The Rape of Nanjing:
Is an Unbiased Representation Possible?
by
Heather M. Downing
Thesis submitted to
the Honors Program, Saint Peter's College
May 17, 2011
Heather M. Downing
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Abstract
In the years leading up to and including World War II, the Japanese invaded China,
committing war crimes and atrocities that some say rivaled those committed by the German
National Socialist (Nazi) Party in Europe. However, due to a number of factors following the
end of World War II, many conflicting points of view about Nanjing have arisen, including views
from Japanese ultranationalists, Chinese victims and their descendants, and from other outside
parties, including Americans and Europeans.
In the present day, the evidence and the different testimonies of what may have happened
in Nanjing have become so convoluted that it would be impossible to come up with a purely
factual, unbiased historical account of the events in Nanjing during the Japanese invasion on
December 13, 1937 and the weeks leading up to and following that invasion. By looking at
some of the most popular sources and references pertaining to the Nanjing Massacre, one can
assess just how disputed the topic has become and how truly impossible it is for historians to
arrive at a single, agreed upon history of the event.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
3
Foreword
4
Chapter 1
Historical Factors Which Contributed
to the Formation of Conflicting Accounts
6
Chapter 2
An Analysis of Iris Chang’s
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
12
Chapter 3
An Analysis of Rhawn Joseph’s
Documentary on the Rape of Nanjing
20
Chapter 4
An Analysis of Masahiro Yamamoto’s
Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity
26
Conclusion
32
Works Consulted
35
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Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Father Mark DeStephano, S.J., for all of his
guidance, support, and seemingly endless patience during the writing of this thesis. I certainly
couldn’t have done it without him and his keen observations.
I would also like to thank my mother for encouraging me, as always, to press forward and
finish what I’ve started, even when it seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
I also offer a special thanks to Michael Doody for his kind helpfulness in the final stages
of my thesis.
Last but not least of all, I’d like to thank all of the friends who listened when I just needed
to talk out all of my ideas or to organize my thoughts. Even more thanks to those friends who
had more faith in me than I had in myself.
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Foreword
When I first began my research on the Rape of Nanjing, I had no idea where it would
eventually lead me. My initial plan was to explore the way that different media have covered the
topic over the years. I wanted to observe the differences between Chinese and Japanese media,
as well as the outsider perspective found in American and European media. I hoped to prove that
the conflicting media representations in each culture had had an impact on the relationship
between Japan and China, including the way the two nations perceive each other, the way they
interact on a political level, and how the peoples perceive each other on a more one-on-one level.
As I continued my research and began the writing process, it became apparent to me that
proving this thesis would be difficult—or impossible. After all, how does one prove cause and
effect? Is it possible to demonstrate that these media discrepancies had an actual, provable effect
on the relationship between the two nations? While the relationship and the apparent causes may
be visible to the naked eye, proving that correlation is far more difficult than simply observing it
and hypothesizing about it.
What I discovered instead of proof was a convoluted history and historiography of the
alleged “Nanjing Massacre” or “Rape of Nanjing,” as it has come to be known. I found
discrepancies in numbers, which placed the death toll in Nanjing somewhere between 5,000 and
300,000. I found accounts of the “massacre” that painted the Japanese soldiers involved as pure
evil, nothing but devils sent to destroy the Chinese race in a systematic genocide. At the same
time, I found other accounts claiming that the entire “massacre” had been blown wildly out of
proportion; some even claimed that it had been fabricated entirely, a mere story told by the
Chinese to garner sympathy from the Western world. With all of this conflicting information, I
began to wonder how anyone could possibly hope to prove anything at all about the Rape of
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Nanjing.
After spending countless hours of writing, trying to stick to my original thesis, I was told
by my advisor that I had not actually proven anything. All I had done was neatly compiled all of
my research into a regurgitation of the historiography of the Nanjing Massacre. I needed a new
thesis—I needed to figure out what all of my research actually amounted to, what it all actually
meant. Finally, Father DeStephano recommended that I look into the works of Hayden White, a
historian who explores history as a narrative. White’s theory is that all of history is in fact a
narrative—a story told from the specific point of view of the writer. In this way, it is impossible
to achieve purely objective history. Even if the writer has all of the necessary facts and statistics,
all of the evidence, and all of the photographs and films, the narrative that writer creates will still
be the result of his or her own personal opinions and beliefs.
That was exactly what my research was telling me all along—there is no objective history
of the Nanjing Massacre.
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Chapter 1
Historical Factors Which Contributed
to the Formation of Conflicting Accounts
Many scholarly texts on the Rape of Nanjing highlight the fact that there is no standard,
unanimously agreed upon history of this event. To explain this, scholars point to the
historiography—the body of works that comprise the history and the way the history was
composed over time—of the Nanjing Massacre. So many conflicting points of view have been
promoted and published that it has become difficult to determine what is hard fact, what has been
exaggerated, and what is simply false. No account regarding the massacre can be complete
without a careful consideration of the many different people and publications that have
influenced the way people around the world view this part of history. The origins of this
convoluted history of Nanjing are closely tied to the postwar period.
During the war, Japanese newspapers and media outlets carefully chose to publish only
material that cast the Japanese as righteous victors. Anything that could be considered critical of
the Japanese military or of the war itself would have been censored as unpatriotic, including
accounts of Nanjing war crimes. One witness of the massacre, an American physician named
Robert Wilson, wrote this on December 21, 1937:
We heard yesterday that the Japanese news agency Domei reported the population [of
Nanjing] returning to their homes, business going on as usual and the population
welcoming their Japanese visitors, or words to that effect. If that is all the news that is
going out of the city, it is due for a big shake up when the real news breaks. (Gamble
261)
Under Allied occupation, atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre and the infamous Bataan Death
March were openly publicized and criticized in Japanese newspapers for the first time (Yoshida
48). Especially after the start of the tribunal in Tokyo, public awareness of such events and of
Japanese war crimes rose greatly (Yoshida 45).
