Japan’s denial of the atrocities it committed in Nanjing inflames an infection the Imperial Army left more than 70 years ago. Leaving historical wounds to fester makes demonstrating Japanese patriotism impossible.
In one incident between December 1937 and March 1938, some 350,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the invading Japanese troops, according to mainstream historians. Tens of thousands of victims were beheaded, burned, bayoneted, buried alive or disemboweled.
Worse than that, an estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped. Many were then mutilated and tortured before being murdered. It is in recognition of them that we call this inhumanity the “Rape of Nanjing.’’ The gruesome details are rendered compellingly in Iris Chang’s 1997 book, likely the first written in English. Even sworn Nazi John Rabe was so horrified by Japanese sadism, he urged Adolf Hilter to intervene.
To this day the Japanese government has refused to apologize for these and other World War II atrocities. But unlike Holocaust deniers, the revisionism of the Rape of Nanjing has been largely successful in Japan, where a large swath of Japanese society believes they never happened. This has had consequences for Japan, even while it continues the charade.
In fact, soon after the war 28 men went on trial in an international criminal court in Tokyo for the Nanjing Massacre and other crimes. And during the trial, it became clear that Tokyo had known about the atrocities but ignored them. Of the 28, 25 were found guilty on one or more of the charges. All were sentenced in 1948 either to death by hanging or life imprisonment, but by 1956 every one of them had been paroled.
Decades after the massacre, Japan began to deny and distort the history of Nanjing. In books and columns in Japan, a revisionist perspective of the incident began to emerge, including outright denials that it had ever taken place. Ikuhiko Hata’s “Nanjing Incident’’ is considered by the Japanese Ministry of Education to be the definitive historical text on the subject. This book puts the official death count at between 38,000 and 42,000.
In the 1990s, some top Japanese government officials claimed that the massacre was fabricated. Shocked by this, conscientious professors and parliamentarian ministers tried to set the record straight, but they were thwarted at every turn. Official apologies or compensation have, as a result, not been forthcoming.
In 1997, Japan’s former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama apologized to the victims of Japan’s unprovoked aggression. His apology a decade ago, as well as Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s in Indonesia in 2005, should be welcome. However, their apologies are personal ones, not government recognitions of atrocities.
The majority of Murayama’s colleagues in the Japanese government did not share his feelings. And he failed to make a formal and official apology in the so-called “No War Resolution.’’ Only 26 percent of the members of Japan’s Diet supported the resolution. Shockingly, 47 percent voiced opposition. Furthermore, Seisuke Okuno, the former education minister, managed to organize a national campaign collecting 4.5 million signatures against the resolution.
The gaff prone Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said in a 1990 interview: “People say that the Japanese made a holocaust but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie.’’ He has been the top political leader of Japan’s most important city since 1999 and has a realistic chance of becoming Japan’s next prime minister.
In the battle of competing Japanese and Chinese nationalism, the struggle over the re-construction of Japan’s national identity, and whether it will incorporate its past into that re-construction, will determine whether a “normal” Japan can be accepted by its Asian neighbors. It behooves Japanese people everywhere to join in the reconstruction by acknowledging what really happened 70 years ago. Otherwise, the country will remain stuck in the past, preventing itself from taking the leadership role it deserves.
Japan pays dearly in denying this history, a fact poignantly illustrated by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the United States in April. He reacted defensively to a salvo of questions on “comfort women” and Japan’s wartime responsibility. Contrast that with former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder joining with his French, American and British counterparts in D-Day ceremonies in France in June three years ago. These two pictures starkly show how far Japan is behind Germany in coming to terms with its past – and how far Asia is from exorcising the ghosts of Nanjing as compared to Europe’s exorcism of the memories of Auschwitz.
Japan also pays with its international reputation. Japan’s denials cost it permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council. China’s Premier Wen Jiabao specifically said in April 2005 that Beijing would wield its veto power to block Japan’s U.N. aspirations until Tokyo “respects history, takes responsibility for history and wins over the trust of peoples in Asia.” If strained relations with its neighbors have such real political costs for Tokyo, then why do Japanese leaders cling to their delusions?
One possible reason is that they hinge pride in their country on the sacrifices their fathers and grandfathers made fighting in Japan’s Pacific War. Many Japanese have falsely conflated Japanese slogans of “support the troops” with supporting the country’s past militarism. For them, to apologize for Japan’s wars of aggression in Asia, and indeed, to acknowledge war crimes the Imperial Army committed during its invasion of China in 1937, would be tantamount to believing the lives of millions of their countrymen were sacrificed in vain, and that the lives of those enshrined at Yasukuni were wasted.
The vast majority of the interred at the Yasukuni Shrine were fighters in the Pacific War, or what many on the right in Japan continue to call the “Greater East Asia War” – a term banned by the American General Headquarters during its post-war occupation due to the name’s association with Japan’s wartime policies, namely the notion of a Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.
Suspicions about the role of Yasukuni in Japanese nationalism are due in part to Shrine priests secretly adding 1,068 convicted war criminals to the “Book of Souls,” Yasukuni’s official registry. If Japan’s leaders honestly acknowledge the past, the ghosts of Nanjing would be finally laid to rest.
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