The papers and the Net today have been jammed with stories (and some great photos) about anti-Japanese protests in China, some of which became violent.
Thousands of Chinese smashed windows and threw rocks at the Japanese embassy and ambassador’s residence in Beijing on Saturday in a protest against Japan’s wartime past and its bid for a U.N. Security Council seat.
Protesters pushed their way through a paramilitary police cordon to the gates of the Japanese ambassador’s residence, throwing stones and water bottles and shouting “Japanese pig come out.”
Some 500 paramilitary police holding plastic shields raced into the compound and barricaded the gates. Protesters threw stones and bricks at the residence, and shouted at police, “Chinese people shouldn’t protect Japanese.”
Anti-Japanese sentiment has been running high in China since Tuesday Japan when approved a textbook critics say whitewashes atrocities committed during World War II, and many Chinese feel the country has not owned up to its wartime aggression.
Demonstrators, who said they had been organized mostly through e-mail and instant messaging, had been marching peacefully under heavy police guard.
One group began throwing bottles and stones when they passed a Japanese restaurant, smashing windows with tiles they had ripped from its roof before police stopped them.
A second Japanese restaurant was targeted later in the evening, with bricks thrown through the window, terrifying kimono-clad waitresses.
“We are all Chinese in here and were just minding our own business,” one told Reuters minutes after the attack. “This is terrifying.”
I’ll say it again. The Chinese have a great point, just as the protestors in Seoul do. The revision of Japan’s history textbooks is unjustifiable and inexcusable. The misery that the Japanese army wrought on the Chinese during the last world war was unparalleled in its savagery. Anger is not only justified, it’s called for.
Attacking Japanese restaurants in China, however, and terrorizing the Chinese workers there is not the best way to deal with the issue. In fact, if I had to think of a more immature and ineffective way to deal with it, I’d be hard pressed. This has already backfired, making China appear to be the criminal and not Japan. Ugly pictures of angry, out-of-control Chinese demonstrators are plastered on Drudge, and while it may feel good at the moment to release some of the anger, in the long run it only works against the demonstrators.
So many stories on China over the past 24 hours, but I have to deal with family issues this weekend, so I may not get to cover them, at least not until tomorrow….
Go here for a most interesting eyewitness blogger account of the demonstrations.
1
By ACB
You and I both know that if you protest like this, Japan will sit tight and ignore the issue.
As anybody who knows Japanese culture will tell you, if go in shouting and banging your fists on the table, Japan will refuse to play ball.
You have to do things calmly, and you have to do them in private. No media, no shouting, and no accusations.
If China had followed these rules, then it would had a Beijing approved appology and different text books by now.
April 9, 2005 @ 11:28 pm | Comment
2
By ACB
Both you and Xinhua forgot to mention that the disputed text books are used in a minority of school. The last text book series was only accepted by 2 private schools, both of which were in Tokyo. Only 2000 books were ever printed and less than 0.5 of Japanese children ever used them.
These books are really a joke, people in Japan don’t know what all of the fuss is about becasue these books are sold in small numbers and are suplimented by teachers who can fill in all of the disputed details.
There are far worse things printed everyday in the US, more books are printed that deny the holocaust than dilute Japaneese war crimes.
People are also forgetting that these books are aimed at young children.
Japanese children are more sensitive to sex and violance than US children and some details, particularly those concerning rape and sexual slavery are diluted to protect them rather than to distort history. They learn about these things in high school and college, but they are too young in middle school to read about ‘comfort women’, which is another word for rape victim.
April 9, 2005 @ 11:38 pm | Comment
3
By Thomas
Unfortunately, many are making this out to seem as if these textbooks are THE textbooks that will be used in Japanese schools. The more I read about the issue, the more I see that these books are not at all THE books that will be used, but only one set in a vast number of textbooks that individual districts or schools can choose from (and probably won’t choose in this case).
Textbook writers have the right to put their slant on events. This does not mean that the average person, school, or district in any country will be fooled into purchasing textbooks that misrepresent history.
On a side note: I think that the rioters in China are only doing harm to the image of the Chinese people. First of all, the books won’t be used in mose Japanese schools… so much of the hubbub is an overreaction. Secondly, despite what happened decades ago, when foreign readers are confronted with images of angry Chinese masses storming Japanese businesses and breaking windows of the Japanese embassy, their reaction is not “Oh, the Chinese have a right to be angry.” Rather, it is “what did those Japanese storekeepers do to merit this?” And since the storekeepers themselves did nothing (except for be Japanese), the result is to give the protestors a fanatical glow.
Kind of reminds me of the violent crowds following last year’s China-Japan football game.
April 10, 2005 @ 12:10 am | Comment
4
By sango
Just a small point:
“Japanese children are more sensitive to sex and violance than US children” ?
