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The Rape of Nanking (book)
Encyclopedia
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is a bestselling
1997 non-fiction
book written by Iris Chang
about the 1937–1938 Nanking Massacre
, the massacre and atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army
after it captured Nanjing
, then capital of China
, during the Second Sino-Japanese War
. It documents the events, based on the author's research, leading up to the Nanking Massacre and the atrocities that were committed. The book also presents the view that the Japanese government has not done enough to redress the atrocities. It is one of the first major English-language books to introduce the Nanking Massacre to Western
and Eastern
readers alike, and has been translated into several languages.
The book was a source of fame for Chang but was also controversial; it has been praised as a work which "shows more clearly than any previous account" the extent and brutality of the episode, while at the same time it was criticised as "seriously flawed" and "full of misinformation and harebrained explanations". It was received with both acclaim and criticism by the public and by academics. Chang's research on the book was credited with the finding of the diaries of John Rabe
and Minnie Vautrin
, both of whom played important roles in the Nanking Safety Zone
, a designated area in Nanjing which protected Chinese civilians during the Nanking Massacre.
The book prompted AOL
executive Ted Leonsis
to fund and produce Nanking
, a 2007 documentary film
about the Nanking Massacre, after he read it.
to the United States during World War II
, that during the Nanking Massacre, the Japanese "sliced babies not just in half but in thirds and fourths". In the introduction of The Rape of Nanking, she wrote that throughout her childhood, the Nanking Massacre "remained buried in the back of [her] mind as a metaphor for unspeakable evil". When she searched the local public libraries in her school and found nothing, she wondered why nobody had written a book about it.
The subject of the Nanking Massacre entered Chang's life again almost two decades later when she learned of producers who had completed documentary films about it. One of the producers was Shao Tzuping, who helped produce Magee's Testament, a film which contains footage of the Nanking Massacre itself, shot by the missionary
John Magee. The other producer was Nancy Tong, who, together with Christine Choy, produced and co-directed In The Name of the Emperor, a film containing a series of interviews with Chinese, American, and Japanese citizens. Chang began talking to Shao and Tong, and soon she was connected to a network of activists who felt the need to document and publicize the Nanking Massacre. In December 1994, she attended a conference on the Nanking Massacre, held in Cupertino
, California
, and it was what she saw and heard at the conference that motivated her to write The Rape of Nanking. As she wrote in the introduction of the book, while she was at the conference, she was "suddenly in a panic that this terrifying disrespect for death and dying, this reversion in human social evolution, would be reduced to a footnote of history, treated like a harmless glitch in a computer program that might or might not again cause a problem, unless someone forced the world to remember it".
at the time of the Nanking Massacre. Additionally, she traveled to Nanjing to interview survivors of the Nanking Massacre and to read Chinese accounts and confessions by Japanese army veterans. Chang did not, however, conduct research in Japan, and this left her vulnerable to criticisms on how she portrayed modern Japan in the context of how it deals with its World War II past.
Chang's research led her to make what one San Francisco Chronicle
article called "significant discoveries" on the subject of the Nanking Massacre, in the forms of the diaries of two Westerners that were in Nanjing leading efforts to save lives during the Japanese invasion. The first diary was that of John Rabe, a German
Nazi Party member who was the leader of the Nanking Safety Zone, a demilitarized zone
in Nanjing that Rabe and other Westerners set up to protect Chinese civilians. The other diary belonged to the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, who saved the lives of about 10,000 women and children when she provided them with shelter in Ginling College
. The diaries documented the events of the Nanking Massacre from the perspectives of their writers, and provided detailed accounts of atrocities that they saw, as well as information surrounding the circumstances of the Nanking Safety Zone. Chang dubbed Rabe the "Oskar Schindler
of Nanking" and Vautrin the "Anne Frank
of Nanking". Rabe's diary is over 800 pages, and contains one of the most detailed accounts of the Nanking Massacre. Translated into English, it was published in 1998 by Random House
as a book on its own, called The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe. Vautrin's diary recounts her personal experience and feelings on the Nanking Massacre; in it, an entry reads, "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today." It was used as source material for a biographical book about Vautrin and her role during the Nanking Massacre, called American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, written by Hua-ling Hu.
" to narrate the events of the Nanking Massacre, from three different perspectives: that of the Japanese military, the Chinese victims, and the Westerners who tried to help Chinese civilians. The second part was written on the postwar reaction to the massacre, especially the reaction of the American and European governments. The third part of the book is dedicated to examining the circumstances that, Chang believed, have kept knowledge of the massacre out of public consciousness decades after the war.
, "death by fire", "death by ice", and "death by dogs". Based on the testimony of a survivor of the massacre, Chang also described a killing contest amongst a group of Japanese soldiers to determine who could kill the fastest. On the rape that occurred during the massacre, Chang wrote that "certainly it was one of the greatest mass rapes in world history." She estimated that the number of women raped ranged from twenty thousand to as many as eighty thousand, and stated that women from all classes were raped, including Buddhist nuns. Furthermore, rape occurred in all locations and at all hours, and women both very young and very old were raped. Not even pregnant women were spared, Chang wrote, and that after gang rape, Japanese soldiers "sometimes slashed open the bellies of pregnant women and ripped out the fetus
es for amusement". Not all rape victims were women, according to the book, Chinese men were sodomized and forced to perform repulsive sexual acts. Some were forced to commit incest—fathers to rape their own daughters, brothers their sisters, sons their mothers.
and the procurator of the District Court of Nanjing in 1946 stated at least 300,000 were killed, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East
(IMTFE) judges concluded that more than 260,000 people were killed, Japanese historian Fujiwara Akira approximated 200,000, John Rabe, who "never conducted a systematic count and left Nanking in February", estimated only 50,000 to 60,000, and Japanese author Ikuhiko Hata
argued the number killed was between 38,000 and 42,000.
The book discussed the research of historian Sun Zhaiwei of the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences. In a 1990 paper entitled The Nanking Massacre and the Nanking Population, Sun estimated the total number of people killed at 377,400. Using Chinese burial records, he calculated that the number dead exceeded the figure of 227,400. He then added estimates totaling 150,000 given by Japanese imperial army major Ohta Hisao in a confessional report about the Japanese army's disposal efforts of dead bodies, arriving at the sum of 377,400 dead.
