Nanjing: the politics of memory
Asia:NZ contributor Vaughan Yarwood reports on efforts by China and Japan to find middle ground over contested and painful history.
Please note that the views expressed by the author of this feature do not necessarily reflect the views of Asia:NZ
In the face of seemingly irreconcilable differences over a brutal war fought between Japan and China some 70 years ago, both these Asian giants have been trying to find some middle ground to ease long standing historical tensions.
A central feature of this bridging initiative has been the Japan-China Joint History Research Committee which was set up in December 2006, following a conciliatory visit to China by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
According to the committee’s Japanese chair, Shin’ichi Kitaoka, the aim was not to establish a common view of history, but to allow historians to map out the true extent of the differences between the two camps and to reduce what he called the ‘perception gap’.
But two recent films set during the Sino-Japanese War have reawakened the ghosts of that terrible conflict as it has been written respectively by China and Japan.
The Chinese film City of Life and Death and the Sino-German production John Rabe, which premiered at the Shanghai Film Festival in June, are both assured attention in China but unlikely to be seen widely in Japan and therefore unlikely to deepen historical understanding between the two countries.
Both centre on the controversy surrounding the massacre of thousands of civilians by Japanese troops as they occupied the northeastern city of Nanking between December 1937 and March 1938.
This single event is the lightning rod that epitomizes the ‘perception gap’ that Kiaoka refers to and to this day continues to play a significant influence on the diplomatic relationship between the two countries.
While Chinese historians have asserted about 300,000 or more died in the atrocities that occurred over a four month period, the Japanese side have been accused of minimising the civilian casualties of Nanking.
While the debate about what exactly happened at Nanking continues to grind away as a backdrop to the closer economic relationship both countries enjoy, it does raise questions about perceptions of history as ideology.
Chinese director Lu Chuan’s film City of Life and Death (also known as Nanking! Nanking!) has become an instant box office hit after it was released across hundreds of cinemas in China. In its first 19 days it was seen by one million cinema goers while making $US22 million.
While the Chinese public has reacted favourably to this retelling of a cathartic and humiliating event in the process of nation-building, the film courted controversy at home for its nuanced portrayal of a Japanese officer. Several death threats were received by its director Lu Chuan from nationalistic Chinese evidently unable to accept an attempt to humanise an occupation soldier.
Meanwhile the Sino-German production John Rabe presents a less graphic depiction of the bloody events known variously as the Nanjing atrocity, the Nanjing incident and the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking.
Written and directed by Florian Gallenberger, it focuses on the German businessman after whom the film is named who used his Nazi party credentials to set up a safety zone for over 200,000 Chinese civilians trapped in the city, inviting comparisons with Oskar Schlindler who rescued Jews from the gas chambers during World War 2.
Gallenberger told the German film website Spielfilm that that although working with the Chinese censorship authorities was difficult, Sino-Japanese relations presented a bigger problem.
He said there was concern over a large gas exploration joint-venture that caused the film production to be temporarily halted. But the publication in Japan of a schoolbook that ignored the Nanking massacre prompted the Chinese authorities to allow work on the film to continue.
Although damned with faint praise by critics, John Rabe, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2009, and the more favourably received City of Life and Death both reveal just the depth of sensitivity surrounding the Nanking massacre. This year sees the 70th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre and while other productions about the horrific episode are underway, it appears a good bet that none are unlikely to get a broad release in Japan.
The story that led to Nanking began when Japan soldiers invaded Manchuria in 1931, ostensibly to protect a railway controlled by Japanese interests. The foothold in northern China followed success in an earlier war against Russia and was to secure mineral resources for an anticipated renewal of this conflict.
China, at the time embroiled in a destructive civil war between communists and the Kuomintang nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, was ill-placed to resist when, in July 1937, a skirmish triggered full-scale war with Japan.
The Japanese soon breached the Chinese defences at Shanghai and threatened the Kuomintang’s capital, Nanjing. The nationalists eventually abandoned the city to its fate, culminating in a protracted series of massacres and individual killings of up to 300,000 civilians over a six-week period by Japanese troops. The number of dead has remained a point of contention with Japan claiming a much lower figure.
Sixty years later, the diaries in which John Rabe recorded the unfolding horrors of the Nanjing were published as The Good German of Nanking. The anniversary was further marked by the appearance of Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.
In response, a Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata created controversy when, at a Princeton University symposium the same year, he presented a paper titled A numerical study of the Nanking Atrocity, which questioned the exact number of Chinese fatalities and suggested that most had been killed as soldiers out of uniform.
With so many issues requiring co-operation between China and Japan, including resource and energy management, environmental protection, population ageing and regional security, Shin’ichi Kitaoka of the Japan-China Joint History Research Committee Japanese chair is adamant that what he calls ‘the history question’ needs to be resolved.
Two years ago, in a publication marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, he wrote: ‘If both governments agreed for the time being to leave the history debate to historians, and depoliticise it, they could get on with their proper business as cooperating governments’.
The Japan-China Joint History Research Committee is yet to report its findings.
- by Vaughan Yarwood