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The Allies prohibited any publications that promoted militarism, arms and defense,
extreme patriotism, or criticism of the Allied occupation. Both before and during the war,
Japanese schools had been heavily steeped in building a strong sense of patriotism in their
students, but the occupying forces changed that and required amendments to textbooks. Under
the rule of the Allied forces, “the same teachers who once demanded that their students become
loyal patriots [of Japan] now made their students either black out sentences or tear out pages
based on the ministry's new guidelines” (Yoshida 47). Thus, under Allied supervision, World
War II was added to history textbooks, including a brief mention of the Nanjing Massacre
(Yoshida 47).
One of the most important aspects of media representations of the war during the
occupation was the shift of blame, both in Japan and the United States, from Japan itself to the
Japanese military. As the American occupiers quickly tried to form a friendly relationship with
the Japanese, it was important that the Japanese not feel resentful or that they were being
blamed; it was equally important for the United States to ease the animosity of the average
American toward the Japanese. After years of being fed propaganda that demonized the other
side, both countries needed to learn to see each other not as enemies, but as people (Yoshida 71).
The mass media would be responsible for this.
According to the Allies, Emperor Hirohito and the ordinary citizens of Japan were not
responsible for the war, but were victims of the Japanese military. Military leaders, particularly
Hideki Tōjō, “were solely responsible for the abuses of power, the deprivations of the people's
freedom, the inhumane treatments of civilians and prisoners of war, and other violence that had
occurred during the war” (Yoshida 48). Books and mass media articles were published claiming
that the decision to attack Pearl Harbor had been made against Hirohito's will. These ideas
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formed in the period immediately following the war are the same ones taught to American
students today, with Tōjō portrayed as the villain, the Japanese equivalent of Adolf Hitler.
The same stand was taken in the Japanese media and educational system. In standard
Japanese history textbooks of the postwar period, any section talking about Japan's role in the
war would refer not to the “Japanese,” but to the “Japanese army” or the “military.” In other
words, “it was the military that had dragged Japan into an unwanted war” (Yoshida 47).
Newspapers also attributed the war to military leaders and were sympathetic to the suffering of
the Japanese people as a whole.
This attitude would prevail throughout most of the American occupation of Japan, but
would change as the occupation neared its end and the Cold War came to the forefront of
American concerns. Immediately following the war, the Supreme Command of the Allied
Powers (hereafter SCAP) had forced many of Japan's wartime officials and leaders out of power,
in favor of a new, anti-militaristic leadership. However, as the Cold War took shape, SCAP was
more concerned with purging Communist Party members and sympathizers. In the process of
this “Red Purge,” many of the old wartime elite were able to retake their positions of power,
including some who had been convicted as class A war criminals (Yoshida 53).
Whereas SCAP officials had first insisted that Japanese textbooks depict the atrocities
committed by the Japanese during the war, these regulations were loosened after the end of the
occupation, and textbook publishers reduced the image of Japan's aggression during the war.
The Nanjing Massacre, which had never really been covered in detail by these textbooks,
disappeared almost entirely from history books (Yoshida 53). This would be the beginning of the
revisionist movement in which Japanese ultranationalists tried to recreate the image of the
Japanese military in World War II, trying to minimize and discredit claims that the Japanese had
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committed any “atrocities.” Some even went so far as to claim that both the Rape of Nanjing
and the claims of “comfort women” were pure fabrications.
Meanwhile, in postwar China, civil war was the ruling factor in deciding whether or not
the Rape of Nanjing would be publicized. As the Nationalist Party and Communist Party
struggled for power, both parties put little emphasis on the atrocities committed by the Japanese.
Trials were held in Nanjing and other places throughout China, but “during the civil war, the
main focus of both Nationalist and Communist governments was on defeating their current
enemies rather than remembering the war against Japan of the 1930s and 1940s” (Yoshida 62).
The Nationalist government especially avoided dragging up memories of the Japanese
occupation, since many Chinese associated the corrupt Kuomintang with being collaborators
with the Japanese, increasing their own wealth, and abusing their power (Yoshida 65). At least
temporarily, news and reports of Japanese war crimes were removed from the public view and
fell by the wayside.
The Communist Party used memories of such incidents as the Nanjing Massacre in order
to stir anti-American sentiments, claiming that the Americans and other foreigners living in
Nanjing had conspired with the Japanese to kill as many Chinese as possible (Yoshida 68). In
fact, the Communist Party even framed the Japanese as being fellow victims of American
aggression, citing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Yoshida 69). In the years
immediately following the war, the Nanjing Massacre was not a major point of political interest,
but it remained a strong memory only for those who lived in and around Nanjing who had
experienced the massacre personally. The Communist Party avoided addressing Nanjing,
because it “did not welcome public focus on wartime weakness at a time when it was trying to
build up national pride and strength among the people” (Yoshida 70).
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Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the power of the Communist Party became more stable
throughout China. In 1972, Japan formally recognized the People's Republic of China as the sole
legitimate government of China, resulting in relatively friendly relations between the two
countries in the spectrum of official diplomatic policy. However, it was also around this time
that the historiography of the Rape of Nanjing began to take another turn in China, with public
opinion of the Chinese people beginning to shift against the Japanese. In public schools, the
PRC government began to emphasize the teaching of Japanese aggression during World War II.
This was intended to combat the fear of “spiritual pollution” by Western influences. This policy
also incorporated the Nanjing Massacre as an important part of the curriculum, “in order to
promote patriotism and nationalism among the youth who had not experienced the PRC's
liberation of China from Japanese militarism” (Yoshida 102).
These events in the postwar period would lead to ever greater variations on the story of
Nanjing. Different groups acquired different stances, including ultranationalist Japanese and
Chinese perspectives, as well as even third party opinions from Americans and Europeans. As
different versions of the Nanjing Massacre began appearing in periodicals, scholarly journals,
and even public school textbooks, controversies rose up between Japan and China. Other
nations, such as the United States, were also drawn into the fray, offering up even more opinions
on the matter. Now, not only has it become difficult to assess what actually happened at
Nanjing—it may even be impossible.