Then why is it that Japanese anime imported to North America (such as Dragonball Z and One Piece) often have the blood and violence censored out? As an avid anime watcher, I know that it’s common for Japanese children’s shows to contain mature content such as sex, nudity, violence, and complex situations. On the other hand, North American audiences are judged as too conservative and squeamish to handle it.
Remember, video games, which are generally seen as glorifying violence, are more mainstream in Japan than in North America.
April 10, 2005 @ 12:17 am | Comment
5
By Jing
Oh put a sock in it ACB, Japanese middle school children too innocent to learn at such a young age about comfort women? Are you even vaguely aware of the STD rates for teenage girls in Japan? How can they not be prepared for the issue of rape victims when pornography is ubiquitous? A 14 year old in the U.S. can learn about the holocaust(mass murder), but heaven forbid that Japanese kids learn anything relating to sex, afterall they live in such a puritanical society!
Your sorry ass excuse about the textbook issue doesn’t cut it either. Quite frankly even if China were to “ask nicely” so to speak, nothing would still ever be done because the ministries responsible for it are out to do it on purpose. Don’t even bother with that shit about no one understanding the oh so mysterious ways of Japanese culture. That barely works when a Westerner is involved but considering the other participant involved is China, any tired orientalist mojo is worthless. It isn’t an issue of people failing to understand Japan. Japan just doesn’t seem to understand the rest of the world, and the last time they did, it took 2 atomic bombs to drive the lesson home.
/rant
April 10, 2005 @ 12:26 am | Comment
6
By Muninn
Look, clearly the textbooks in question are revisionist, I own and have read an older edition and regardless of the fact that it includes mention of the main events required by the Ministry of Education (thus securing its passage by said Ministry which are required to make sure it makes due mention of a set of events and not distort them), its narrative is one which clearly tries to tell a proud story of the history of the Japanese nation. As such, the controversial textbook is something I would want no child in Japan to have. As has been mentioned in the comments above though, the last edition was used by less than 1% of schools in Japan, and is often supplemented with other texts. ACB is wrong, the book sold like hot cakes, but only in regular stores thanks to its controversy.
I have seen several of the textbooks which are used by far higher percentages of Japanese students (at the National Diet Children’s Library in Tokyo) and they all are at the least unproblematic in their mention of wartime atrocities, and in some cases have wonderful detailed special sections on the hardships of colonial rule, of atrocities, and of the war. Of course, in the highly charged nationalist media coverage of this issue in China and Korea, these other textbooks often get no mention nor do they rarely mention how few schools actually use the problematic textbook. I’m not surprised, but I expect more from Peking Duck and other bloggers I respect who write about Asia.
It is most unfortunate that the approval process which the Ministry of Education is what it is but I would also caution against some of the changes which have been suggested to change it: As the famous Ienaga Saburo case (a left wing intellectual and fantastic historian whose textbooks were not given approval), if you allow the Ministry to intervene too much, they will step in and mess with the narrative and wording in many places we don’t want them messing. I do not think the answer here is MORE government intervention into textbooks because nations will also support national historical narratives…the results of which I have seen, not only in this current nationalist revisionist textbook, but in the laughable contents of Korean and Chinese textbooks of their own history.
There is currently a huge diversity in Japanese history textbooks (one more popular textbook I looked at which covered the atrocities well even suggested that the North Korean invasion of the ROK was a “war of liberation” and we should see it as a civil war that the US should not have dabbled in – this approach would only be seen in DPRK and PRC textbooks and whether you agree or not with this interpretation of the Korean war it gives you an idea of how much the textbooks in Japan swing the other way in some cases) which can’t be said for textbooks in the ROK, DPRK, or the PRC where textbooks are full of nationalist crap which is far more full of factual inaccuracy (about the sufferings of the people at the hands of their own rulers and in China’s case, their historical aggression towards their neighbors) and self-congratulatory fantasies than, I regret, even the revisionist right-wing nonsense in this silly Japanese textbook that has been approved and is being read by almost no one (it is generating more income from its controversy by being sold in regular bookstores in Japan – a first in history textbooks, than it is being read in the schools).
To summarize: the new edition of the Japanese textbook in question is probably as bad as the old one, will probably be read by as few children as the last one (unless pissing off the Japanese with all these protests will encourage more them to choose it out of spite), and represents the kind of self-congratulatory nationalist history which is found in many nations around the world. The majority of Japanese textbooks give much better coverage of the atrocities, colonial oppression, and aggressive war (although the most popular textbook does so in such a dry factual manner that one would like more discussion of the issues concerned). The media reporting about this is overwhelmingly irresponsible in its lack of detail on the complexity of this issue and rarely puts it into context.
April 10, 2005 @ 12:58 am | Comment
7
By Hui
“understand Japanese culture”? No one can understand it better than the Chinese because we’ve paid such a high price for this piece of knowldege–Japan is a nation that only pays respect to power, violence and brutality. But don’t worry, ACB, our smart government will follow your rules as they always did. That’s why there’s no coverage of the protests from Chinese media, including all the major websites.
