938 massacre at Nanking, the denial
has been more fierce and obstinate than almost anywhere else. The
ghosts of the war still haunt East Asian politics today, some seventy
years after the fact, and the reason for this is because of
Japan’s refusal to take responsibility for its past.
THE RAPE OF NANKING
On
July 7, 1937, a Japanese soldier went missing outside of Beijing. The
disappearance of this single soldier, later found unharmed, set into
motion a horrible series of events that would, before the end of 1945,
cost China some twenty million sons and daughters. Of those twenty
million killed, an estimated seventeen to eighteen million were unarmed
civilians. The majority of those who died in the war were not killed
directly, but rather, indirectly by preventable famine and widespread
disease. Nevertheless, Japan had a hand in the direct killing of more
or less 4,000,000 Chinese, all but about 400,000 of whom were
civilians. However, Japan has yet to deliver a heartfelt apology or any
real compensation to those of its neighbors who suffered under the
bloodstained boots of Japanese expansionism. To add insult to massacre,
many of the Japanese in governmental and academic positions have
grotesquely transformed the Japan of the 1930s and 40s so much, so that
even the fabricators themselves seem to believe that their wartime role
was that of the victims.
The
killing energy of the Japanese Army swept right across China during the
Second Sino-Japanese War – kicked off in 1937 by the Marco Polo
Bridge Incident briefly delineated above – but it is perhaps best
epitomized in the gruesomely well-documented story of Nanking. In the
December of 1937, the Japanese Army entered the old capital of
Nationalist China, Nanking. For six weeks, they there looted thousands
of homes, brutalized and raped tens of thousands of men and women, and
executed or murdered upwards of 300,000 innocent people. The massacre
was splashed across the front pages of some of the major newspapers of
the day, but, after the close of World War II, lay largely forgotten by
the West for nearly sixty years.
In 1997, however, historian and journalist Iris Chang wrote The Rape of Nanking
and forced the sleeping memory to the forefront of Western
consciousness. Her book was important historically, to be sure, and her
work in finding the German John Rabe’s diary incalculably
significant, but the book’s true value was in its re-exposing the
massacre to the English-speaking world. It opened up to the West the
fierce debate that has been raging in the East ever since the end of
the war. Since Iris Chang’s best selling book, some dozen or more
works have been published on the massacre in English – many of
which make explicit reference to her and her research. 5
Big companies like the History Channel have produced documentaries on
the incident. Numerous scholarly articles and consumer magazine
articles have been written about it as well. In 2007, the documentary
film Nanking
was originally inspired by Iris Chang’s book. Another upcoming
movie is actually based off her book, and expected to release in 2008.
Nevertheless, Japan continues to deny or deemphasize the events that
took place in Nanking.
THE DENIAL
For
years, Japanese right-wingers have dismissed the Rape of Nanking as
Chinese fabrication meant to embarrass or discredit Japan – even
in the face of extraordinary evidence to the contrary. Those who have
spoken up for historical truth within the country have been bullied,
harassed, and, in some cases, even killed. The Japanese Ministry of
Education has stamped out or softened any mention of Japanese
atrocities in textbooks for many years, and, to a lesser but still
quite frightening degree, continues to do so to this day. It is
disheartening, for instance, to learn that Japan’s current Prime
Minister, Abe Shinzo, led the Japanese Society for History Textbook
Reform before his election – a group that since its foundation in
1997 has attempted to revise Japanese history in order to promote
Japanese patriotism at the cost of historical accuracy.
There
is no doubt that the denial continues. In June 2007, members of
Abe’s party, the Liberal Democratic Party, claimed that there was
no evidence to prove that the Japanese had participated in mass
killings in Nanking during the war. In retort to the global interest in
Nanking’s massacre, catalyzed by Iris Chang’s book and the
recent release of the movie Nanking,
Nakayama Nariaki, the leader of the group, said that they would not let
“lies and deceit be spread around the world.”6
Their outspoken denial comes on the tail of Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao’s speech to the Japanese diet, where he urged “Japan
to face up to its World War II actions.”7 Clearly, the Liberal Democratic Party is not listening. Similarly, in direct retort to the American movie Nanking, Japanese filmmaker Satoru Mizushima is producing a documentary called The Truth about Nanjing, wherein he hopes to prove that the first movie was “based on fabrications and gives a false impression.”8 The debate today is as healthy as ever before, and, thanks to Iris Chang and the stir she created, it is global as well.