Even some of the most well-known works on the Rape of Nanjing, such as Iris Chang’s
world-famous The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II can be called into
question. By exploring some of these major texts, including not only Chang’s book, but also a
documentary by Dr. Rhawn Joseph and a book by a Japanese revisionist, Masahiro Tanaka, one
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can really get a grasp for how very twisted the history of Nanjing has become in recent years—
so twisted, in fact, that whether or not these works are actually “history” could be called into
question. An analysis of these works demonstrates the impossibility of forming a purely
unbiased, totally factual historical account of the Rape of Nanjing.
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Chapter 2:
An Analysis of Iris Chang’s
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
In the very first paragraph of her introduction chapter, Iris Chang points out that the
Chinese experienced World War II in a very different way from people living in the Western
hemisphere. For Americans, the war did not begin until December 7, 1941, when the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor. This drew United States military forces into the conflict for the first time.
However, by this point in history, the Chinese had already been suffering at the hands of the
Japanese for ten years, beginning with Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931. As their strength
in Manchuria increased, the Japanese expanded their attack both to the north and south. In 1937,
they launched an attack on Shanghai, moving inland toward the capital of the newly-formed
Nationalist government, Nanjing1. According to Iris Chang, these invasions marked the
beginning of a nightmare that would continue until the last of the Japanese military was forced
out of China at the end of the war in 1945—and even beyond, as people dealt with the extensive
aftermath of the long occupation. This aspect of the war has not been highlighted for nearly
seven decades. Understanding the events that occurred in the Asian theater of World War II is
essential to comprehending the current cultural identities of the nations involved, as well as the
tensions between Japan and the nations it occupied during the war.
Iris Chang was the daughter of two Chinese immigrants. Her parents grew up in China
during the Japanese occupation and World War II. They later moved with their families to
Taiwan, and then to the United States, where Iris was born. It was from her parents that she first
heard about the Nanjing Massacre. Though they had not personally witnessed it themselves,
they had grown up hearing about it, and they passed the knowledge on to their daughter.
1
“Nanjing” is the more modern, pinyin spelling of the city's name. In some texts, such as Iris Chang's The Rape
of Nanking, it may still be referred to as “Nanking,” an older spelling of the name. For the purposes of this
document, I will use the more modern spelling; the old spelling will be used only in direct quotations.
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According to Chang, the stories she heard from her parents were truly horrific, including
testimony that the Japanese “sliced babies not just in half but in thirds and fourths” (Chang 8). It
was these tales that originally sparked her interest in studying the history of Nanjing. Her desire
to write her book was increased as she became aware of the distinct lack of easily accessible
information on the massacre, as well as finally meeting other Chinese and Chinese-American
activists who wanted to disseminate information about Nanjing.
Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, was
published in 1997. At the time, it was lauded as the authoritative book on the Nanjing Massacre.
While there were novels and nonfiction that mentioned the massacre, Chang’s book was “the
first, full-length English-language narrative of the atrocity to reach a wide audience” (“About”).
It also remained on The New York Times list of bestsellers for months. Even today, after
extensive literature on the massacre has been published, it is still the most highly regarded and
highly recommended book for information on Nanjing. The book is considered to be historical
fact. However, how factual is her account in reality?
One might expect that the author of such a well-known and respected historical book
would have had a strong background in historical research and writing, but this is not the case.
After completing high school, Iris Chang studied journalism at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. She wrote for both The New York Times and the Associated Press, and later
completed a master’s degree in writing at Johns Hopkins University (“About”). While she was
not necessarily trained in the writing of history, she put her journalistic training to use in the
writing of The Rape of Nanking. She used many primary sources, including diaries, journals,
letters, and newspaper articles written by American and European witnesses at Nanjing, along
with photos taken not only by international observers, but by the Japanese themselves. She also
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travelled to China, conducting countless interviews with survivors and their descendents, which
she incorporated into her book.
The question remains: was Iris Chang’s background in journalism enough to maintain the
unbiased integrity of her book? Is her book a purely factual account of what transpired in and
around Nanjing in 1937?
While The Rape of Nanking does draw its information from innumerable primary sources
and firsthand accounts, Chang’s personal bias in the subject matter continues to shine through
her narrative. It is apparent in both her use of language and her choice of content. She also takes
an accusatory stance toward the Japanese, promoting the concept of a conspiracy among the
Japanese to cover up or manipulate the events at Nanjing. While her account of the events at
Nanjing itself may be largely accurate, it also paints a very emotional picture that leaves little
gray area when portraying the Chinese as victims and the Japanese as villains, by leaving out
testimonies from other perspectives (though she does include a brief explanation of the political
and social temperament in Japan in the years leading up the invasion of China).
In the first chapter of her book, Chang explains the prewar conditions in both Japan and
China that led up to the invasion of China. Throughout this portion of the book, she manages to
keep a level-headed and relatively unbiased tone to her writing. However, as she progresses into
the second chapter, entitled “Six Weeks of Terror,” her writing takes on a more dramatic tone—it
becomes more like a novel than a historical account. For example, in one description she writes,
“As the victims toppled to the ground, moaning and screaming, the streets, alleys, and ditches of
the fallen capital ran rivers of blood, much of it coming from people barely alive, with no
strength left to run away” (Chang 46). On the next page, she calls the events at Nanjing an “orgy
of violence” (Chang 47).
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In the fourth chapter, entitled “Six Weeks of Horror,” Chang goes into greater detail about
the events that occurred at Nanjing, including methods of killing, the numerous rapes, and the
death toll. Once again, her language shows her sympathy toward the Chinese victims, while
condemning the Japanese. She uses words such as “grisly,” “gruesome,” “brutal,” and
“repulsive.” At one point she says, “The torture that the Japanese inflicted upon the native
population at Nanking almost surpasses human comprehension” (Chang 87). Later, she writes,
“There seemed to be no limit to the Japanese capacity for human degradation and sexual
perversion in Nanking” (Chang 94).