April 10, 2005 @ 1:30 am | Comment
8
By Other Lisa
Okay, I’m blatantly blog-wh@ring, but I did my best to provide a historical context for anti-Japanese protests – and yes, May 4th is prominently featured…here…
April 10, 2005 @ 3:46 am | Comment
9
By Dave
Premise 1: Japan has more freedom of opinion than China
Premise 2: This freedom is reflected in the textbook controversy, as school boards ultimately decide what textbooks (from the Ministry’s approved list) it will use, just as this freedom is reflected in it’s parliamentary democracy.
Premise 3: In China, there’s only one history, one opinion. Textbooks do not reflect a diversity of opinion because a diversity of opinion on issues such as history, which directly affect the Party.
Corollary: The current Chinese population has little or no exposure to internal debate or controversy over history, national identity or the role of the state.
Supposition: This prevents Chinese people, even when informed of the full facts of the Japanese textbook controversy, or, for another example, the huge swath of Taiwanese people who disagree, partly or entirely, with the Mainland’s One China policy, from understanding what is really taking place in these countries because they have no experience of living in a society where a plurality of views and opinions are allowed and are fractitiously represented within a democratic government.
Conclusion: Many Chinese people who are angry with Japan, Taiwan, the U.S. or other nations not only are not informed of the other views and interest groups in these nations, but when informed cannot process this information, because their experiences growing up leave them ill-equipped to handle it.
Secondary Conclusion: Full democracy, if implemented in China, would, at least in the beginning, be very, very messy and probably violent. Protests and other incidents of “acting out” such as these would only intensify. Without such a baptism by fire for China to learn to have internal debate and sympathize with others debates, these reactions to things such as Japan can only intensify and get worse.
April 10, 2005 @ 4:29 am | Comment
10
By michael
These anti-Japanese demonstrations are out-of-control and counterproductive.
I was at the demonstration in Guangzhou (see link) today, and it was a very negative atmosphere.
April 10, 2005 @ 4:30 am | Comment
11
By Daai Tou Laam Diary
Anti-Japan Riots Back To Guangdong
Evening news here is showing more anti-japan riots on Sunday in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Video of protestors climbing up billboards and cutting up ads for Sony and Epson. Apparently the Japanese government has asked the Chinese government for reparations f
April 10, 2005 @ 5:04 am | Comment
12
By Sam_S
Hmm. Dave, very thought provoking, thanks. Haven’t read all the news or even all this thread, but from my front-row seat in Shenzhen, all the coverage that reads violent demonstrations erupted….
Change that last word to “were sponsored”.
Tiny depth-free coverage on my blog, too.
April 10, 2005 @ 5:17 am | Comment
13
By Keir
If I was a Japanese here in Beijing I’d find it especially troubling that finding out what to do is impossible given that the embassy website is apparently BLOCKED (www.japan.org.cn). I’ve been trying to access it all day and it only goes to show how implicit the government is in this affair.
April 10, 2005 @ 6:42 am | Comment
14
By Mark
Japan has yet to come to terms with its past.The issue is not just textbooks,its Japans attitude to its past.Until Japan comes clean ,its going to anger people.I’m not saying that what is happening in China is right,I’m saying you can’t behave like Japan does and not expect there to be a very angry reaction.A lot of this type of reaction,Japan brings upon itself.
Mark
April 10, 2005 @ 6:47 am | Comment
15
By Anonymous
In China nothing happens without Party approval, permission or incitement. As everyone knows, this offensive against Japan at this time is government’s policy. Dave has the point. For all the responsibilities you could find in Japan’s attitude, once again the problem is in Zhongnanhai.
Very sad indeed to see chinese people used as puppets.
April 10, 2005 @ 8:23 am | Comment
16
By Anonymous
Keir,
Try this:
http://www.cn.emb-japan.go.jp/
Still blocked?
April 10, 2005 @ 8:29 am | Comment
17
By richard
Munin, thanks for a great comment, probably the most important in this thread. One thing:
Of course, in the highly charged nationalist media coverage of this issue in China and Korea, these other textbooks often get no mention nor do they rarely mention how few schools actually use the problematic textbook. I’m not surprised, but I expect more from Peking Duck and other bloggers I respect who write about Asia.
I have virtually no special knowledge of the types of textbooks Japanese students are being given except what I read in the media and on blogs. If I were aware of the textbooks you mention I would certainly refer to them. Don’t blame the bloggers — the media have definitely done a good job convincing us that Japan’s textbooks are, across the board, revisionist, nationalistic and deceptive.
April 10, 2005 @ 9:39 am | Comment
18
By nightal
rather odd that many of us are trying to rationalise irrational behaviours on both Japanese and Chinese sides. Pointing blame at the government of each side is just being motivational reductionistic.
