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Unit 10—Handout 5-1
Japanese Denial
At the Hiroshima museum it is easy to feel victimized . . . .
But we must realize that we were aggressors too.
—Murakami Hatsuichi, curator
Discussions of Denial, Reconciliation, and Redress
Read the following three articles by Jones, McLoughlin, and Selden. Make notes as
you read. Then summarize the articles’ main points. Share these with your group
(3 or 4) fi rst, appointing a recorder to record your insights. After your discussion, a
spokesperson, appointed by the group, should then present the group’s consensus
to the class.
Denial of the Rape of Nanking by Adam Jones
A conscious attempt has been made by “revisionists” in Japan to deny or downplay the involvement of the Japanese
military in massive atrocities during World War II. In September 1986, the Japanese education minister, Fujio Masayuki,
referred to the Rape of Nanking as “just a part of war.” In 1988, a 30-second scene depicting the Rape of Nanking was
removed from Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor by the fi lm’s Japanese distributor. In 1991, censors at the Ministry
of Education “ordered textbook authorities to eliminate all reference to the numbers of Chinese killed during the Rape
of Nanking because authorities believed there was insuffi cient evidence to verify those numbers” (Chang, The Rape of
Nanking, 208). And General Nagano Shigeto, a Second World War veteran appointed justice minister in spring 1994,
told a Japanese newspaper that “the Nanking Massacre and the rest was a fabrication.”
Until the recent resurgence of interest in the Nanjing Massacre, the atrocities and their survivors had been largely
forgotten. “After the war some of the survivors had clung to the hope that their government would vindicate them by
pushing for Japanese reparations and an offi cial apology. This hope, however, was swiftly shattered when the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), eager to forge an alliance with the Japanese to gain international legitimacy, announced at
various times that it had forgiven the Japanese.” Despite the fact that “the PRC has never signed a treaty with the Japanese
relinquishing its right to seek national reparations for wartime crimes,” no such reparations have been sought—or
offered. Overseas Chinese have, however, mounted increasing activist efforts. “The 1990s saw a proliferation of novels,
historical books, and newspaper articles about the Rape of Nanking. . . . The San Francisco school district plans to
include the history of the Rape of Nanking in its curriculum, and prints have even been drawn up among Chinese real
estate developers to build a Chinese holocaust museum.” (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, 223-24.) Chang concludes her
book, itself an important contribution to the revival of interest in these ghastly events, with a call for justice, however
delayed.
Japan carries not only the legal burden but the moral obligation to acknowledge the evil it perpetrated at Nanjing.
At a minimum, the Japanese government needs to issue an offi cial apology to the victims, pay reparations to the people
whose lives were destroyed in the rampage, and, most important, educate future generations of Japanese citizens about
the true facts of the massacre. These long-overdue steps are crucial for Japan if it expects to deserve respect from the
international community—and to achieve closure on a dark chapter that stained its history (Chang, The Rape of Nanking,
225)
Source: Adam Jones, Gendercide. http://www.gendercide.org/case_nanking.html
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