These kinds of descriptions invariably evoke from readers at least some sort of emotional
response, an emotional response that Chang likely felt while conducting her interviews and other
research. While her narrative does not necessarily stray from fact, it does present the facts in a
dramatized form, through the use of colorful imagery and emotionally heavy language. She
frequently uses subjective terms, bringing her narrative further and further away from objectivity.
This language has an effect on the way that readers will perceive the information and will thus
play a role in shaping their opinions. Regardless of whether or not it was intentional on Chang’s
part, readers of her book will likely find themselves feeling strong sympathy for the Chinese, and
perhaps more than a little bit of hatred toward the Japanese.
Of all of the persuasive tools Chang uses in her book, perhaps the strongest would be her
use of photographs. Included in The Rape of Nanking is a twenty-four page section of black and
white photographs. The images chosen include piles of bodies along the Yangtze River, live
Chinese prisoners being bayoneted, prisoners being buried alive, and prisoners in the midst of
decapitation by sword. She also includes gory images of severed heads and the bodies of women
raped and killed, as well as pornographic images of female Chinese captives.
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The feeling one gets when looking at these photographs is reminiscent of the very same
feeling one might get the first time he or she sees photographs taken from Auschwitz or other
Nazi concentration camps. This is no accident. From the very beginning, starting with her title,
Chang seeks to form a parallel between the Nanjing Massacre and the Holocaust in her readers’
minds.
Chang’s choice of words and use of photographs are not the only aspects of her book that
reveal prejudice. She also shows bias in the types of information she chooses to convey. She
dedicates large portions of her book, particularly in chapter four, to the different methods used by
the Japanese to kill Chinese soldiers and civilians, including several detailed accounts she heard
from her interview subjects during her time in China. She also includes information about the
war crime trials held at the end of the war, as well as perceived plans by the Japanese to cover up
the Nanjing Massacre. However, she includes little, if any, information that might gain any kind
of sympathy toward the Japanese.
In addition to telling how prisoners were killed en masse by firing squads, she also gives
detailed accounts of prisoners being burned alive, buried alive, bayoneted alive, mutilated,
hacked to death by swords, frozen to death, and even being torn apart by dogs. She also gives
accounts of whole families being tortured and killed. An entire other section is dedicated to the
many stories of rape she has collected, including numerous tales that include the victims being
killed or committing suicide afterwards. These tales leave little room for one to believe that even
a single Japanese soldier present at Nanjing may have had an ounce of humanity left in him.
In her chapter on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), Chang
criticizes the punishments meted out to the Japanese officials on trial. Only seven class A war
criminals were sentenced to death, and the rest of them were sentenced to imprisonment.
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However, those who were imprisoned did not remain incarcerated until the end of their natural
lives; many were later released and allowed to regain positions of power in the Japanese
government and economy. She is also critical of the immunity granted to Emperor Hirohito and
other members of the imperial family by General Douglas MacArthur. This immunity allowed
the emperor and his family (including those who had been present at the Rape of Nanjing) to
escape the trials altogether; they were not even called in to serve as witnesses (Chang 175-79).
Chang also lists prominent figures in Japanese government, politics, and the public view
who have openly denied or tried to downplay the actions of the Japanese in China and other
countries during the occupation and throughout World War II. She points out that many of them
maintained powerful positions in the government or economy, despite their opinions on the war
and Japanese wartime aggression. She also touches on what has become known as the “textbook
controversy” in Japan, during which the Japanese Ministry of Education made plans to reduce
the mention of Japanese wartime aggression and of the Nanjing Massacre in public school
textbooks. By pointing out these individuals and highlighting instances of denial from the end of
World War II through to the present day, she creates an image of a Japan that is completely
unrepentant toward the matter.
However, she fails to mention in much detail the numerous Japanese individuals who
have come forth to argue against individuals who would deny the actions of the Japanese military
during their occupation of other Asian countries. She briefly mentions Azuma Shiro, whom she
quotes several times throughout her book. He was a soldier who fought in Nanjing and
participated in the massacre, and he is most well-known for confessing his war crimes by
publishing his war diary. However, the diary went out of print after he lost a lawsuit in which his
fellow soldier, Kouji Hashimoto, whom he mentioned in the book, sued him for defamation of
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character2. Hashimoto argued that Shiro could not prove that the events reported in his diary
were not pure fabrications (Zhang). She also briefly mentions a few other notable Japanese who
took similar stances, but these brief inclusions do little to mitigate the feelings of dislike one
might feel for the Japanese after reading Chang’s book.
While I would not say that Chang’s narrative is inaccurate or untrue, I would argue that it
pushes the reader toward certain conclusions. It is an historical account of what happened in
Nanjing and what followed in the years afterward and into the modern era. However, it is still a
biased account. Her book is not without an agenda. One of her goals in writing The Rape of
Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust was clearly to disseminate information about a subject that is
not often discussed in history courses, in books, or in general. It was to tell what she perceived
as the unheard story of her parents and grandparents, and the other Chinese whom she
interviewed and with whom she associated herself.
At the end of her book, Chang puts emphasis on the responsibility of the Japanese
government to take ownership of the war crimes committed by the Japanese before and during
World War II. She points out that while Germany has formally apologized for the Holocaust and
offered reparations to survivors and their families, the Japanese government has never done
anything like this. Similarly, while German students learn about the Holocaust extensively in
school, throughout their formal education, Japanese children learn very little, if anything at all,
regarding the Nanjing Massacre or other war crimes and aggressive acts committed by the
Japanese during the same time period. Thus, another prominent goal in writing this book was to
convince her readers that the Japanese should take action to apologize or in some way correct the
wrongs done to the Chinese, as well as other national groups that were affected by Japanese
2
I attempted to obtain a copy of Azuma Shiro's war diary, which was originally published in Japanese in 1987,
and later in English. However, as a result of the lawsuit and the book going out of print, it has become almost
impossible to get a copy of the small paperback.