The mutual animosity between the two nations is a matter of irrational passion. Sadly, the only social and political arrangement in China to counter the destructive side of such irrational forces is the party.
April 10, 2005 @ 9:45 am | Comment
19
By ACB
“the revision of Japan’s history textbooks is unjustifiable and inexcusable. The misery that the Japanese army wrought on the Chinese during the last world war was unparalleled in its savagery. Anger is not only justified, it’s called for.”
Just two minor corrections.
1) Most of the disputed elements in Japanese text books are actually VERY minor indeed.
For example, some of these books leave out exact casualties and use words like ‘many’ or ‘large numbers’ and exclude graphic references to sex crimes, but they do not deny that they happened. This is normal in a book intended for CHILDREN. I do not support the deliberate alteration of history books for political purposes, but I do support the removal of graphic, violent or sexual content. High school text books are intended for an older audience and carry these details as do college books.
Teachers are also free to fill in any blanks that they believe that their students are mature enough to handle. I for one wouldn’t tell an 11 year old girl of more than the existence of sex crimes in WWII, it would be a crime against her to do so.
China also disputes things that are actually fact as recognized by other countries, like Japan’s desire to replace white rule with its own, and things that are really post war border issues and are not related to the war at all. Other issues are because of Chinese ego and their need to inflate everything.
According to Wikipedia, China suffered 13,000,000 in combined civilian and military casualties, http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/casualty.html and http://ww2bodycount.netfirms.com/ both roughly agree. But I’ve heard figures of 30,000,000 being banded around from pro China sources. This is about how many people Japan killed world wide in 15 years of conflict and occupation throughout the whole of Asia. This shows that you can’t trust some of the complaints coming out of China. They are not based on facts.
Japanese text books are not as bad as you think, and they in no way rate this. I urge you to read ask a Japanese friend to translate one of these books rather than reading about it in the media.
2) The misery brought by Japan was not ‘unparalleled’. Both Russia and Germany were equally brutal. May I draw your attention to the siege of Moscow and Stalingrad, the crushing of resistance in Warsaw, the fall of Berlin, and the Holocaust. Also the treatment of civilians in the Soviet Union, not to mention the bombing holocaust brought on by allied carpet bombing of German cities.
I don’t know what they teach you in America, but I learnt my history in Asia and Europe, and I apparently had a far better education in this area than you did.
Germany killed about 27 million Russians in four years of fighting, and about 4 Million Jews during the Holocaust. Japan killed about 31-32 million people from a dozen countries in 15 years of fighting and occupation.
Germany is beats Japan by a mile.
April 10, 2005 @ 9:56 am | Comment
20
By Anonymous
ACB: The difference between Germany and Japan is that Germany has formally apologized and provided compensation.
April 10, 2005 @ 10:08 am | Comment
21
By richard
JR: Please sincerely ask yourself, “What would the Jews do, if Germans denied holocaust in their history book?”
As a Jew and a student of the Holocaust, I can promise you the very kast thing the Jews would do is attack German restaurants (especially
those operated by German Jews!). It would virtually never happen. RThe jews would mobile its various organizations and begin an intensive worldwide media campaign, they would place ads in papers everywhere, they would appear on talk shows and they would engage in serious behind the scenes discussions with the Germans to correct the situation. These are exactly the approaches they took to the post-WWII oppression of Soviet Jewery — they never once threw bricks at Russian restaurants or displayed
violence. This is called intelligent, meaningful, strategic protest designed to get maximum results with minimal bloodshed. Throwing bricks
through windwons of Russian businesses in the US would have damaged their cause and their credibility and made the situation worse, not better. But mature people everywhere know this, and I think you do too, JR.
The other thing we all know is that the textbooks are all but irrelevant, a minor catalyst. This situation is a tinderbox, and in the CCP’s eyes it serves a purpose. They’ll try to contain it, they’ll send out police to cool things off, just as Hitler sent in the police to end the Kristallnacht riots in 1938. But we all know Hitler incited those riots,
and we all know that if the CCP didn’t exactly incite the riots, they allowed them to happen and gave them tacit approval.
April 10, 2005 @ 10:18 am | Comment
22
By schtickyrice
It is ridiculous to have an atrocity contest between Japan and Germany. It doesn’t make it any less painful for the victims of either of the above to be told that bad as it may be, some other group suffered more. It is sickening to indulge in such neurotic victimhood. Instead of getting mad, get even. Those protestors should channel their energies into something constructive, like helping the migrant workers and making China a kinder, gentler, and more prosperous society for all. All this wanton destructiveness will not change anything except damage China’s image in the world.
April 10, 2005 @ 10:33 am | Comment
23
By richard
Well said, schticky. Can you imagine what China could achieve if this energy could be harnessed for a meaningful purpose?