Chang wrote that there is "compelling evidence" that the Japanese themselves, at the time, believed that the death toll may have been as high as 300,000. She cited a message that Japan's foreign minister
Kōki Hirota
relayed to his contacts in Washington, DC in the first month of the massacre on January 17, 1938. The message acknowledged that "not less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians [were] slaughtered, many cases in cold blood."
The Rape of Nanking sold more than half a million copies when it was first published in the US, and according to The New York Times
, received general critical acclaim. Iris Chang became an instant celebrity in the US; she was awarded honorary degrees, invited to give lectures and to discuss the Nanking Massacre on shows such as Good Morning America
, Nightline, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
, and was profiled by The New York Times as well as featured on the cover of Reader's Digest
. The book was on the New York Times Best Seller list
for 10 weeks and sold more than 125,000 copies in four months. Hillary Clinton invited her to the White House
, US historian Stephen Ambrose
described her as "maybe the best young historian we’ve got", and the Organization of Chinese Americans
named her National Woman of the Year. The book's popularity prompted a lengthy book tour, with Chang visiting 65 cities in over a year and a half.
The book received praise from news media. The Wall Street Journal
wrote that it was the "first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city", and that Chang "skillfully excavated from oblivion the terrible events that took place". The Atlantic Monthly
wrote that it was "a crushing indictment of the Japanese army's behavior". The Chicago Tribune
wrote that it was "a powerful new work of history and moral inquiry" and that "Chang takes great care to establish an accurate accounting of the dimensions of the violence." The Philadelphia Inquirer
wrote that it was a "compelling account of a horrendous episode that, until recently, has been largely forgotten", and that "animals do not behave the way the Japanese troops of the Imperial Army behaved."
According to William C. Kirby
, Professor of History at Harvard University
, Chang "shows more clearly than any previous account just what [the Japanese] did", and that she "draws connections between the slaughter in Europe and in Asia of millions of innocents during World War II". Ross Terrill, an associate in research at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University
, wrote that the book is "scholarly, an exciting investigation and a work of passion". Beatrice S. Bartlett, Emeritus Professor of History at Yale University
, wrote, "Iris Chang's research on the Nanking holocaust yields a new and expanded telling of this World War II atrocity and reflects thorough research."
and was diagnosed with "brief reactive psychosis
" in August 2004. She began taking medications to stabilize her mood. She wrote:
, California
, and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre
, a memorial site in Nanjing built to commemorate the victims of the Nanking Massacre, added a wing dedicated to her in 2005.
In the US, a Chinese garden in Norfolk
, Virginia
, which contains a memorial to Minnie Vautrin
, added a memorial dedicated to Chang, including her as the latest victim of the Nanking Massacre, and drawing parallels between Chang and Vautrin, who also took her own life. Vautrin exhausted herself trying to protect women and children during the Nanking Massacre and subsequently during the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, finally suffering a nervous breakdown in 1940. She returned to the US for medical treatment, committing suicide a year later.
, argued that the book is "seriously flawed" and "full of misinformation and harebrained explanations." He suggested that the book "starts to fall apart" when Chang tried to explain why the massacre took place, as she repeatedly commented on "the Japanese psyche" which she sees as "the historical product of centuries of conditioning that all boil down to mass murder
" even though in the introduction, she wrote that she will offer no "commentary on the Japanese character or the genetic makeup of a people who could commit such acts". Fogel criticized that part of the problem is Chang's "lack of training as a historian" and another part is "the book's dual aim as passionate polemic and dispassionate history". David M. Kennedy
, a Pulitzer Prize winning professor of history at Stanford University
, also pointed out that while Chang noted that "this book is not intended as a commentary on the Japanese character," she then wrote about the "'Japanese identity'—a bloody business, in her estimation, replete with martial competitions, samurai ethics, and the fearsome warriors' code of bushido
", making the inference that "'the path to Nanking' runs through the very marrow of Japanese culture." Kennedy also suggested that "accusation and outrage, rather than analysis and understanding, are this book's dominant motifs, and although outrage is a morally necessary response to Nanjing, it is an intellectually insufficient one." Roger B. Jeans, professor of history at Washington and Lee University
, refers to Chang's book as "half-baked history", and criticizes her lack of experience with the subject matter:
Jeans continued what he calls "giving the lie to Iris Chang's generalizations about 'the Japanese'" by discussing the clashing interest groups within Japanese society over such things as museums, textbooks, and war memory.
Robert Entenmann, professor of history at St. Olaf College
, criticized the work on the grounds that the "Japanese historical background Chang presents is clichéd, simplistic, stereotyped, and often inaccurate." On Chang's treatment of modern Japanese reaction to the massacre, he writes that Chang seemed "unable to differentiate between some members of the ultranationalist fringe and other Japanese", and that "her own ethnic prejudice
implicitly pervades her book." Stating that Chang's description of the massacre is "open to criticism", Entenmann further commented that Chang "does not adequately explain why the massacre occurred".
Journalist Timothy M. Kelly described Chang's work as exhibiting "simple carelessness, sheer sloppiness, historical inaccuracies, and shameless plagiarism." Kelly further criticized Chang for her "lack of attention to detail". Finally, Kelly charged that Chang also had plagiarized
passages and an illustration from Japan's Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini
.
Kennedy criticized Chang's accusation of "Western indifference" and "Japanese denial" of the massacre as being "exaggerated", commenting that "the Western world in fact neither then nor later ignored the Rape of Nanking" and that "nor is Chang entirely correct that Japan has obstinately refused to acknowledge its wartime crimes, let alone express regret for them." Chang argues that Japan "remains to this day a renegade nation," having "managed to avoid the moral judgment of the civilized world that the Germans were made to accept for their actions in this nightmare time." However, according to Kennedy, this accusation has already become a cliché of Western criticism of Japan, most notably exemplified by Ian Buruma
's The Wages of Guilt (1994), whose general thesis might be summarized as "Germany remembers too much, Japan too little." Kennedy pointed out that a vocal Japanese left has long kept the memory of Nanking alive, noting the 1995 resolution
of Japan's House of Councillors
that expressed "deep remorse" (fukai hansei) for the suffering that Japan inflicted on other peoples during World War II and clear apologies (owabi) for Imperial Japan's offenses against other nations from two Japanese Prime Ministers.