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cruelty during occupation. Thus, her account is not a complete and purely factual historical
account of the Nanjing Massacre, but rather a snapshot of the massacre from one specific
angle—the angle of the victim.
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Chapter 3
An Analysis of Rhawn Joseph’s
Documentary on the Rape of Nanking
Rhawn Joseph is an American neuroscientist. He studied at both the Chicago Medical
School and Yale University Medical School. Thus, most of his research, writing, and projects
relate to the study of the brain. His research included studies of human sexuality, hormones, and
the limbic system, among other things (“Rhawn Joseph”). Yet, for some reason, he also chose to
produce, write, direct, and narrate a documentary on the Nanjing Massacre. In addition, he also
created separate short films on “comfort women” (women forced into sexual slavery by the
Japanese military throughout Asia), Japanese torture methods, and about Unit 731, a facility
where the Japanese performed medical experiments on Chinese prisoners.
According to the description of the documentary, “the purpose of this film is educational,
and to explain the mind-set that led to a horrible crime: the torture and murder of 280,000
civilians by Japanese soldiers who took great pleasure in raping, bayoneting, beheading and
burning people alive” (“Rape of Nanking”). The description goes on to say that the film was a
strictly independent production without financial support from any government or organization,
and thus, the filmmaker claims that he had no political motives in creating the film. In other
words, he is claiming to have created an unbiased historical account. However, in the same
breath, he also claims that the Japanese had planned the same brutal treatment for the “white
races,” including America, in their plan to expand the Japanese empire. He also claims to “have
no purpose and no other goal other than to create an interesting, provocative, educational movie
that speaks to the mind and intellect, and which can speak to the heart and one's emotions” (“The
Rape of Nanking”). This very goal of speaking to the emotions betrays an agenda other than
education. It is apparent that the filmmaker has already chosen a side, and plans to draw
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sympathy to that side from his viewers.
Regardless of the fact that Joseph has little or no formal education or background in
history, his documentaries on Japanese war crimes during World War II have become widely
viewed and influential. Created in 2005 and published online in 2006, his documentary on the
Nanjing Massacre has received more than 1.6 million hits on YouTube, where it can be viewed
for free. His video on Unit 731, also available on YouTube, has received nearly one million hits.
These videos, particularly the one on Nanjing, are used in classrooms as a teaching aid on the
massacre. After all, it is easier to ask a class to watch a film than it is to ask the students to each
read a full length book, such as Chang’s The Rape of Nanking.
The content of Joseph’s film is very similar to that of Iris Chang’s book. It includes a
chronological history of the march on Nanjing and the fall of the city. It also includes, much like
Chang’s book, detailed accounts of the many methods used by the Japanese to kill Chinese
civilians and soldiers alike. He also goes to great length to discuss the numerous rapes of women
in Nanjing, noting that those raped ranged from small children, as young as two or three years
old, to elderly women who were grandmothers or even great-grandmothers. Like Chang, he
discusses the incredibly poor treatment of female captives, and the mutilation they endured both
before and after death.
There are also many differences between Joseph’s film and Chang’s book. Joseph goes
into far greater detail about the Japanese perspective of events. He includes a description of the
training that Japanese soldiers underwent before going into China, in an attempt to explain the
mindset that allowed them to perform the very war crimes he describes. He explains the system
of emperor worship that led the Japanese to perform violent acts, when they were told that it was
all for the glory of the emperor. They were also taught that all human life, other than that of the
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emperor, was useless including their own lives, the lives of the Chinese, and the lives of other
victims throughout Asia. However, he does not go into the same amount of detail on the postwar
period that Chang includes in her book. He mentions nothing of the alleged media and
government cover up of Nanjing in the present day, nor does he mention Japan’s failure to
apologize for its World War II war crimes.
While Joseph does share Chang’s criticism of Emperor Hirohito’s escape from trial, he
takes a more extreme stance. Chang argues that the world will most likely never know exactly
how involved Hirohito was in the decision to declare war or how much he knew about the war
crimes being committed by Japanese soldiers. Many texts argue that he knew little or nothing of
the war, and that he was simply the puppet of a military government. General Hideki Tōjō, the
man in charge of the Japanese military during the war period, is often charged as being the one
who really controlled the country and made the decision to start the war. Joseph, on the other
hand, claims that it was Hirohito’s personal decision to declare war on both China and the United
States. He also states that it was Hirohito’s personal desire to become the sole ruler of the entire
world.
Also, just as Chang included photographs in her book, Joseph relies heavily on images to
tell his narrative. The description of the film boasts that it is the result of twenty years of
research and is made up entirely of archival photos and film clips. In fact, Joseph uses all of the
images that appeared in Chang’s book, in addition to many other images that also leave a strong
impression on the viewer. In addition to images, Joseph is also able to use audio to get his
message across, an advantage that Chang did not have in the use of a print medium. Much of
Joseph’s film on Nanjing is punctuated by the sounds of burning fires, gunshots and
machineguns, the screeching of bombs, explosions, and people screaming. All of these elements
Downing 23
are compiled in order to gain sympathy for the Chinese victims and promote an image of the
Japanese as brutal killing machines.
Thus, despite Joseph’s alleged intent to simply provide educational information, his film
still contains a strong bias toward the Japanese as war criminals. The small portion of his film
that explores the mindset of the average World War II era Japanese soldier does little to mitigate
the damning narrative that permeates the majority of the film. His other films, particularly the
one on Unit 731, are even more damaging to the image of the Japanese. In that documentary, not
even a brief explanation or defense of the Japanese is offered. This is somewhat surprising, since
one might expect that an outsider—a third party, neither associated with the Japanese nor the
Chinese—would be able to produce a more objective account of the history of the Nanjing
Massacre. However, perhaps Joseph cannot be expected to maintain even a relatively objective
standpoint because he is not a historian by trade.