April 10, 2005 @ 10:45 am | Comment
24
By Muninn
Hey Richard, I didn’t mean to sound too critical in that side comment I made since clearly you didn’t claim to know much in detail about the issue, but I hope we will all (myself included) will do what we can as bloggers with an influential voice in our growing medium (and for that I congratulate you as ever on a fantastic site and following) to try to look beyond the media snapshot for those issues that can incite such emotive responses as this one does 🙂
April 10, 2005 @ 12:10 pm | Comment
25
By richard
Thanks Munin – I appreciate your sharing your knowledge on this topic. I wish more people could read what you have to say, as it puts the protests in an entirely different light and, more than anything else I’ve read, underscores just how ill-advised these protests are.
April 10, 2005 @ 12:30 pm | Comment
26
By bellevue
ACB:
In fact Xinhua did mention that news – some 1,400 copies were put into actual use in 3 private schools. The figure is then updated to something around 2,000.
Xinhua buries this news deep, but even if they had made it a headline news, the protesters would hardly have behaved any diffrently.
For you information, I broke this 1,400-copy news to a Chinese BBS I frequented, only got dozens of angry responses (“even one copy is evil enough”) and then I was blocked to post any further.
Got the picture?
April 10, 2005 @ 1:10 pm | Comment
27
By bellevue
Please sincerely ask yourself, “What would the Jews do, if Germans denied holocaust in their history book?”
LOL! After so many years in the States, the guy still thinks that Jews think in the same Chinese way he knows and only knows!
Ignorance and stupidity really know no bound.
April 10, 2005 @ 1:20 pm | Comment
28
By JR
Please sincerely ask yourself, “What would the Jews do, if Germans denied holocaust in their history book?”
LOL! After so many years in the States, the guy still thinks that Jews think in the same Chinese way he knows and only knows!
Ignorance and stupidity really know no bound.
Posted by bellevue at April 10, 2005 01:20 PM
This is exactly why bellevue is NOT a troll in here.
April 10, 2005 @ 1:44 pm | Comment
29
By JR
“Munin, thanks for a great comment, probably the most important in this thread. One thing:
Of course, in the highly charged nationalist media coverage of this issue in China and Korea, these other textbooks often get no mention nor do they rarely mention how few schools actually use the problematic textbook. I’m not surprised, but I expect more from Peking Duck and other bloggers I respect who write about Asia.
I have virtually no special knowledge of the types of textbooks Japanese students are being given except what I read in the media and on blogs. If I were aware of the textbooks you mention I would certainly refer to them. Don’t blame the bloggers — the media have definitely done a good job convincing us that Japan’s textbooks are, across the board, revisionist, nationalistic and deceptive.
Posted by richard at April 10, 2005 09:39 AM
Thanks Munin – I appreciate your sharing your knowledge on this topic. I wish more people could read what you have to say, as it puts the protests in an entirely different light and, more than anything else I’ve read, underscores just how ill-advised these protests are.
Posted by richard at April 10, 2005 12:30 PM ”
Richard,
Do you know Munnin personally, you seem to be eager to accept everything Munnin said as nothing but the truths of this matter. I, otherwise, would like more informations.
Since Munnin has these textbooks with him, I would like Munnin to scan and copy the different textbooks he mentioned, and share them with us in his web site first of all.
Second, Munnin’s point was that the whitewash is no big deal at all because there is only 1% Japanese schools using this textbook. My questions to Munnin, how many Japanese students affected are this 1%? Where do you get this statistic of 1% using the textbook, the original source?
April 10, 2005 @ 2:23 pm | Comment
30
By richard
JR, other bright commenters who I do know have commented in this thread supporting Muninn’s assertions that this has been blown out of proportion. Also, I went to his site and I was impressed (as in very, very impressed). I don’t swallow everything every commenter says just because it’s in line with my own thinking. Bellevue is a good example — I respect his intelligence, but I always remember that he sees things through an anti-Chinese filter, just as many others see everything through a pro-Chinese filter. Go over to Muninn’s site and let us all knw if you think he’s an unreliable/unknowledgeable source.
April 10, 2005 @ 2:37 pm | Comment
31
By JR
Richard,
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that he seems very knowledgeable, but what he wrote he “interpreted” for us. The following statements are all his own observations and interpretations of the hard facts, “the new edition of the Japanese textbook in question is probably as bad as the old one….” or this statement. “1) Most of the disputed elements in Japanese text books are actually VERY minor indeed. For example, some of these books leave out exact casualties and use words like ‘many’ or ‘large numbers’ and exclude graphic references to sex crimes, but they do not deny that they happened. This is normal in a book intended for CHILDREN. I do not support the deliberate alteration of history books for political purposes, but I do support the removal of graphic, violent or sexual content. High school text books are intended for an older audience and carry these details as do college books.” or this statement “I have seen several of the textbooks which are used by far higher percentages of Japanese students (at the National Diet Children’s Library in Tokyo) and they all are at the least unproblematic in their mention of wartime atrocities, and in some cases have wonderful detailed special sections on the hardships of colonial rule, of atrocities, and of the war.”