It
is important to stress that Japan, as a whole, does not condone nor
agree with the political right wing’s fringe (and erroneous)
beliefs about history. Roger B. Jeans argues this point very well in
his article “Victims or Victimizers? Museums, Textbooks, and the
War Debate in Contemporary Japan.”9
Historians like Ienaga Saburo have also challenged the government about
their historical revisionism from within Japan, with Ienaga suing the
Ministry of Education over the issue in 1970 and winning. However,
because the groups that believe that the Nanking massacre was either
fabricated or exaggerated have controlled and continue to control the
Japanese government, the official stance of Japan remains decidedly
right wing on the issue, as exemplified by the Liberal Democratic
Party’s June 2007 report against the Rape of Nanking.
An
official, heartfelt apology and compensation effort from Japan to its
neighbors will only be possible when new, truly liberal government
comes to power in Japan, or when international pressures from the West,
or domestic pressure from within Japan itself, manages to sway the
dominant, conservative party’s views. In the meantime, the Rape
of Nanking – and the Second Sino-Japanese War more broadly
– continue to hamper relations between Japan and the rest of East
Asia. The cost of Japan’s denial has been great so far, but it
only continues to grow with the passing of the years. Saving perhaps
the immediate postwar years, there has never before been a more urgent
need or more appropriate time for Japan to make amends than right now.
THE COST
The
immediate and continuing cost of denying the Rape of Nanking and the
other atrocities committed by Japan in the Second World War is a moral
one. It is a blot against the Japanese people that simply cannot be
erased until it has been addressed. It is a festering wound in the East
Asian heart that upsets people as individuals, and nations as a whole.
This cost is an eternal one, too, and will continue exerting its dark
influence on East Asian affairs for however long it is until Japan
caters to its moral duty and seeks reconciliation with its East Asian
neighbors. Seventy years is a long time, but one hundred and seventy
years will not be enough. Ignoring the issue will not make it go away.
Related
to the moral cost is the cost that the survivors of Japan’s
massacres have paid. The cost for the survivors has been in their
livelihoods, their physical health, and their emotional and
psychological well-being. Rape victims, like Japan’s
“comfort women,” have had to live with years of stigmatism
even in their home countries. Orphans have had to grow up without ever
knowing their parents or siblings. Related though it is, unlike the
moral cost, the lifespan of the survivor cost is limited, and running
out. If Japan hopes to redress the issue, it should not wait until all
of its war criminals and former soldiers die out – because all
the victims will be dead by then, as well. It may be less embarrassing
for Japan to wait ten, twenty more years before apologizing, but the
gesture loses potency and sincerity with every year, and survivor, that
passes.
Disengaging
oneself from the human element, the moral outrage and the individual
pain, one can see that there is yet another cost in Japan’s
denial. It is the political and economic cost. For twenty-seven years
after the end of the war, Japan and China had an extremely tense
relationship. Only in 1972 did the two countries normalize relations.
To this day, however, they remain wary of one another. With political
and economic issues of worldwide importance happening in East Asia, the
mutual distrust Japan and the rest of Asia have for each other is
downright dangerous. Japan and China have been increasing bilateral
trade with one another over the past decade. Meanwhile, North Korea has
been developing nuclear missiles technology, or so the fears go. In
Japan itself, its desire to revise its pacifist constitution is being
met with widespread protest primarily because of its history, and its
unwillingness to acknowledge that frightful past for which it is
responsible.
THE FUTURE
Despite
Premier Wen’s poetic assertion that “spring has
come,” there is clearly much left to do before such optimism is
warranted. Japan’s Prime Minister Abe’s visit to South
Korea and China, and Premier Wen’s visit to Japan, are steps in
the right direction. Japan-China talks on their shared past, such as
those ongoing talks that both countries hope to have completed by 2008,
are also a step forward.10
The position of some groups within the Liberal Democratic Party who
claim that the Rape of Nanking is a fabrication is not. Claims that
“the past can’t be changed” and “should be
forgotten” are not only dangerous, but also steps backwards.
Like
Premier Wen’s “spring has come” assertion, it would
be naïve to preempt the future by suggesting that holocausts like
the Rape of Nanking are behind us in this 21st-century
world. They are not behind us. And perhaps they never will be behind
us. All we can do, as human beings, is remain guarded against them, and
the governments that might perpetrate them. For this reason, a
remilitarizing Japan is a grave threat to its neighbors so long as it
continues to deny its past. Only by acknowledging its past will Japan
find acceptance in the East Asian community.