Sonni Efron of Los Angeles Times
warned that the bitter row over Iris Chang's book may leave Westerners with the "misimpression" that little has been written in Japan about the Nanjing Massacre, when in fact the National Diet Library
holds at least 42 books about the Nanjing massacre and Japan's wartime misdeeds, 21 of which were written by liberals investigating Japan's wartime atrocities. In addition, Efron noted that geriatric Japanese soldiers have published their memoirs and have been giving speeches and interviews in increasing numbers, recounting the atrocities they committed or witnessed. After years of government-enforced denial, Japanese middle school textbooks now carry accounts of the Nanjing massacre as accepted truth. Fogel also writes: "Dozens of Japanese scholars are now actively engaged in research on every aspect of the war.... Indeed, we know many details of the Nanjing massacre, Japanese sexual exploitation of 'comfort women,' and biological and chemical warfare used in China because of the trailblazing research" of Japanese scholars.
San Francisco Chronicle
Staff Writer Charles Burress wrote that Chang's quote of a secret telegram sent by Japan's foreign minister in 1938 was incorrectly cited as "compelling evidence" that Japanese troops killed at least 300,000 Chinese civilians in Nanjing. According to Burress, the figure of 300,000 Chinese civilians killed actually came from a message sent by a British reporter, concerning deaths not only in Nanjing but in other places as well. Additionally, Burress questioned her motivation for writing the book on whether she wrote it as an activist or as a historian, citing that the book "draws its emotional impetus" from her conviction to not let the Nanking Massacre be forgotten to the world. Burress also cited Ikuhiko Hata
, a Japanese history professor at Nihon University
, who argued that 11 photos in the book were misrepresented or fake. One particular photo shows women and children walking across a bridge with Japanese soldiers, and captioned as "The Japanese rounded up thousands of women. Most were gang-raped or forced into military prostitution." Hata stated that the photo originally appeared in 1937 in a Japanese newspaper as part of a series of photos that showed peaceful scenes of Chinese villagers under Japanese occupation.
Chang attempted to respond to Burress' criticism in a letter written to the San Francisco Chronicle, but the letter was not published by the newspaper. In the letter, she offered criticism of her own concerning Burress' article. Chang found that it was a "disturbing tendency" that Burress quoted right-wing Japanese critics "without demanding evidence to back up their allegations". Furthermore, she argued that Ikuhiko Hata, a source cited by Burress, was not "regarded as a serious scholar" either in Japan or in the US, because he was a regular contributor to "ultra right-wing" Japanese publications. One such publication had published an article from a Holocaust denier
which argued that no gas chamber
s were used in Germany
to kill Jews. This has caused the parent publisher to shut down the publication. On Burress' criticism of her inaccurate photo captioning, Chang disputed the contention that the caption was wrong. She wrote that her book dealt with the "horror of the Japanese invasion of China", and that the caption reading "The Japanese rounded up thousands of women. Most were gang-raped or forced into military prostitution" contained two statements of indisputable facts.
Chang also issued a rejoinder against Burress' argument that she incorrectly cited a telegram sent by Japan's foreign minister. She wrote that while the original figure of 300,000 Chinese civilian deaths in Nanjing was reported by a British reporter, this figure was cited in a message that Japan's foreign minister sent to his contacts in Washington, DC. Being a figure used by a high-ranking Japanese government official, Chang argued that this was evidence that the Japanese government recognized 300,000 as the number of Chinese civilian deaths. Finally, she criticized Burress for his "nitpick" of small details in order to draw attention away from the scope and magnitude of the Nanking Massacre, writing that such was a "common tactic" of Holocaust deniers.
The Rape of Nanking has caused controversy in Japan. Los Angeles Times
staff writer Sonni Efron reported that in addition to receiving criticism by Japanese "ultranationalists" who believe that the massacre in Nanjing never took place, Chang was also criticized by Japanese liberals, who "insist the massacre happened but allege that Chang's flawed scholarship damages their cause". Associate Professor David Askew of
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
stated that Chang's work dealt a "severe blow" to the "Great Massacre School" of thought, which advocates for the validity of the findings at the Tokyo Trials, the tribunal that was convened to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan
for crimes committed during World War II. Askew further argued that "the Great Massacre School has thus been forced into the (unusual) position of criticising a work that argues for a larger death toll."
Following the publication of The Rape of Nanking, Japanese critic Masaaki Tanaka
decided to have his 1987 book on Nanking translated into English. Entitled What Really Happened in Nanking: the Refutation of a Common Myth, Tanaka states in his introduction "I am convinced that [American researchers] will arrive at the realization that violations of international law of the magnitude alleged by Iris Chang in The Rape of Nanking (more than 300,000 murders and 80,000 rapes) never took place."
Chang's book was not published in a translated Japanese language edition until December 2007. Problems with translation efforts surfaced immediately after a contract was signed for the Japanese publishing of the book. A Japanese literary agency informed Chang that several Japanese historians declined to review the translation, and that one professor backed out due to pressure placed on his family from "an unknown organization". According to Japan scholar Ivan P. Hall, revisionist historians in Japan organized a committee of right-wing scholars to condemn the book with repeated appearances at the Foreign Correspondents' Club
in Tokyo
and throughout Japan. They prevailed on Kashiwa Shobo, the contracted Japanese publisher of the book, to insist that Chang edit the book for "corrections" they wanted made, to delete photographs and alter maps, and to publish a rebuttal to Chang's book. Chang disagreed with the changes and, as a result, withdrew the Japanese publishing of the book. The rebuttal piece was nonetheless published in the form of a 288-page book, titled A study of The Rape of Nanking, written by Nobukatsu Fujioka
and Shudo Higashinakano.