Again, I am not saying he is unreliable or biased but the hard facts would be much more convincing than his own interpretations of the facts he was telling us.
April 10, 2005 @ 3:15 pm | Comment
32
By JR
I just come across this…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4415147.stm
Historical difference
The Japanese government, which says it can only press textbooks to be amended if they contain factual errors, has said it is up to individual school districts to decide which books they use.
“China and South Korea say the books underplay Japan’s military occupations of Asian countries in the first half of the 20th Century.
One book refers to the Japanese slaughter of some 300,000 civilians in the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937 as an “incident”, rather than the “massacre” it is known as elsewhere.
The seven other texts approved on Tuesday are also accused of dispensing with the kind of detail Japan’s neighbours say is necessary for a balanced account.
Only one of the books gives figures for the number of civilians killed in the Nanjing Massacre, while the others say “many people” died. ”
Someone in here please call BBC news and tell them they get their “facts” wrong.
April 10, 2005 @ 4:06 pm | Comment
33
By Keir
Hey- whoever gave me the http://www.cn.emb-japan.go.jp/ address, cheers. You wuldn’t have the English page now, would you?….
April 10, 2005 @ 4:42 pm | Comment
34
By Keir
No worries- got it.
April 10, 2005 @ 4:43 pm | Comment
35
By Keir
One last thing:
Exactly how many millions died during the Great Leap Backward in 3 years? I tell my geography class it was roughly the population of Canada, but in my library at school all I have are these Chinese history textbooks that for some reason stay quiet on the issue.
April 10, 2005 @ 4:52 pm | Comment
36
By richard
JR, what facts did the BBC get wrong? As to the use of “incident” as opposed to “massacre” — it’s the same word the CCP uses to refer to the TSM. Not that there’s any comparison between the two massacres in terms of scale, brutality and sadism, but if Japan’s use of the word “incident” is an issue for the Chinese then it’s a good example of the pot calling the kettle black.
April 10, 2005 @ 4:56 pm | Comment
37
By richard
Brilliant point, Keir. In terms of its government being honest, up-front, contrite and respectful of its people through the ages, China’s not at the top of the list, having killed more of its own people than just about any other country.
April 10, 2005 @ 5:02 pm | Comment
38
By wkl
Here’s something from the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27855-2005Apr5.html
Japanese Schoolbooks Anger S. Korea, China
The outcry intensified in 2001 after the Education Ministry here approved a new junior high textbook that was drafted by a group of Japanese nationalists and that omitted key details about Japan’s wartime atrocities. The book has since been adopted by a handful of Japanese schools.
On Tuesday, the Education Ministry approved a newer edition of the same text that critics say further distorts the past and portrays imperial Japan as a liberator rather than an occupier of its Asian neighbors. The text shuns the word “invasion,” for instance, and leaves out critical accounts of events such as the Japanese army’s massacre of civilians in Nanking, China, in 1937.
Other texts for the 2006 school year were toned down. The term “comfort women” — a euphemism for wartime sex slaves, mostly from Korea and China — disappeared from all eight junior high history books approved by the national government Tuesday. One book maintained a reference to wartime “comfort stations” for Japanese soldiers. In contrast, all 2001 editions of the books had specific references to the practice of sexual slavery, according to Japan’s Kyodo news service.
The Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, which drafted the most controversial of the new books, hailed the approvals as in step with current thinking in Japan.
Some schoolbook publishers and government officials have argued that it is time to remove “self-deprecating” historical references. That argument has troubled Japan’s neighbors because it comes at a time when Japan continues to move away from postwar pacifism and is considering changing its U.S.-drafted constitution, in which it renounced the right to maintain a military.
The government approved “the textbook that most faithfully reflects the goal . . . of deepening love towards our country’s history,” the society said in a statement.
———————
Japan as a liberator. That’s a new one. Free Expression or not, the Education Ministry should NEVER had approved that textbook. I don’t care if it’s going to be used in only a few schools. It’s only going to rile people up all over Asia.
April 10, 2005 @ 5:03 pm | Comment
39
By richard
I agree with you, wkl. They should never have published it.
April 10, 2005 @ 5:05 pm | Comment
40
By Muninn
wkl – thanks for the reference to the WP article, if it is true that “Other texts for the 2006 school year were toned down. The term “comfort women” — a euphemism for wartime sex slaves, mostly from Korea and China — disappeared from all eight junior high history books approved by the national government Tuesday.” then this is a much more tragic development that is of greater concern to me than the approval of the controversial textbook being mentioned. Knowing some of the publishers and anti-revisionist historians involved in some of these other textbooks (including my former advisor at Waseda who was once authored one of these texts) this can only be explained by a shift in policy in the revision process itself (whereby the ministry “recommends” that certain things be dropped or reworded after the draft is submitted). Because this review process and the resubmission etc. is time consuming, the 2006 book change would indicate an effort by the ministry to get rid of the comfort women mention as early as 2003.