It is also important to note that Joseph’s sources for these documentaries are not always
the most reliable. He claims that they were the product of twenty years of research, but where
did he conduct this research? What sources did he use? From which archives did he allegedly
take his photographs and film clips? For the most part, these questions go unanswered within the
documentaries. The only times that Joseph gives any attributions for his facts are when he uses
direct quotes, which are written out on the screen with the source noted at the end.
In some cases, Joseph uses reputable sources, often many of the same sources cited by
Iris Chang, including quotes from the war diary of Azuma Shiro, often the same quotes used by
Chang. He also includes quotes from the diary and letters of John Rabe, a German businessman
and a member of the Nazi party. Rabe, much like the other foreigners living in Nanjing, was
appalled by war crimes he witnessed. He was also the leader of the Nanjing Safety Zone, which
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foreigners set up in an attempt to protect Chinese civilians from the Japanese soldiers. These, in
addition to several other reputable sources, are used throughout the documentary.
However, Joseph also uses sources that may be questionable. For instance, he cites a
document known as the “Tanaka Memorial” as his source for information on Japan’s plan to
expand its empire across the entire world and to become the master race. This document was
allegedly written by Japanese Prime Minister Gi-ichi Tanaka. It reads:
In order to conquer the world, we must first conquer China. . . But in order to conquer
China, we must first conquer Manchuria and Mongolia. . . If we succeed in conquering
China, the rest of the Asiatic countries and South Sea countries will fear us and surrender
to us. Then the world will realize that Eastern Asia is ours and will not dare to violate our
rights. This is the plan left to us by Emperor Meiji, the success of which is essential to
our national existence. (The “Tanaka Memorial” as quoted in Chang 178)
However, Iris Chang points out in her book that the authenticity of “Tanaka Memorial” cannot be
verified. In fact, most modern day scholars now believe the document to be forgery, most likely
coming from Russia (Chang 178). Joseph’s use of this document seems to indicate that he did
not conduct his research as thoroughly as perhaps he should have. His film was finished in 2005,
approximately eight years after Chang’s book was originally published. Is it possible that he
constructed an entire documentary without consulting the authoritative English-language text on
the matter? This seems even less likely, since his narrative bears such a striking resemblance to
that of Chang’s book. With all of these facts considered, there is really no excuse for such
blatant use of an unconfirmed and unsupported source.
In addition, the sources for his photos and video clips also go unmentioned, whereas in
Chang’s book, each photo’s source is clearly noted in a caption. Many of the clips used in
Joseph’s film, though in black and white, seem to be of higher quality than would have been
available at the time of the massacre. Some appear to be clips from films or reenactments. If
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one watches Joseph’s documentary on Unit 731, it becomes even more apparent that many of his
“archival film clips” are from staged reenactments. The film on Unit 731 includes gory images
of surgery, obviously taken from modern day films of surgical procedures. He also uses modern
day photographs of patients suffering from flesh-eating diseases and other ailments that Japanese
medical experimenters purportedly inflicted upon Chinese prisoners. These clips are used for
pure shock-value, providing imagery that will surprise and disgust the audience. One of the most
ludicrous clips used in the film on Unit 731 is a reenactment of prisoners suffering from burns in
which Joseph himself (he is recognizable if one compares the film to the pictures of him found
on his website) appears on camera with his face covered in fake blood, feigning the agony of
victims of Japanese medical experiments (“Unit 731”).
When one takes all of these factors into account, Joseph’s films seem to fall far short of
his goal of educating the public on Japanese war crimes. They fall even shorter of giving an
objective history of the Nanjing Massacre. Despite their shortcomings, these films have been
widely used as a source on Nanjing, not only for individuals curious about the subject, but also
by high school teachers and college professors who hoped to use them as an easily accessible
teaching tool on the subject. His films were even shown to the public in China, and translated
into Japanese versions (which can also be found on YouTube). When such a popular and wellknown source turns out to be seemingly so unreliable, it does not leave much hope for a truly
objective, reliable, and accurate historical account of the Rape of Nanjing.
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Chapter 4
An Analysis of Masahiro Yamamoto’s
Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity
Masahiro Yamamoto was born and raised in Japan. He completed his undergraduate
studies at the University of Hokkaido, and then moved to the United States to complete his
masters degree and his doctorate in history at the University of Alabama. His book, Nanking:
Anatomy of an Atrocity, began as his doctoral dissertation and grew as he continued his research.
His views are altogether very different from those presented by either Iris Chang or Rhawn
Joseph. Though Yamamoto is Japanese, he requests in his introduction that readers not judge
what he is saying based on his race or on his last name. He insists that his view has not been
shaped by his nationality, but instead by his extensive research. Now considered a revisionist in
terms of his views on Nanjing, Yamamoto argues that for many years, even as a child in Japan,
he shared the traditionalist view of the Nanjing Massacre—the same view shared by Chang,
Joseph, and most other American and European historians. However, he asserts that the more
research he conducted and the more he looked into revisionist texts on Nanjing, the more his
opinion was swayed.
Yamamoto’s position is not necessarily as extreme as many other Japanese
ultranationalists and revisionists who would seek to deny that the Nanjing Massacre occurred at
all. Quite the contrary, he asserts that the massacre did in fact occur and did in fact include the
unlawful killing of many Chinese soldiers and civilians. However, for numerous reasons, he
refutes the idea that what occurred in Nanjing was in any way comparable to the Nazi Holocaust
in World War II Europe. He claims that the truth of what happened in Nanjing has been blown
out of proportion in modern times, due to a lack of in depth research using primary sources, as
opposed to secondary sources. He also believes the emotional connection that many involved
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feel over the matter has also clouded the judgment of many people, leading them to blindly
accept the Holocaust-Nanjing parallel that has been drawn in many texts on Nanjing. He
specifically mentions this in relation to the popularity of Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking: The
Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Yamamoto 3).