Shudo Higashinakano, a professor of Intellectual History at Asia University of Japan
, argued in an opinion column that appeared in Sankei Shimbun
that the book was "pure baloney", that there was "no witness of illegal executions or murders", and that "there existed no 'Rape of Nanking' as alleged by the Tokyo Trial." He pointed out 90 historical factual errors in the first 64 pages of The Rape of Nanking, some of which were corrected in the 1998 Penguin Books
edition of the book.
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
1997 non-fiction
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
book written by Iris Chang
Iris Chang
Iris Shun-Ru Chang was an American historian and journalist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. She committed suicide on November 9, 2004...
about the 1937–1938 Nanking Massacre
Nanking Massacre
The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass murder, genocide and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing , the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 13, 1937 during the Second...
, the massacre and atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army
Imperial Japanese Army
-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
after it captured Nanjing
Nanjing
' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...
, then capital of China
Republic of China
The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...
, during the Second Sino-Japanese War
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
. It documents the events, based on the author's research, leading up to the Nanking Massacre and the atrocities that were committed. The book also presents the view that the Japanese government has not done enough to redress the atrocities. It is one of the first major English-language books to introduce the Nanking Massacre to Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
and Eastern
Eastern world
__FORCETOC__The term Eastern world refers very broadly to the various cultures or social structures and philosophical systems of Eastern Asia or geographically the Eastern Culture...
readers alike, and has been translated into several languages.
The book was a source of fame for Chang but was also controversial; it has been praised as a work which "shows more clearly than any previous account" the extent and brutality of the episode, while at the same time it was criticised as "seriously flawed" and "full of misinformation and harebrained explanations". It was received with both acclaim and criticism by the public and by academics. Chang's research on the book was credited with the finding of the diaries of John Rabe
John Rabe
John Rabe was a German businessman who is best known for his efforts to stop the atrocities of the Japanese army during the Nanking Occupation and his work to protect and help the Chinese civilians during the event...
and Minnie Vautrin
Minnie Vautrin
Wilhelmina Vautrin was an American missionary renowned for saving the lives of many women at the Ginling Girls College in Nanjing, China, during the Nanking Massacre.- Biography :...
, both of whom played important roles in the Nanking Safety Zone
Nanking Safety Zone
The Nanking Safety Zone was a demilitarized zone for Chinese civilians set up on the eve of the Japanese breakthrough in the Battle of Nanking...
, a designated area in Nanjing which protected Chinese civilians during the Nanking Massacre.
The book prompted AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
executive Ted Leonsis
Ted Leonsis
Theodore John Leonsis is an Internet pioneer, sports team owner, venture capital investor, filmmaker, author and philanthropist. His early new media company, Redgate Communications was acquired by America Online in 1994, and Leonsis became a senior AOL executive for the next 13 years...
to fund and produce Nanking
Nanking (film)
Nanking is a 2007 film about the 1937 Nanking Massacre committed by the Japanese army in the former capital city Nanjing, China. The film draws on letters and diaries from the era as well as archive footage and interviews with surviving victims and perpetrators of the massacre...
, a 2007 documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about the Nanking Massacre, after he read it.
Inspiration
When Iris Chang was a child, she was told by her immigrant parents, who had escaped from China via TaiwanTaiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
to the United States during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, that during the Nanking Massacre, the Japanese "sliced babies not just in half but in thirds and fourths". In the introduction of The Rape of Nanking, she wrote that throughout her childhood, the Nanking Massacre "remained buried in the back of [her] mind as a metaphor for unspeakable evil". When she searched the local public libraries in her school and found nothing, she wondered why nobody had written a book about it.
The subject of the Nanking Massacre entered Chang's life again almost two decades later when she learned of producers who had completed documentary films about it. One of the producers was Shao Tzuping, who helped produce Magee's Testament, a film which contains footage of the Nanking Massacre itself, shot by the missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
John Magee. The other producer was Nancy Tong, who, together with Christine Choy, produced and co-directed In The Name of the Emperor, a film containing a series of interviews with Chinese, American, and Japanese citizens. Chang began talking to Shao and Tong, and soon she was connected to a network of activists who felt the need to document and publicize the Nanking Massacre. In December 1994, she attended a conference on the Nanking Massacre, held in Cupertino
Cupertino, California
Cupertino is an affluent suburban city in Santa Clara County, California in the U.S., directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 58,302 at the time of the 2010 census. Forbes...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, and it was what she saw and heard at the conference that motivated her to write The Rape of Nanking. As she wrote in the introduction of the book, while she was at the conference, she was "suddenly in a panic that this terrifying disrespect for death and dying, this reversion in human social evolution, would be reduced to a footnote of history, treated like a harmless glitch in a computer program that might or might not again cause a problem, unless someone forced the world to remember it".
Research
Chang spent two years on research for the book. She found that raw source materials were available in the US, contained in the diaries, films, and photographs of American missionaries, journalists, and military officers who were in NanjingNanjing
' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...
at the time of the Nanking Massacre. Additionally, she traveled to Nanjing to interview survivors of the Nanking Massacre and to read Chinese accounts and confessions by Japanese army veterans. Chang did not, however, conduct research in Japan, and this left her vulnerable to criticisms on how she portrayed modern Japan in the context of how it deals with its World War II past.
Chang's research led her to make what one San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
article called "significant discoveries" on the subject of the Nanking Massacre, in the forms of the diaries of two Westerners that were in Nanjing leading efforts to save lives during the Japanese invasion. The first diary was that of John Rabe, a German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
Nazi Party member who was the leader of the Nanking Safety Zone, a demilitarized zone
Demilitarized zone
In military terms, a demilitarized zone is an area, usually the frontier or boundary between two or more military powers , where military activity is not permitted, usually by peace treaty, armistice, or other bilateral or multilateral agreement...
in Nanjing that Rabe and other Westerners set up to protect Chinese civilians. The other diary belonged to the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, who saved the lives of about 10,000 women and children when she provided them with shelter in Ginling College
Ginling College
Ginling College was a Christian university founded in 1913 in Nanjing, China...