The books I saw (I regret that I don’t have my handwritten notes handy) were from different years. the Nihonshi: gendai kara no rekishi (Heisei 14, I think that is 2002) I liked the best, published by Tokyo shoseki. It had quite a bit of detail 138-9, full section on the unit 731 on p147, and p146-7 talked about the lie that was the daitoaken (greater east asia co-prosperty sphere), it had a whole section on resistance to Japan and on the naming controversy (15 year war vs. great east asia war vs. anti-Japan war, vs. sino-japanese war) and maps and glossary on the periosd on 150-1 (I’m quoting from some hasty notes so I can’t guarantee accuracy)
a book published by Jitsukyoushuppan in the same year had lots too, with a whole side bar section on the nanjing massacre, listing the inflated 300,000 figure used by the Chinese gov. (see the detailed research by David Askew on this, for example here http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html and in his Sino-Japanese studies articles on the subject – the numbers game is really not all that interesting to me, I’m more interested in the substance, see for example my blog entry at http://muninn.net/blog/2004/03/102-former-soldiers-in-nanjing-1937.html on this) and had 2 pages on the colonization of Korea and titled one section p80-1 “How did Japan invade Korea and Taiwan”
There was more but I have bad notes from my short visit to the library. The most straight forwardly factual and thus unhelpful to emphasizing the war among the books I looked at was the yamagawa 2002 text (I think this was quite a popular text) if I remember correctly, but it wasn’t nearly as nationalistic as the new controversial textbook, just dry and factual.
For an older comparison of texts on just their treatment of the Nanjing massacre see:
http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/Nanjing/nanjing3.html but keep in mind that Japan Echo is a somewhat right-leaning mag which I suspect is supported by the gov.
April 10, 2005 @ 6:10 pm | Comment
41
By Muninn
wkl – thanks for the reference to the WP article, if it is true that “Other texts for the 2006 school year were toned down. The term “comfort women” — a euphemism for wartime sex slaves, mostly from Korea and China — disappeared from all eight junior high history books approved by the national government Tuesday.” then this is a much more tragic development that is of greater concern to me than the approval of the controversial textbook being mentioned. Knowing some of the publishers and anti-revisionist historians involved in some of these other textbooks (including my former advisor at Waseda who was once authored one of these texts) this can only be explained by a shift in policy in the revision process itself (whereby the ministry “recommends” that certain things be dropped or reworded after the draft is submitted). Because this review process and the resubmission etc. is time consuming, the 2006 book change would indicate an effort by the ministry to get rid of the comfort women mention as early as 2003.
The books I saw (I regret that I don’t have my handwritten notes handy) were from different years. the Nihonshi: gendai kara no rekishi (Heisei 14, I think that is 2002) I liked the best, published by Tokyo shoseki. It had quite a bit of detail 138-9, full section on the unit 731 on p147, and p146-7 talked about the lie that was the daitoaken (greater east asia co-prosperty sphere), it had a whole section on resistance to Japan and on the naming controversy (15 year war vs. great east asia war vs. anti-Japan war, vs. sino-japanese war) and maps and glossary on the periosd on 150-1 (I’m quoting from some hasty notes so I can’t guarantee accuracy)
a book published by Jitsukyoushuppan in the same year had lots too, with a whole side bar section on the nanjing massacre, listing the inflated 300,000 figure used by the Chinese gov. (see the detailed research by David Askew on this, for example here http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html and in his Sino-Japanese studies articles on the subject – the numbers game is really not all that interesting to me, I’m more interested in the substance, see for example my blog entry at muninn.net/blog/2004/03/102-former-soldiers-in-nanjing-1937.html on this) and had 2 pages on the colonization of Korea and titled one section p80-1 “How did Japan invade Korea and Taiwan”
There was more but I have bad notes from my short visit to the library. The most straight forwardly factual and thus unhelpful to emphasizing the war among the books I looked at was the yamagawa 2002 text (I think this was quite a popular text) if I remember correctly, but it wasn’t nearly as nationalistic as the new controversial textbook, just dry and factual.
For an older comparison of texts on just their treatment of the Nanjing massacre see:
http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/Nanjing/nanjing3.html but keep in mind that Japan Echo is a somewhat right-leaning mag which I suspect is supported by the gov.