He bases his assertion that the Nanjing Massacre is not comparable to the Holocaust on a
number of factors. First, he argues that the Nazi’s extermination of the Jews in Europe was a
carefully planned and meticulously carried out plan to commit genocide. The Japanese, on the
other hand, had no such plans, according to Yamamoto. Their killing of the Chinese was not a
planned effort to wipe them out, but instead an act of fear and desperation. He points to figures
indicating that the vast majority of those killed at Nanjing were adult males (although other texts
often put emphasis on women, children, and the elderly being victimized at Nanjing). Yamamoto
says the reason for this killing was obvious—the Japanese wanted to kill any remaining soldiers,
including those who had changed into civilian clothing in order to escape. In the process,
Yamamoto says, some civilians were mistakenly identified as possibly being soldiers and thus
killed.
Rather than the killing being systematic, as some might claim, Yamamoto believes the
warfare conducted by the Japanese at Nanjing was far closer to the warfare conducted in ancient
and medieval times in Europe. Specifically, he notes that the attack on Nanjing resembles an
ancient siege. In ancient times, Yamamoto argues, men would pillage towns and commit
atrocities for several reasons: out of necessity to gain supplies, out of a sense of entitlement after
all of their hard work during the siege, and out of a feeling of superiority over the defeated
enemies. “People in the premodern age,” says Yamamoto, “accepted violence against defeated
enemy soldiers and the population of a fallen city as the norm, not the exception” (Yamamoto
Downing 28
10). He also points out that in more modern times, similar patterns could be observed in battles
involving siege situations. This, he argues, is what happened in Nanjing.
After the long, difficult battle in Shanghai, and the arduous march to Nanjing, the
Japanese were in much the same spirits as ancient soldiers who had endured a long siege
(Yamamoto 53-54). In other words, Yamamoto is arguing that the behavior of Japanese soldiers
at Nanjing was in no way unique to the Japanese. They acted, he argues, in the same way that
any other soldiers would act, if put in the same situation. In this way, he seeks to defend the
behavior of the Japanese, insofar as their actions should not be demonized as they often are in
other historical studies of Nanjing.
In addition to his assertion that the nature of the Nanjing Massacre was entirely different
from that of the Holocaust, he points out that it is also incomparable in terms of scale and
duration. The Holocaust lasted for many years and resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews and
other innocent people, especially including many women, children, and the elderly. The incident
at Nanjing, he asserts, lasted only six weeks and claimed the lives of only 15,000 to 50,000
people, many of whom Yamamoto believes were adult men. He claims the reason a parallel was
drawn between the Holocaust and Nanjing was the emotional and political temperament at the
time. He argues that fierce Allied propaganda about the Japanese led to the demonization of the
soldiers at Nanjing, their actions blown out of proportion in an attempt to bolster anti-Japanese
sentiment and gain support for the war.
For obvious reasons, Yamamoto’s book does not include any photographs or images. The
only occasional breaks in the text are graphs that demonstrate his facts and figures. Whereas
Chang and Joseph both played to the emotions of their audience, Yamamoto seeks to appeal to
their reason to push his more pro-Japanese agenda. The use of images, such as the ones Chang
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or Joseph used, would do nothing to promote in readers the belief that perhaps the Japanese
soldiers at Nanjing were not as bad as history (or historiography, rather) has made them out to
be.
After drawing the conclusion that the Nanjing Massacre and the Holocaust were not
comparable, Yamamoto goes on to assert that if the crime is not the same, then the punishment
should not be the same. Many traditionalists, such as Iris Chang, believe that the Japanese
should accept their responsibility for the massacre at Nanjing, offer apologies, and also offer
compensation to the victims, much as the German government did in the years following World
War II. Yamamoto agrees that perhaps the Japanese should take some responsibility and issue an
apology, but he believes it is going too far to expect Japan to compensate the victims at Nanjing.
In other ways, Yamamoto’s thesis is similar to my own. He argues that the most popular
and well-known books and articles written on Nanjing have not been truly scrutinized. They
have simply been accepted and lauded because they follow the traditionalist version of history,
which many American historians already accept as fact. By examining these texts himself, he
has found that there are holes in the writers’ research which leave a lot of room for error, much as
I have found holes in the objectivity of the sources I have analyzed.
Yamamoto’s assertions are obviously a far cry from the narratives of both Iris Chang and
Rhawn Joseph because he departs from their traditionalist view of Nanjing. However, he
simultaneously points out that he is not taking the Japanese ultranationalist stance of denying the
massacre altogether. Within the text, he also acknowledges that despite his extensive research,
he understands that many people in the traditionalist viewpoint, particularly many Americans,
will not be pleased with the conclusion of his research nor will they agree with it.
Despite the fact that his research and his thesis seem to be so different from the
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traditionalist viewpoint explored in the works of both Chang and Joseph, Yamamoto’s work still
appears to be more objective in its rational approach to the subject. Yet, this approach could still
be considered a form of bias, merely in his determination to come to a different conclusion from
others. In this attempt, he tries to stretch his facts to far-fetched conclusions with minimal
information. For instance, he cites a handful of examples where Japanese occupations of other
cities besides Nanjing were reported as being “orderly” or without too many problems (though at
least some murders and rapes seemed to follow the military wherever they went) (Yamamoto
165). He seems to think these few testimonies are enough to oppose the countless other stories,
besides Nanjing, of Japanese war crimes and misbehavior.
Yamamoto seems to disregard the many testimonies of violent and cruel deaths meted out
by the Japanese soldiers at Nanjing. He seems to disregard the photographic evidence provided
at the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, in Chang’s book, and in Joseph’s
documentary that Japanese soldiers did engage in brutal acts, such as beheadings, live burials,
and bayoneting. He makes no mention of these testimonies and sticks to the numbers he has so
carefully crunched for the writing of this book.