. The diaries documented the events of the Nanking Massacre from the perspectives of their writers, and provided detailed accounts of atrocities that they saw, as well as information surrounding the circumstances of the Nanking Safety Zone. Chang dubbed Rabe the "Oskar Schindler
Oskar Schindler
Oskar Schindler was an ethnic German industrialist born in Moravia. He is credited with saving over 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic respectively.He is the subject of the...
of Nanking" and Vautrin the "Anne Frank
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...
of Nanking". Rabe's diary is over 800 pages, and contains one of the most detailed accounts of the Nanking Massacre. Translated into English, it was published in 1998 by Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
as a book on its own, called The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe. Vautrin's diary recounts her personal experience and feelings on the Nanking Massacre; in it, an entry reads, "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today." It was used as source material for a biographical book about Vautrin and her role during the Nanking Massacre, called American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, written by Hua-ling Hu.
The book
The Rape of Nanking is structured into three main parts. The first part uses a technique that Chang called "the Rashomon perspectiveRashomon (film)
The bandit's storyTajōmaru, a notorious brigand , claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at a cache of ancient swords he discovered. In the grove he tied the samurai to a tree, then brought the woman there. She initially tried to defend herself with a...
" to narrate the events of the Nanking Massacre, from three different perspectives: that of the Japanese military, the Chinese victims, and the Westerners who tried to help Chinese civilians. The second part was written on the postwar reaction to the massacre, especially the reaction of the American and European governments. The third part of the book is dedicated to examining the circumstances that, Chang believed, have kept knowledge of the massacre out of public consciousness decades after the war.
Atrocities
The book depicted in detail the killing, torture, and rape that occurred during the Nanking Massacre. Chang listed and described the kinds of torture that were visited upon the residents, including live burials, mutilationMutilation
Mutilation or maiming is an act of physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of any living body, usually without causing death.- Usage :...
, "death by fire", "death by ice", and "death by dogs". Based on the testimony of a survivor of the massacre, Chang also described a killing contest amongst a group of Japanese soldiers to determine who could kill the fastest. On the rape that occurred during the massacre, Chang wrote that "certainly it was one of the greatest mass rapes in world history." She estimated that the number of women raped ranged from twenty thousand to as many as eighty thousand, and stated that women from all classes were raped, including Buddhist nuns. Furthermore, rape occurred in all locations and at all hours, and women both very young and very old were raped. Not even pregnant women were spared, Chang wrote, and that after gang rape, Japanese soldiers "sometimes slashed open the bellies of pregnant women and ripped out the fetus
Fetus
A fetus is a developing mammal or other viviparous vertebrate after the embryonic stage and before birth.In humans, the fetal stage of prenatal development starts at the beginning of the 11th week in gestational age, which is the 9th week after fertilization.-Etymology and spelling variations:The...
es for amusement". Not all rape victims were women, according to the book, Chinese men were sodomized and forced to perform repulsive sexual acts. Some were forced to commit incest—fathers to rape their own daughters, brothers their sisters, sons their mothers.
Death toll
Chang wrote of the death toll estimates given by different sources; Chinese military specialist Liu Fang-chu proposed a figure of 430,000, officials at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial HallNanjing Massacre Memorial Hall
The Memorial for compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression is the Memorial Hall for the people killed in the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese army in and around the then capital of China, Nanjing, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on December 13, 1937...
and the procurator of the District Court of Nanjing in 1946 stated at least 300,000 were killed, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East
International Military Tribunal for the Far East
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East , also known as the Tokyo Trials, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, or simply the Tribunal, was convened on April 29, 1946, to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three types of crimes: "Class A" crimes were reserved for those who...
(IMTFE) judges concluded that more than 260,000 people were killed, Japanese historian Fujiwara Akira approximated 200,000, John Rabe, who "never conducted a systematic count and left Nanking in February", estimated only 50,000 to 60,000, and Japanese author Ikuhiko Hata
Ikuhiko Hata
is a Japanese revisionist historian. He published many books and interpretive studies in both Japanese military and modern history.-Education and career:...
argued the number killed was between 38,000 and 42,000.
The book discussed the research of historian Sun Zhaiwei of the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences. In a 1990 paper entitled The Nanking Massacre and the Nanking Population, Sun estimated the total number of people killed at 377,400. Using Chinese burial records, he calculated that the number dead exceeded the figure of 227,400. He then added estimates totaling 150,000 given by Japanese imperial army major Ohta Hisao in a confessional report about the Japanese army's disposal efforts of dead bodies, arriving at the sum of 377,400 dead.
Chang wrote that there is "compelling evidence" that the Japanese themselves, at the time, believed that the death toll may have been as high as 300,000. She cited a message that Japan's foreign minister
Minister for Foreign Affairs (Japan)
The of Japan is the Cabinet member responsible for Japanese foreign policy and the chief executive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Since the end of the American occupation of Japan, the position has been one of the most powerful in the Cabinet, as Japan's economic interests have long relied on...
Kōki Hirota
Koki Hirota
was a Japanese diplomat, politician and the 32nd Prime Minister of Japan from March 9, 1936 to February 2, 1937.-Early life:Hirota was born in what is now part of Chūō-ku, Fukuoka city, Fukuoka Prefecture. His father was a stonemason, and he was adopted into the Hirota family. After attending...
relayed to his contacts in Washington, DC in the first month of the massacre on January 17, 1938. The message acknowledged that "not less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians [were] slaughtered, many cases in cold blood."
Acclaim
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, received general critical acclaim. Iris Chang became an instant celebrity in the US; she was awarded honorary degrees, invited to give lectures and to discuss the Nanking Massacre on shows such as Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
, Nightline, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
PBS NewsHour is an evening television news program broadcast weeknights on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. The show is produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, a company co-owned by former anchors Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil, and Liberty Media, which owns a 65% stake in the...
, and was profiled by The New York Times as well as featured on the cover of Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest is a general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace...
