> Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, ed.  The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38:
> Complicating the Picture.  New York  Berghahn Books, 2007.  xx + 433
> pp.  $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-84545-180-6; $39.95 (paper), ISBN
> 978-1-84545-500-2.
>
> Reviewed by Sven Saaler (Sophia University)
> Published on H-Genocide (September, 2009)
> Commissioned by Elisa G. von Joeden-Forgey
>
> The Nanjing Massacre and Historical Memory in East Asia
>
> A number of historical issues continue to cast a shadow over Japan's
> relations with its Asian neighbors. Territorial issues between Japan
> on the one side and South Korea, Russia and China on the other remain
> unresolved. Visits of high-ranking politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine
> are considered deeply offensive abroad, because the shrine not only
> venerates 2.5 million ordinary soldiers who gave their lives during
> the war, but also a number of war criminals, who were sentenced to
> death at the 1947-48 "Tokyo Trials," a verdict the Japanese
> government officially recognized in Article. 11 of the 1951 San
> Francisco Peace Treaty. Japanese  denial of atrocities such as the
> Nanjing (Nanking) massacre of 1937/38 as well as the glorification of
> war and colonial rule in ultraconservative circles in Japan also
> continue to strain relations with China and the two Koreas.
>
> While most historians would probably consider their work as ideally
> leading to "closure"--i.e., to the creation of a generally accepted
> picture of a given historical event--this does not seem to be
> possible with a number of these controversies, despite widespread
> agreement that they are important "historical issues" (see, for
> example, the section "Historical Issues" on the homepage of the
> Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs).[1] The "Nanjing Massacre" or
> "Nanjing Incident" of 1937/38 is a case in point.[2] From an outside
> perspective, it is difficult to imagine how so large a gap could
> develop between historians on one side of the spectrum, who argue
> that the victims of this "incident" did not exceed a dozen or so (and
> thus a "massacre" never happened), and, on the other side, a number
> of Japanese and most Chinese historians (as well as the official
> version of the Chinese state) who insist that the figure was as high
> as 200,000 or even 300,000. Despite decades of work, historians have
> not only completely failed to close the numbers gap but have, rather,
> contributed to its widening. As the subtitle of the volume under
> review suggests, the picture is becoming more complicated not only as
> the outcome of increasing academic research, but also as a result of
> activities promoted by a variety of organizations and interest groups
> in recent years.
>
> Before tackling the book under review, it therefore seems important
> to point out that the "battle" for the right to interpret the Nanjing
> question--and other related historical issues--has, to a large
> degree, slipped out of the hands of historians, as a variety of
> people and organizations outside the academy have become more
> involved in investigating the issue, spreading information about
> Nanjing, stimulating discussion, and contributing to historical
> interpretations and the settlement of historical grievances. These
> actors include politicians, lawyers and judges (in lawsuits brought
> by Nanjing victims mainly against the Japanese state, but also as
> participants in academic symposia), journalists, and filmmakers. An
> astonishingly large number of "historical" movies dealing with the
> Nanjing incident have been produced in the last few years, triggered
> by the seventieth anniversary of that event. As the cultural
> historian Aleida Assmann has pointed out, historical movies influence
> popular historical consciousness and the historical perceptions of
> the general public far more than any amount of academic research.[3]
> On the other hand, it is not difficult to spot the academic (and
> political) positions being staked out in the recent wave of Nanjing
> movies. The quasi-official Chinese view of a large massacre with
> several hundred thousand victims is clearly represented in the recent
> Chinese movie "Nanjing! Nanjing!_"_ (the official English title is
> "City of Life and Death").[4] At the other extreme, the (yet to be
> finished) trilogy "Nanjing no shinjitsu_"_ (The Truth of Nanjing)
> represents the conservative Japanese (or "revisionist") view of a
> more-or-less peaceful occupation of Nanjing in December 1938 and the
> absence of any massacre.[5] It was produced by the clearly
> revisionist "Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact."[6]
> The German-Chinese-French co-production "John Rabe",[7] directed by
> Florian Gallenberger,[8] which focuses on the German businessman John
> Rabe and his role in establishing the Nanjing Safety Zone (NSZ),
> seems to be an expression, above all, of the German desire to find
> more "good Germans" in recent history --more "Schindlers"--and is
> thus focused on the large number of victims and Rabe's role in
> saving, as the film's press guide claims, "250,000 Chinese lives."[9]
> The movie won a number of awards in Germany but was ignored in Japan
> when it was released (in Germany and China) in April 2009.[10] All
> the movies mentioned above were released in 2009, but as early as
> December 2007, to mark the seventieth anniversary, a
> half-documentary, half-fictional film called simply "Nanking" had
> been released.[11]  It was produced by Ted Leonis and Bill Guttentag
> and starred, interestingly, Jürgen Prochnow--the "usual suspect" for
> the role of the stereotypical German in American movies--as John
> Rabe.
