The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes)
The Rape of Nanjing was one of the worst atrocities committed during World War II. On December 13, 1937, the Japanese army captured the city of Nanjing, then the capital of wartime China. According to the International Military Tribunal, during the ensuing massacre 20,000 Chinese men of military age were killed and approximately 20,000 cases of rape occurred; in all, the total number of people killed in and around the city of Nanjing was about 200,000. This carefully researched, intelligent collection of original essays considers the post-World War II treatment in China of the Nanjing Massacre and Japan. The book examines how the issue has developed as a political and diplomatic controversy in the five decades since World War II.
In his introduction, Joshua A. Fogel raises the significant moral and historiographical issues that frame the other essays. Mark Eykholt then provides an account of postwar Chinese responses to the massacre. Takashi Yoshida assesses the attempts to downplay the incident and its effects, providing a revealing analysis of Japanese debates over Japan's role in the world and the continuing ambivalence of many Japanese toward their defeat in World War II. In the concluding essay, Daqing Yang widens the scope of the discussion by comparing the Nanjing historiographic debates to similar debates in Germany over the nature of the Holocaust.
http://www.amazon.com/Nanjing-Massacre-History-Historiography-Asia/dp/0520220072
The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (Studies of the Pacific Basin Institute)
Honda Katsuichi, an investigative journalist for Asahi Simbun, shows in pitiless detail the horrors of the Japanese Army's march to and seizure and capture of Nanjing in late 1937. Unvarnished accounts of the testimony--of Chinese victims and Japanese perpetrators--to the rape and slaughter are juxtaposed with public relations announcements of the Japanese Army as printed in various Japanese newspapers of the time. The bland announcements of triumphant victories stand in bitter contrast to the atrocities that actually took place on the scene.
The story unfolds in horror of the Japanese army raping and killing in the so-called heat of battle. Yet by recalling the testimony of Japanese soldiers and reporters who were on the scene, as well as reproducing dispatches by Japanese Army authorities at the time, Honda makes it clear that the atrocities were part of a studied effort directed by the Japanese high command to impress the Chinese people with the power of its army and the folly of resistance. The estimate of at least 100,000 killed in these military operations is no exaggeration. The Chinese side of the story is based on the author's interviews with dozens of survivors.
Based on four visits to China between 1971 and 1989, Honda, along with other Japanese journalists and scholars, reveals the truth of the Nanjing massacre, provoked by the efforts of right-wing Japanese, including, sadly, many government officials, to whitewash the whole incident, even to the point of contending that a massacre never happened. This gripping account of the atrocities and cover-up joins other recent exposes in keeping alive the memory of this shameful event.
The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II
In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered—a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written the definitive history of this horrifying episode.
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