. The book was on the New York Times Best Seller list
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
for 10 weeks and sold more than 125,000 copies in four months. Hillary Clinton invited her to the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
, US historian Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many best selling volumes of American popular history...
described her as "maybe the best young historian we’ve got", and the Organization of Chinese Americans
Organization of Chinese Americans
Founded in 1973, the Organization of Chinese Americans is a national organization dedicated to advancing the social, political, and economic well-being of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States...
named her National Woman of the Year. The book's popularity prompted a lengthy book tour, with Chang visiting 65 cities in over a year and a half.
The book received praise from news media. The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
wrote that it was the "first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city", and that Chang "skillfully excavated from oblivion the terrible events that took place". The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
wrote that it was "a crushing indictment of the Japanese army's behavior". The Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
wrote that it was "a powerful new work of history and moral inquiry" and that "Chang takes great care to establish an accurate accounting of the dimensions of the violence." The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
wrote that it was a "compelling account of a horrendous episode that, until recently, has been largely forgotten", and that "animals do not behave the way the Japanese troops of the Imperial Army behaved."
According to William C. Kirby
William C. Kirby
William C. Kirby is T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University, where is he concurrently the Director of Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Chairman of the Harvard China Fund. He is the former Dean of the Harvard...
, Professor of History at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Chang "shows more clearly than any previous account just what [the Japanese] did", and that she "draws connections between the slaughter in Europe and in Asia of millions of innocents during World War II". Ross Terrill, an associate in research at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, wrote that the book is "scholarly, an exciting investigation and a work of passion". Beatrice S. Bartlett, Emeritus Professor of History at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, wrote, "Iris Chang's research on the Nanking holocaust yields a new and expanded telling of this World War II atrocity and reflects thorough research."
Chang's death
The book was the main source of fame for Iris Chang, who was well respected in China for raising awareness of the Nanking Massacre in the Western world. At the same time, Chang received hate mail (primarily from Japanese ultranationalists), threatening notes on her car and believed her phone was tapped. She would respond overwhelmingly to any question of the validity of her work. Her own mother said the book "made Iris sad". Chang suffered from depressionClinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
and was diagnosed with "brief reactive psychosis
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
" in August 2004. She began taking medications to stabilize her mood. She wrote:
I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the CIASuccumbing to her battle with depression, Chang took her own life in November 2004. After her suicide, a memorial service was held in China by Nanking Massacre survivors at the same time as her funeral in Los AltosCentral Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.
Los Altos, California
Los Altos is a city at the southern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The city is in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 28,976 according to the 2010 census....
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre
Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall
The Memorial for compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression is the Memorial Hall for the people killed in the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese army in and around the then capital of China, Nanjing, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on December 13, 1937...
, a memorial site in Nanjing built to commemorate the victims of the Nanking Massacre, added a wing dedicated to her in 2005.
In the US, a Chinese garden in Norfolk
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, which contains a memorial to Minnie Vautrin
Minnie Vautrin
Wilhelmina Vautrin was an American missionary renowned for saving the lives of many women at the Ginling Girls College in Nanjing, China, during the Nanking Massacre.- Biography :...
, added a memorial dedicated to Chang, including her as the latest victim of the Nanking Massacre, and drawing parallels between Chang and Vautrin, who also took her own life. Vautrin exhausted herself trying to protect women and children during the Nanking Massacre and subsequently during the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, finally suffering a nervous breakdown in 1940. She returned to the US for medical treatment, committing suicide a year later.
Criticism
Joshua A. Fogel, Canada Research Chair at York UniversityYork University
York University is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, Ontario's second-largest graduate school, and Canada's leading interdisciplinary university....
, argued that the book is "seriously flawed" and "full of misinformation and harebrained explanations." He suggested that the book "starts to fall apart" when Chang tried to explain why the massacre took place, as she repeatedly commented on "the Japanese psyche" which she sees as "the historical product of centuries of conditioning that all boil down to mass murder
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
" even though in the introduction, she wrote that she will offer no "commentary on the Japanese character or the genetic makeup of a people who could commit such acts". Fogel criticized that part of the problem is Chang's "lack of training as a historian" and another part is "the book's dual aim as passionate polemic and dispassionate history". David M. Kennedy
David M. Kennedy (historian)
David M. Kennedy is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning historian specializing in American history. He is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and the Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West...
, a Pulitzer Prize winning professor of history at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, also pointed out that while Chang noted that "this book is not intended as a commentary on the Japanese character," she then wrote about the "'Japanese identity'—a bloody business, in her estimation, replete with martial competitions, samurai ethics, and the fearsome warriors' code of bushido
Bushido
, meaning "Way of the Warrior-Knight", is a Japanese word which is used to describe a uniquely Japanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and...
", making the inference that "'the path to Nanking' runs through the very marrow of Japanese culture." Kennedy also suggested that "accusation and outrage, rather than analysis and understanding, are this book's dominant motifs, and although outrage is a morally necessary response to Nanjing, it is an intellectually insufficient one." Roger B. Jeans, professor of history at Washington and Lee University
Washington and Lee University
Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia, United States.The classical school from which Washington and Lee descended was established in 1749 as Augusta Academy, about north of its present location. In 1776 it was renamed Liberty Hall in a burst of...
, refers to Chang's book as "half-baked history", and criticizes her lack of experience with the subject matter:
In writing about this horrific event, Chang strives to portray it as an unexamined Asian holocaust. Unfortunately, she undermines her argument—she is not a trained historian—by neglecting the wealth of sources in English and Japanese on this event. This leads her into errors such as greatly inflating the population of Nanjing (Nanking) at that time and uncritically accepting the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and contemporary Chinese figures for the numbers of Chinese civilians and soldiers killed. What particularly struck me about her argument was her attempt to charge all Japanese with refusing to accept the fact of the 'Rape of Nanking' and her condemnation of the 'persistent Japanese refusal to come to terms with its past.'
Jeans continued what he calls "giving the lie to Iris Chang's generalizations about 'the Japanese'" by discussing the clashing interest groups within Japanese society over such things as museums, textbooks, and war memory.
Robert Entenmann, professor of history at St. Olaf College
St. Olaf College
St. Olaf College is a coeducational, residential, four-year, private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, United States. It was founded in 1874 by a group of Norwegian-American immigrant pastors and farmers, led by Pastor Bernt Julius Muus. The college is named after Olaf II of Norway,...