>
> Against the background of this ongoing interest in the Nanjing issue,
> the volume under review, published in 2007 to mark the seventieth
> anniversary of the massacre, is an important addition to our
> knowledge of the controversy beyond the realms of "historical
> fiction" and "historical theatrical visualization." The reviewer
> shares the editor's view that the "raw passions" portrayed in film
> adaptations and other treatments of the Nanjing story stand in the
> way of reconciliation within East Asia and even constitute an
> obstacle to a convergence of views on the issue; and that these
> "passionate" versions of "'memory'--although valuable for other
> purposes--cannot substitute for empirically verified facts in history
> as an academic discipline" (p. 7).
>
> The book comprises three sections containing sixteen chapters, ten of
> which were originally written in English, while the remaining six
> have been translated from the Japanese originals by the editor, Bob
> Tadashi Wakabayashi. These include one chapter made up of a
> collection of letters written in Nanjing in 1937 by a reserve officer
> called up by the Japanese army. The authors of the translated
> chapters include Kasahara Tokushi and the late Fujiwara Akira, two of
> the most influential Japanese historians of the Nanjing massacre and
> adherents of the view that emphasizes the likelihood of a large
> number of Chinese casualties, both civilian and military, in Nanjing
> in 1937/38 (while not supporting the official Chinese claim that this
> number was as high as 300,000). Some of the other contributors are
> well known as specialists on the massacre through their numerous
> publications on the controversy, and include the editor, Yoshida
> Takashi, David Askew, Timothy Brook, and Joshua A. Fogel. I assume
> that it was not possible to persuade a representative from the
> conservative camp of Japanese historians to contribute a chapter.[12]
> Critics have convincingly undermined the professional credentials of
> many members of the conservative camp, particularly the deniers of
> the Nanjing massacre, who have, over the years, engaged in political
> agitation rather than in rational discussion, so the omission of
> their writings from this volume will probably not be missed by most
> readers.
>
> Despite this, the viewpoint contesting the "large massacre theory"
> and emphasizing the "fact" that the killings were no more than a
> conventional act of war is also aired in the volume, with some of the
> contributors showing some acknowledgement of this position. As the
> editor emphasizes in his introduction, while some awkward facts
> presented in the book were first established by the _deniers_ of a
> large-scale massacre, they cannot be simply rejected based on
> political positions and convictions alone--as has so often been the
> case with "inconvenient" facts in discussions of the Nanjing
> massacre. Reminding readers of E. H. Carr's argument in his seminal
> work of historiography, _What is History?_, the editor urges that
> "historians must try, at least, to rise above the personal,
> political, and ethnic biases that virtually all human beings harbor"
> and strive to arrive at conclusions (and even moral judgments) on a
> "more reliable, less emotionally distorted basis " (p. 23).[13] The
> book seeks to provide the reader with this "more reliable and less
> emotionally distorted basis" for historical judgment and to refine
> "the prevailing view of Japanese turpitude, Chinese victimization,
> and Western humanitarianism at Nanking" (p. 23).
>
> While not all readers would agree with the notion of an apolitical
> approach to history and the possibility of somehow transcending one's
> own social, political and cultural background--not to mention
> emotions--one has to say that, on the whole, the book should be
> considered a balanced work that fairly sets out a number of positions
> and, above all, presents the most recent results of research on what
> is still a very sensitive issue.
