Comments on: 102 Former Soldiers in Nanjing, 1937

By: Muninn » Book First in Shibuya

Muninn » Book First in Shibuya — Thu, 25 May 2006 17:06:48 +0000

[…] Ok, where was I? The history section seemed to have gotten a bit worse. Maybe it is just me but the selection for nationalist revisionists seems to have expanded somewhat. While not a very scientific measure, to give you an idea, in the standard “Nanjing incident” (Nanjing massacre) section, 4 out of 12 books were of the “what massacre?” variety. This despite the fact that three of the remaining volumes were compilations of interviews with Japanese soldiers who admitted participating in the slaughter (two of them) and of interviews of victims. I have written about one of these important works here at Muninn. I just cannot understand how, with such excellent empirical material out there, any major publisher can still put out such crap. What made it worse was that both of the books about the Nanjing occupation out on display were of “what massacre?” variety. One was a whole book dedicated to talking about the problematic pictures of the massacre (there are indeed many pictures used in Chinese materials about the massacre which have nothing to do with the occupation of Nanjing in 1937 or are otherwise problematic), and the other was a work discussing KMT party archives showing how they mobilized propaganda to spread anti-Japanese sentiment in the aftermath of the occupation of Nanjing. I don’t have any problem with either of the central claims at work in these two prominently displayed books (that there are many problematic pictures about the massacre and that the Nationalists and later Communists milked the massacre for all its propaganda potential) – it is just that neither of these facts prove a damn thing in the face of a mountain of evidence about the widespread slaughter. […]

By: Derek

Derek — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you for posting that Mitch. Those of us that are not East Asian scholars (such as myself) know generally that the Nanjing massacre was some kind of a murder-and-rape-fest commited by the imperial army, but I have never read detailed accounts such as this. It was not easy to read, but I am glad that I did.

I fear that no matter the overwhelming evidence, the revisionists will never change their position. Instead of following the scientific method, their method is as follows: 1)Create hypothesis. 2)Collect data. 3)Use and expand upon all data that supports hypothesis. 4)Discredit and deny all data that refutes hypothesis. 5)Hypothesis is proven.

One aspect that I find particulaly disconcerting is that as time passes, first-person witnesses will become more scarce and eventually die out. This will only make it easier for the revisionists to promote thier ‘version’ of the events. Irregardless of the problem of compensation of victims, if the Japanese government would acknowledge that these events happened and ensure that they are taught without any ‘glossing over’ in the schools, then the revisionists would be discredited to the point that no one, even the Japaenese, would take them seriously. No matter what the international community thinks, as long as a significant portion of the Japanese populace give ear to the revisionists, the revisionists will continue to weave their clever lies.

By: Kmlawson

Kmlawson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks Derek for your comment. Even if the revisionists are incorrigible, at least collections of this kind of testimony are coming out and can be referred to easily in the future.

By: Danny Yee

Danny Yee — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m seeing large gaps in the text of your post (using Mozilla 1.4.1). For example, it drops out after “Waseda’s” and restarts (after two blank lines) with “methodically”. Could be a Javascript problem, or maybe some kind of character encoding issue.

By: Muninn

Muninn — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there, I’m sorry you are having trouble reading the entry. The page is encoded in Unicode and contains a lot of Japanese text. I have been able to view the posting in IE, Firefox, and Safari on the Mac without any issues, it would be sad if there is trouble reading it on a PC.