, criticized the work on the grounds that the "Japanese historical background Chang presents is clichéd, simplistic, stereotyped, and often inaccurate." On Chang's treatment of modern Japanese reaction to the massacre, he writes that Chang seemed "unable to differentiate between some members of the ultranationalist fringe and other Japanese", and that "her own ethnic prejudice
Prejudice
Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...
implicitly pervades her book." Stating that Chang's description of the massacre is "open to criticism", Entenmann further commented that Chang "does not adequately explain why the massacre occurred".
Journalist Timothy M. Kelly described Chang's work as exhibiting "simple carelessness, sheer sloppiness, historical inaccuracies, and shameless plagiarism." Kelly further criticized Chang for her "lack of attention to detail". Finally, Kelly charged that Chang also had plagiarized
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
passages and an illustration from Japan's Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini
David Bergamini
David Bergamini , was an American author who wrote books on 20th century history and popular science, notably mathematics...
.
Kennedy criticized Chang's accusation of "Western indifference" and "Japanese denial" of the massacre as being "exaggerated", commenting that "the Western world in fact neither then nor later ignored the Rape of Nanking" and that "nor is Chang entirely correct that Japan has obstinately refused to acknowledge its wartime crimes, let alone express regret for them." Chang argues that Japan "remains to this day a renegade nation," having "managed to avoid the moral judgment of the civilized world that the Germans were made to accept for their actions in this nightmare time." However, according to Kennedy, this accusation has already become a cliché of Western criticism of Japan, most notably exemplified by Ian Buruma
Ian Buruma
Buruma is a nephew of the English film director John Schlesinger, a series of interviews with whom he published in book form.-Works:*The Japanese Tattoo with Donald Richie ISBN 978-0-8348-0228-5...
's The Wages of Guilt (1994), whose general thesis might be summarized as "Germany remembers too much, Japan too little." Kennedy pointed out that a vocal Japanese left has long kept the memory of Nanking alive, noting the 1995 resolution
Resolution to renew the determination for peace on the basis of lessons learned from history
The , also known as Fusen Ketsugi, is a issued by the House of Representatives of Japan on June 9, 1995:The original draft of the resolution that was submitted by Japan Socialist Party contained stronger expressions of apology...
of Japan's House of Councillors
House of Councillors
The is the upper house of the Diet of Japan. The House of Representatives is the lower house. The House of Councillors is the successor to the pre-war House of Peers. If the two houses disagree on matters of the budget, treaties, or designation of the prime minister, the House of Representatives...
that expressed "deep remorse" (fukai hansei) for the suffering that Japan inflicted on other peoples during World War II and clear apologies (owabi) for Imperial Japan's offenses against other nations from two Japanese Prime Ministers.
Sonni Efron of Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
warned that the bitter row over Iris Chang's book may leave Westerners with the "misimpression" that little has been written in Japan about the Nanjing Massacre, when in fact the National Diet Library
National Diet Library
The is the only national library in Japan. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the in researching matters of public policy. The library is similar in purpose and scope to the U.S...
holds at least 42 books about the Nanjing massacre and Japan's wartime misdeeds, 21 of which were written by liberals investigating Japan's wartime atrocities. In addition, Efron noted that geriatric Japanese soldiers have published their memoirs and have been giving speeches and interviews in increasing numbers, recounting the atrocities they committed or witnessed. After years of government-enforced denial, Japanese middle school textbooks now carry accounts of the Nanjing massacre as accepted truth. Fogel also writes: "Dozens of Japanese scholars are now actively engaged in research on every aspect of the war.... Indeed, we know many details of the Nanjing massacre, Japanese sexual exploitation of 'comfort women,' and biological and chemical warfare used in China because of the trailblazing research" of Japanese scholars.
Responding to criticism
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
Staff Writer Charles Burress wrote that Chang's quote of a secret telegram sent by Japan's foreign minister in 1938 was incorrectly cited as "compelling evidence" that Japanese troops killed at least 300,000 Chinese civilians in Nanjing. According to Burress, the figure of 300,000 Chinese civilians killed actually came from a message sent by a British reporter, concerning deaths not only in Nanjing but in other places as well. Additionally, Burress questioned her motivation for writing the book on whether she wrote it as an activist or as a historian, citing that the book "draws its emotional impetus" from her conviction to not let the Nanking Massacre be forgotten to the world. Burress also cited Ikuhiko Hata
Ikuhiko Hata
is a Japanese revisionist historian. He published many books and interpretive studies in both Japanese military and modern history.-Education and career:...
, a Japanese history professor at Nihon University
Nihon University
Nihon University is the largest university in Japan. Akiyoshi Yamada, the minister of justice, founded Nihon Law School in October 1889....
, who argued that 11 photos in the book were misrepresented or fake. One particular photo shows women and children walking across a bridge with Japanese soldiers, and captioned as "The Japanese rounded up thousands of women. Most were gang-raped or forced into military prostitution." Hata stated that the photo originally appeared in 1937 in a Japanese newspaper as part of a series of photos that showed peaceful scenes of Chinese villagers under Japanese occupation.
Chang attempted to respond to Burress' criticism in a letter written to the San Francisco Chronicle, but the letter was not published by the newspaper. In the letter, she offered criticism of her own concerning Burress' article. Chang found that it was a "disturbing tendency" that Burress quoted right-wing Japanese critics "without demanding evidence to back up their allegations". Furthermore, she argued that Ikuhiko Hata, a source cited by Burress, was not "regarded as a serious scholar" either in Japan or in the US, because he was a regular contributor to "ultra right-wing" Japanese publications. One such publication had published an article from a Holocaust denier
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
which argued that no gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
s were used in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
to kill Jews. This has caused the parent publisher to shut down the publication. On Burress' criticism of her inaccurate photo captioning, Chang disputed the contention that the caption was wrong. She wrote that her book dealt with the "horror of the Japanese invasion of China", and that the caption reading "The Japanese rounded up thousands of women. Most were gang-raped or forced into military prostitution" contained two statements of indisputable facts.