>
> The introduction by editor Wakabayashi, and chapter 2 by Fujiwara
> Akira, present an overview of the "Nanjing debate" and the three
> major factions that have developed in response--the "Great Massacre
> faction," the "denial faction," and the "middle ground faction"--as
> well as the issues at stake. In outlining the debate, they tackle
> several important questions. How many people were killed in the
> incident? How many of them were civilians, and how many military
> personnel and POWs? How many were former military personnel who had
> taken off their uniforms and, in breach of international law, were
> fighting the Japanese as "guerillas"--or were simply rounded up as
> stragglers? Was the massacre of an organized nature or was it just
> another random act of brutality such as happens constantly in
> wartime?
>
> Chapter 3 by Kasahara Tokushi traces in detail the "Massacres Outside
> Nanking City," claiming that the number of victims within and around
> the city numbered "well over 100,000 and approaching 200,000" (p.
> 68)--a figure the editor confirms as highly reliable in his closing
> chapter (p. 384). Chapter 4 by Ono Kenji analyzes the "Massacres in
> the Vicinity of Mufushan," a mountainous region near Nanjing where
> 17,000 to 18,000 Chinese POWs were executed.
>
> In chapter 5, David Askew scrutinizes the claims for a large
> massacre, analyzing the population records for Nanjing in December
> 1937 and the numbers of victims as estimated in contemporary reports
> by the Australian journalist Harold J. Timperley, American
> anthropology professor Lewis S. Smythe, German businessman John Rabe,
> missionary John Magee (who managed to film abuses of Chinese
> civilians by Japanese soldiers and later smuggled this footage out of
> Nanjing), and NSZ administration officials like Miner Bates and John
> Fitch, another missionary. Although the point is often made in
> genocide studies that, notwithstanding discussions about the precise
> numbers of victims, the historical responsibility for an atrocity is
> not lessened for the perpetrators nor does the event become less
> traumatic for the victims based on casualty figures, the debate over
> numbers has been an all-consuming issue in both academic and popular
> discussions of events in Nanjing in 1937 and 1938. Most of the
> reports consulted by Askew estimate the total population of Nanjing
> in late 1937 as being no more than 200,000 to 250,000, fostering
> doubts about estimates of victims that reach a similar figure. On the
> other hand, the chaotic state of the war zone clearly made it
> difficult to conduct any kind of dispassionate investigation. Askew
> concludes that it seems most likely that accounts that speak of
> around 40,000 victims, including 12,000 POWs, are more or less
> correct. In arriving at this figure, he refers to the account of
> Harold Timperley, who in his first report gave a much higher number,
> but in later reports and publications refers to a figure of around
> 40,000 (p. 97ff)--a tally confirmed by the records of the Red
> Swastika Society (RSS), a Chinese charitable organization which
> claimed to have buried about 40,000 corpses of "unarmed persons" (p.
> 98ff). Furthermore, the RSS claimed that almost all the dead were
> male, and Askew takes a number of writers to task on this point. For
> example, he charges Edgar Snow with manipulation in his book _The
> Battle for Asia_ (1941) and sees this as "the first in a long history
> of factual distortions." According to Askew, Snow "inverts Bates'
> breakdown, claiming that 'a large percentage' of those killed were
> 'women and children'" (p. 107). Further, Agnes Smedley's estimate in_
> Battle Hymn of China_ (1943) of a death toll of "200,000 civilians
> and unarmed soldiers" is "totally unacceptable in that Nanking's
> entire civilian population at the time was 200,000 to 250,000 at
> most" (p. 107).
>
> Chapter 6 is a revised version of an article by the editor,
> originally published in _Monumenta Nipponica_ and required reading
> for anybody dealing with the Nanjing question. The chapter gives an
> overview of the postwar Nanjing debates in Japan and, in particular,
> traces the issue of the factuality of the so-called 100-Man Killing
> Contest Debate (a contest that supposedly involved two Japanese
> soldiers competing to be the first to  kill one hundred enemies with
> his sword), an issue still hotly debated today between Nanjing
> deniers and those emphasizing the magnitude of the Nanjing massacre
> as well as the high degree of brutality during the event.  Chapter 7,
> by Timothy Brook, examines the way in which the Tokyo War Crimes
> Trials dealt with the Nanjing issue after the war and focuses on the
> role of Indian judge Radhabinod Pal. Although Pal "did not deny that
> the incident occurred," he strongly "doubted that the victors had the
> right to judge" (p. 150), largely as a result of Pal's acceptance of
> "Japan's slogan of 'Asia for the Asians' and [his view of] the war as
> just because it was waged 'to liberate Asia from the Europeans'" (p.