Yamamoto also seems to forget the many other instances of Japanese cruelty and
misconduct throughout Asia, such as the mercilessness with which American and European
prisoners of war were frequently treated, in instances such as the Bataan Death March. He
neglects to discuss the thousands of “comfort women” forced into sex slavery during the war in
any detail. While he does not go so far as to say that “comfort women” were ordinary
prostitutes, he does mention the settlement offered to the women who sued the Japanese
government with more than a little disdain, questioning whether or not the Japanese government
and military were directly responsible for average women being drafted into sexual slavery
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(Yamamoto 283).
With these other examples of Japanese cruelty, witnessed by thousands of people
throughout Asia, it may be difficult to believe entirely in Yamamoto’s rational approach. At the
same time that reason forces us to consider Yamamoto’s arguments, it also tells us that if
thousands of people all see something and tell about it, it seems unlikely if not impossible that
they would all be wrong. Thus, Yamamoto’s determination to stick to his viewpoint seems to be
a trademark of some sort of bias, particularly in his determination that the Japanese government
owes no kind of compensation to the victims of Nanjing. After all, even if the death toll is not as
high as some claim it to be, and even if many of the victims of Nanjing were adult men, as
Yamamoto claims, does that mean that the victims that survive in Nanjing are unworthy of
compensation for their suffering? Did they not still witness acts of brutality that no one should
ever have to witness? Would he also deny compensation to the numerous women who were
raped? Though Yamamoto claims that his ethnicity has nothing to do with his perspective on
Nanjing, he still seems to bear some prejudice in favor of the Japanese and against the Chinese.
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Conclusion
In his book, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe,
historian Hayden White proposes that it is impossible for anyone to ever really write about the
past or present as it really happened or happens; any kind of history ever written is tainted by the
writer’s own personal narrative. Even when we may believe we have written something that is
objective, closer inspection will likely reveal at least some small way in which subjectivity and
ideology has crept into our writing.
Perhaps there is no clearer example of White’s narrative theory in action than the example
of the historiography of the Nanjing Massacre. Even the very names themselves for the event,
“Nanjing Massacre” and “Rape of Nanjing,” put a certain spin on the narrative. In the case of
most historical events, as different people of different backgrounds and different time periods
rewrite the history of that event, the actual details of the story tend to differ only slightly—
slightly different word choices, slightly different spellings, and slight discrepancies on dates,
statistics, and other figures.
In the case of the Nanjing Massacre, each newcomer’s narrative seemed to take a on a life
of its own, growing into totally conflicting views in a way rarely seen in history. This could be
attributed to numerous factors, including the violent nature of the events in question, the
emotional weight of the events in question, and the state of utter chaos and confusion that
seemed to pervade Nanjing at the time of the massacre. The differing opinions on Nanjing could
also be attributed to the lack of hard, agreed upon facts and statistics with which to back up the
many versions of narrative.
For instance, one of the most controversial and heavily disputed points in regard to the
Nanjing Massacre is the death toll. Estimates for the number of innocent civilians killed can
Downing 33
range anywhere from about 5,000 to more than 300,000. This is no minor discrepancy; the gap
between different accounts is no less than huge. Of course the lowest estimates are usually the
result of Japanese historians, particularly ultranationalists. In his book, Yamamoto estimates that
at most, about 45,000 to 65,000 Chinese people were killed at Nanjing in total, including both
soldiers and civilians. He estimates that only 15,000 to 50,000 of that number were killed in an
“unlawful way,” such as executions or atrocities. Of those killed, he estimates that only about
5,000 to 20,000 were innocent civilians, while he believes the rest were Chinese soldiers, either
in uniform or disguised in civilian clothing (Yamamoto 115). These numbers represent some of
the lowest estimates for civilian casualties, and Yamamoto claims to have calculated them by
carefully going over the records of firsthand accounts of murders and by studying records of
burials.
The estimates featured in Iris Chang’s book and Rhawn Joseph’s film are much higher.
The description of Joseph’s film reports that approximately 280,000 civilians were killed.
However, the source for Joseph’s number is not disclosed. Chang, on the other hand, lists
several figures offered up by different sources. One Chinese military specialist estimated
430,000, while others claimed 300,000. Judges for the International Military Tribunal for the Far
East set the number at about 260,000, while a Japanese historian estimated 200,000. John Rabe,
the Nazi businessman who helped to save Chinese lives estimated between 50,000 and 60,000,
but Chang argues that he left before the massacre had ended. However, Chang finally
determined that the most reliable source she could find was that of Sun Zhaiwei, a Chinese
historian who by studying census reports and burial records came to the figure of 227,400. Thus,
she determined that at least some 200,000 had been killed. However, when Sun Zhaiwei’s figure
is combined with the testimony of a Japanese prisoner about the dumping and burning of
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thousands of bodies, the number could reach as high as 377,400, a number which Chang points
out “surpasses the death toll for the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined” (Chang
101).
This numbers game is just one part of the way in which people have tried to bend the
facts of Nanjing to suit their own purposes. By including only people killed within a certain area
or within a certain time frame, Japanese ultranationalists can make the death toll appear to be
smaller. Similarly, by including people in a broader area and a broader time frame (for instance,
by including not only the attack on Nanjing but also the march to Nanjing) members of the
opposite side of the argument can make the numbers appear higher. However, in actuality, is the
number of victims important? Or is it simply important that war crimes occurred? Is it truly
necessary for opposing parties to keep splitting hairs on the matter? This endless cycle of
writing and rewriting the history of Nanjing has created a controversy that will never be solved.
Even though we can hope to establish some facts and a general idea of the events at Nanjing, we
will never know without a doubt what exactly transpired in Nanjing on December 13, 1937 and
in the weeks that followed.
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