Chang also issued a rejoinder against Burress' argument that she incorrectly cited a telegram sent by Japan's foreign minister. She wrote that while the original figure of 300,000 Chinese civilian deaths in Nanjing was reported by a British reporter, this figure was cited in a message that Japan's foreign minister sent to his contacts in Washington, DC. Being a figure used by a high-ranking Japanese government official, Chang argued that this was evidence that the Japanese government recognized 300,000 as the number of Chinese civilian deaths. Finally, she criticized Burress for his "nitpick" of small details in order to draw attention away from the scope and magnitude of the Nanking Massacre, writing that such was a "common tactic" of Holocaust deniers.
Reaction in Japan
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
staff writer Sonni Efron reported that in addition to receiving criticism by Japanese "ultranationalists" who believe that the massacre in Nanjing never took place, Chang was also criticized by Japanese liberals, who "insist the massacre happened but allege that Chang's flawed scholarship damages their cause". Associate Professor David Askew of
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
, or APU, is a private institution inaugurated April 2000 in Beppu, Ōita, Japan. APU was made possible through the collaboration of three parties from the public and private sectors: Ōita Prefecture, Beppu City and the Ritsumeikan Academy. APU has an enrollment of over 6,000 students...
stated that Chang's work dealt a "severe blow" to the "Great Massacre School" of thought, which advocates for the validity of the findings at the Tokyo Trials, the tribunal that was convened to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
for crimes committed during World War II. Askew further argued that "the Great Massacre School has thus been forced into the (unusual) position of criticising a work that argues for a larger death toll."
Following the publication of The Rape of Nanking, Japanese critic Masaaki Tanaka
Masaaki Tanaka
Masaaki Tanaka was a Japanese author notable for his book What Really Happened in Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth, which denies that the Nanking Massacre as traditionally understood took place...
decided to have his 1987 book on Nanking translated into English. Entitled What Really Happened in Nanking: the Refutation of a Common Myth, Tanaka states in his introduction "I am convinced that [American researchers] will arrive at the realization that violations of international law of the magnitude alleged by Iris Chang in The Rape of Nanking (more than 300,000 murders and 80,000 rapes) never took place."
Chang's book was not published in a translated Japanese language edition until December 2007. Problems with translation efforts surfaced immediately after a contract was signed for the Japanese publishing of the book. A Japanese literary agency informed Chang that several Japanese historians declined to review the translation, and that one professor backed out due to pressure placed on his family from "an unknown organization". According to Japan scholar Ivan P. Hall, revisionist historians in Japan organized a committee of right-wing scholars to condemn the book with repeated appearances at the Foreign Correspondents' Club
Foreign Correspondents' Club
Foreign Correspondents' Club is a group of clubs for foreign correspondents and other journalists. Some clubs are members only, and some are open to the public.-Hong Kong:...
in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
and throughout Japan. They prevailed on Kashiwa Shobo, the contracted Japanese publisher of the book, to insist that Chang edit the book for "corrections" they wanted made, to delete photographs and alter maps, and to publish a rebuttal to Chang's book. Chang disagreed with the changes and, as a result, withdrew the Japanese publishing of the book. The rebuttal piece was nonetheless published in the form of a 288-page book, titled A study of The Rape of Nanking, written by Nobukatsu Fujioka
Nobukatsu Fujioka
is a professor of education at Tokyo University noted for his efforts at removing from Japanese textbooks accounts of wartime atrocities committed by Japan during the Second World War...
and Shudo Higashinakano.
Shudo Higashinakano, a professor of Intellectual History at Asia University of Japan
Asia University (Japan)
thumb|right|Asia UniversityThe is a private university located in Tokyo, Japan that offers courses in Business Administration, Economics, Law and International Relations...
, argued in an opinion column that appeared in Sankei Shimbun
Sankei Shimbun
is a daily newspaper in Japan published by the . It has the sixth highest circulation for a newspaper in Japan, and is considered as one of the five "national" newspapers...
that the book was "pure baloney", that there was "no witness of illegal executions or murders", and that "there existed no 'Rape of Nanking' as alleged by the Tokyo Trial." He pointed out 90 historical factual errors in the first 64 pages of The Rape of Nanking, some of which were corrected in the 1998 Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
edition of the book.
See also
- Black Sun: The Nanking MassacreBlack Sun: The Nanking MassacreBlack Sun: The Nanking Massacre, also called Men Behind the Sun 4, is a 1994 Hong Kong film directed by Mou Tun Fei and is in many ways considered to be a follow up to the 1987 shockumentary film, Men Behind the Sun...
- Tokyo Trial (film)Tokyo Trial (film)-Story:This film was directed by Gao Qunshu and is about the International Military Tribunal for the Far East after Japan surrendered after World War II. The movie presents the Trial from the point of view of the Chinese judge Mei Ju-ao....
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- City of Life and Death
Editions
- English:
- Foreword by Harvard professor William C. KirbyWilliam C. KirbyWilliam C. Kirby is T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University, where is he concurrently the Director of Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Chairman of the Harvard China Fund. He is the former Dean of the Harvard...
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- Foreword by Harvard professor William C. Kirby
- French:
- Chinese:
- Japanese: 巫召鴻訳『ザ・レイプ・オブ・南京—第二次世界大戦の忘れられたホロコースト』（同時代社、2007年12月）ISBN 4886836178
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- (Corrected version) 巫召鴻著『「ザ・レイプ・オブ・南京」を読む』（同時代社、2007年12月）ISBN 4886836186
External links
- Iris Chang's official site
- Interview with Iris Chang on The Rape of Nanking, Metroactive (1996-12-12)
- Once Again, Japan is at war over History by Sonni Efron, Time Staff Writer (1999-06-06, hosted by Geocities.com)
- Iris’s Spirit is Everywhere, AsianWeek.com (archived version from 2006-12-08)
- The Nanking Incident Archives Fact Finders' Forum — includes analysis of photos.
- FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST (PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, February 20, 1998) - Booknotes interview with Chang on Rape of Nanking, January 11, 1998.