> 167).
>
> Brook's second contribution, on "Chinese Collaboration in Nanking" in
> section 2, further revises the general picture of Japanese
> perpetrators and Chinese victims by emphasizing Chinese cooperation
> with the Japanese occupiers. In his chapter, Brook explores the
> activities of the RSS, the "Nanking Self-government Committee," and,
> as an example of individual collaboration, the activities of Jimmy
> Wang, one of the central figures of that committee. According to
> Brook, Wang "fits no moral models, and offends many; he saw
> opportunities where others saw only horror and defeat, and made the
> most of these; he saved others, and in that process gained something
> for himself"(p. 222). In chapter 10, David Askew's second
> contribution investigates the activities of "Westerners in Occupied
> Nanking," while chapter 11 by Takashi Yoshida explores "Wartime
> Accounts of the Nanking Atrocity." In this article Yoshida--who has
> done much to enhance our understanding of the development of postwar
> attitudes and has been a major contributor to the historiography and
> memorialization of the Nanjing issue in Japan, China and the United
> States--sets out to refute claims that a massacre never happened in
> Nanjing,a position frequently advanced by a number of
> ultraconservative Japanese scholars, politicians, and agitators.[14]
> He directly confronts the "deniers" such as the late Tanaka Masaaki,
> Watanabe Shôichi and Higashinakano Osamichi (Shûdô), who support
> their views by arguing that the killings were scarcely noted by
> wartime media and that not even the Kuomintang (KMT) government of
> Chiang Kai-shek, whose capital was Nanjing until December 1937, made
> a strong appeal to the League of Nations or to third-party countries.
> Yoshida convincingly argues that, for the National Government, it was
> much easier to make general claims of Japanese aggression than to
> report unspecified numbers of "cruelties" or "atrocities" in Nanjing
> to the League of Nations: the KMT "stressed [Japanese] poison gas
> warfare [in cities such as Wuhan] rather than actions in Nanking" (p.
> 254). The use of poison gas was a severe and clear violation of
> international law (the Hague Convention) and "Western peoples were
> especially sensitive to poison gas, perhaps because of their painful
> experiences in the Great War of 1914-1918--only two decades before"
> (p. 254). The Chinese government "thought of Nanking as but one of
> innumerable Japanese atrocities in China at the time.... Although
> Chinese delegates to the League of Nations did mention Nanking
> explicitly in protesting Japanese war crimes, they chose to emphasize
> Japan's use of chemical weapons and air raids on open cities because
> these types of atrocities, they reckoned, would more likely win world
> sympathy and aid" ( p. 261).
>
> In section 3 ("Another Denied Holocaust?"), Joshua A. Fogel critiques
> the interpretation of the Nanjing atrocities as "another Holocaust"
> (chapter 12). He criticizes Iris Chang's much-quoted book _The
> Forgotten Holocaust of World War II_ for its unqualified use of the
> terms "holocaust" and "genocide." Although he points out that the
> Nanjing massacre was the end result of Japanese racism toward the
> Chinese and the process of dehumanization of the Chinese by Japanese
> troops, according to Fogel events in China and Nanjing 1937/38 did
> not follow the normal patterns of genocide--i.e., we cannot speak of
> organized mass murder of a minority by a majority, nor can we find
> what Zygmunt Bauman has identified as a major component of genocide,
> that is, a purpose, "a grand vision of a better and radically
> different society" (p. 280) In Nanjing, Fogel claims, "an overarching
> purpose was missing" (p. 281). A comparison of the Nanjing massacre
> with the Holocaust or other cases of "ideological" genocide might
> indeed pose difficulties for many scholars in the field, as the
> author points out (pp. 277-81). But Fogel also seems to tend to avoid
> characterizing the Nanjing massacre as a genocide, measured against
> the definitions of genocide in the United Nations Convention on
> Genocide (1948) and in the above-mentioned writings of Bauman. He
> concludes that the Nanjing atrocity "was an instance of impromptu,
> large-scale, mass murder perpetrated in the context of Japan's brutal
> war of aggression.... Thus the Atrocity in some respects resembles
> other events in Africa, Cambodia, and the New World that have
> acquired the label 'genocidal.' However, it fell far short both in
> numerical count and percentage of population slain, and it lacked the
> ideological impetus and bureaucratic efficiency that spurred on many
> of these other genocides" (p. 281). Fogel's argument seems aimed at
> preempting revisionist criticism of inflationary use of terms like
> "genocide" or "Holocaust," but it seems to adhere to a somewhat too
> narrow definition of genocide, one which may not be shared by a large
> number of scholars.
>
> In chapter 13, Masahiro Yamamoto interprets the "popularity of
> Chang's book in America" as a result of "ethnic prejudice [towards
> Japan] and the wide gap in interpretations of the Atrocity between
> professional historians and the general public." He rejects Chang's
> claim that the Nanjing atrocity can be described as "another
> Holocaust" or even as genocide, and calls Chang's book the product of
> sensationalism. He argues that it is essential to "_banish the terms
> _Holocaust_ and _genocide_ from this controversy_" because "the
> careless use of sensational vocabulary may produce, or has already
> produced, highly undesirable effects on lay audiences. First, it may
> intensify prejudice against Japanese.... Second, because other
> atrocities in history also may improperly be likened to the Jewish
> Holocaust, its significance cannot but be slighted" (299f, emphasis
> in the original).
>
> In chapter 14, Kasahara Tokushi scrutinizes the arguments of the
> Japanese denial faction, the recent movement for historical
> revisionism, and particularly the notorious Nanjing denier
> Higashinakano Osamichi.[15] In chapter 15 ("Nanking: Denial and
> Atonement in Contemporary Japan"), Kimura Takuji critically analyzes
> the development of historical revisionism in conservative circles and
> the political activities of this movement, which he contrasts with
> "left-wing historical scholarship," which has "spurred the emergence
> of numerous citizen-led movements ... aimed at educating the general
> public about imperial Japanese war crimes" (p. 330). Although much in
> this essay is already mentioned within the book or has appeared
> elsewhere, it neatly contextualizes the arguments of Nanjing deniers
> as well as the advocates of a "Great Massacre" (Kasahara and Ono
> among others) within a scholarly and political framework. The author
> emphasizes the important point that, notwithstanding the publicity
> and sensationalism surrounding the ongoing denials of a Nanjing
> massacre, only "a minority of people in Japan continue to deny this
> history of aggression, are intent on claiming that the Nanking
> atrocity was fabricated or grossly overblown, and repudiate any need
> for atonement"(p. 352).[16]
>
> In his closing piece, "Leftover Problems" (chapter 16), the editor
> treats some important issues left unexamined by most of the
> contributors. First, he summarizes views on the victim tally
> presented in several contributions, emphasizing that figures "under
> 40,000 and over 200,000 push the limits of reason, fairness, and
> evidence" (p. 362). As the most reliable sources for these upper and
> lower limits, Wakabayashi suggests Kasahara Tokushi as the scholar
> who has most adequately defined the "contours" of the massacre,
> producing an estimated victim toll--a toll not limited to the inner
> city of Nanjing, but including victims of the larger area of the
> capital zone--approaching 200,000 (p. 362). He also commends the
> research of historian Hata Ikuhiko for fixing the lower estimate at
> somewhat over 40,000 victims (Hata considers himself a "middle-of-the
> road" scholar, although he is often characterized by the media as a
> "denier"). As his final word on the issue, Wakabayashi concludes that
> "Japanese troops illegally and unjustifiably massacred _at least _29,
> 240 Chinese--and I would say 46,215--just before and after Nanking
> fell....Largely following Kasahara Tokushi, then, I conclude that a
> final victim total will far exceed 100,000 but fall short of
> 200,000." He expands the time frame of the "Nanjing Massacre" to the
> period from "early December 1937 to the end of March 1938 in the ...
> walled city and 6 adjacent counties "(p. 384). Wakabayashi also cites
> Japanese discussions of the usefulness of comparing the postwar
> process of "coming to terms with the past" in Japan with that in
> Germany. Finally, he emphasizes the basic problem of the lack of
> primary sources, a situation which, for the historian following the
> rule of "no evidence, no history," is a central problem in dealing
> with the Nanjing issue.
>
> Citing the changing stance of Hata Ikuhiko, from his rejection in
> 1986 of the view that "there was no 'massive butchery'" to his role
> in the "inaugural meeting of a Nanking denial society," Wakabayashi
> concludes that "it is time to stop fighting the China war and start
> understanding it as history without hatred" (p. 389). On the evidence
> of recent opinion polls indicating that anti-Chinese sentiment in
> Japan is increasing alarmingly, it hardly needs stating that, even
> though recent research on the Nanjing massacre has failed to produce
> groundbreaking new results, for students of modern East Asian history
> (whether from an East Asian or a Euro-American background),
> continuing debate on the issue is essential in order to maintain and
> increase our awareness of this tragic event in world history for as
> long as it remains a central element of the historical traumatization
> of East Asia.
>
> Notes
>
> [1]. http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/postwar/index.html (last accessed
> May 10, 2009).
>
> [2]. The Q&A section of MOFA's homepage includes the official
> position of the Japanese government on the "Nanjing Massacre":
> http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/q_a/faq16.html#q8.
>
> [3]. Assmann, _Geschichte im Gedächtnis (_Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007),
> 162-67.
>
> [4]. http://j.people.com.cn/94478/96695/6642806.html.
>
> [5]. http://www.thetruthofnanking.com/English/MainFrame.html.
>
> [6]. See http://www.sdh-fact.com/.
>
> [7]. See the official Web site www.johnrabe.de.
>
> [8]. Gallenberger was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Live
> Action Short Film in 2000 for _Quiero ser (I want to be...)_.
>
> [9]. http://www.johnrabe.de/downloads/johnrabe_presseheft.pdf.
>
> [10]. The movie won four German Film Awards, including Best Film,
> Best Director, and Best Actor. Ulrich Tukur also won the 2009
> Bavarian Film Awards for Best Actor.
>
> [11]. See http://www.nankingthefilm.com/home.html.
>
> [12]. The conservative camp, particularly the "denial faction" that
> denies that anything approaching a massacre took place in Nanjing in
> 1937/38, has recently made extensive efforts to publicize their
> views, not only in Japan but also through English translations of
> their writings, which are freely accessible on the Internet.
>
> [13]. Edward Hallett Carr, _What is History?_ (New York: Vintage
> Books, 1961),163.
>
> [14]. Takashi Yoshida, _The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History
> and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (_New York: Oxford
> University Press, 2006); "For the Nation or For the People?: History
> and Memory of the Nanjing Massacre in Japan," in _The Power of Memory
> in Modern Japan_, ed. Sven Saaler and Wolfgang Schwentker
> (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2008), 17-31; "Refighting the Nanking
> Massacre: The Continuing Struggle over Memory," in _Nanking 1937:
> Memory and Healing, _ed. Robert Sabell (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
> 2002), 154-80; "A Battle over History: The Nanjing Massacre in
> Japan," in _The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography_, ed.
> Joshua Fogel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000),
> 70-132; "The Nanjing Massacre: Changing Contours of History and
> Memory in Japan, China, and the United States," Web site,  _Japan
> Focus_ (http://www.japanfocus.org/), posted
December 2006.
>
> [15]. For this movement, see Sven Saaler, _Politics, Memory and
> Public Opinion: The History Textbook Controversy and Japanese Society
> (_Munich: Iudicium, 2005).
>
> [16]. The present reviewer reaches almost identical conclusions in
> his _Politics, Memory and Public Opinion._
>
> Citation: Sven Saaler. Review of Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi, ed., _The
> Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture_. H-Genocide,
> H-Net Reviews. September, 2009.
> URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25032
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
> Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
> License.

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