April 10, 2005 @ 6:11 pm | Comment
42
By Muninn
Sorry for adding yet another link here, but for some of you who are curious what the revisionists sound like (and there is no doubt that they are growing in number) you can see some translations I did with commonts related to a recent article one of the historians indirectly connected (if I remember correctly) to the new textbook group. The article was published in Bungei Shunjû last year: muninn.net/blog/2003/09/modern-japanese-history-from-father-to-son.html
April 10, 2005 @ 6:20 pm | Comment
43
By Simon World
Anti-Japan riots in China
The anti-Japan riots in China over the weekend are an indication of both the depths of feeling amongst the Chinese public and the difficulty the Chinese Government is having in putting a lid on the nationalist frenzy it has whipped up. Ironically Japan…
April 10, 2005 @ 8:13 pm | Comment
44
By JR
“JR, what facts did the BBC get wrong? As to the use of “incident” as opposed to “massacre” — it’s the same word the CCP uses to refer to the TSM. Not that there’s any comparison between the two massacres in terms of scale, brutality and sadism, but if Japan’s use of the word “incident” is an issue for the Chinese then it’s a good example of the pot calling the kettle black.
Posted by richard at April 10, 2005 04:56 PM ”
Richard,
This is not about the CCP, it is about the Japanese whitewashing their WW2 atrocities. Would you feel fine if the German government telling their children the holocaust as the incident?
April 10, 2005 @ 8:19 pm | Comment
45
By richard
No I wouldn’t feel fine if the Germans whitewashed the Holocaust. Butthat doesn’ mean I would advocate attacking German bakeries — that would be stupid.
April 10, 2005 @ 8:25 pm | Comment
46
By JR
Every Peking Duck readers, please visit to the site Muninn was referring to
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html
“a book published by Jitsukyoushuppan in the same year had lots too, with a whole side bar section on the nanjing massacre, listing the inflated 300,000 figure used by the Chinese gov”
Muninn, the imperial Japan apologist just lost all his credibility.
April 10, 2005 @ 8:25 pm | Comment
47
By richard
JR, Muninn didn’t write that article, did he?
April 10, 2005 @ 8:30 pm | Comment
48
By JR
Want to know more about the Japanese whitewashing the Nanking Massacre… another right wing Japanese site.
http://www.jiyuu-shikan.org/nanjing/contents.html
April 10, 2005 @ 8:31 pm | Comment
49
By JR
He is using the biased article as the standard.
April 10, 2005 @ 8:32 pm | Comment
50
By richard
I’m not convinced that by linking to a biased article that automatically makes him a Japanese apologist. You sound a little extreme.
April 10, 2005 @ 8:33 pm | Comment
51
By Keir
“Japan is a nation that only pays respect to power, violence and brutality”
Sounds like what we said in 1989 when we opposed German reunification. It’s in their blood! The have a war-gene that transmits itself from generation to generation!
What power besides economic does Japan crave TODAY? What heinous acts of carnage and violence has it acted out within your PARENTS’ generation post ’45? When I think of brutality, funnily enough it’s images of China’s army rolling over its own defenceless students that comes to mind….
Compare this with Ireland, where it’s come to the opoint where the IRA are considering disbanding simply because its people no longer hate the British enough. And they have 600 years worth of reasons to do so!
Poor China. Poor, poor, poor China. It has my sympathy. Trouble is, in the real world that’s all it can expect. It’s certainly more than other countries which have, believe it or not, been brutalised even more expect.
April 10, 2005 @ 8:35 pm | Comment
52
By JR
What? Quoting a page calling the holocaust as an incident is too extreme? Oops I mean the Nanking massacre.
April 10, 2005 @ 8:42 pm | Comment
53
By Muninn
JR, the jiyushugishikan web site you gave at http://jiyuu-shikan.org is an excellent source for the nationalist revisionist line, this organization is directly connected to the “new textbook society” or atarashii kyôkasho o tsukuru kai, which created the currently controversial nationalist text.
The Askew article is great (No, of course I didn’t write it. As I indicated, I’m far less interested in the numbers game and more interested in the substance, see my earlier comment and my own blog postings on this that I linked to), and he is probably the best scholar on the massacre outside of Japan with Timothy Brooks editing a volume collecting documents about the massacre in English (the best high quality research in the world is not yet coming from China which unfortunately has a lot of bad research on this floating around with flawed data and fake pictures that orgs like jiyushugishikan love to take advantage of. The best work on this worldwide is from the Japanese Center for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility and the Committee on the Investigation of the Nanjing Massacre whose left-leaning historians have fantastic documentary collections, interviews with soldiers and victims, etc. The latter organization is specifically carrying out the frontline battle against the revisionist claims in Japan.
April 10, 2005 @ 8:47 pm | Comment
54
By Muninn
Wait, I’m confused, what article is biased? The Askew article?! I’m beginning to wonder if JR is actually reading what I write, and what Askew wrote, perhaps then he would realize what side I’m on here (and Askew for that matter!)…
If you have any doubt about my position on this issue and my comments above are too difficult, see my 2 postings most close to this topic (muninn.net/blog/2004/03/102-former-soldiers-in-nanjing-1937.html , muninn.net/blog/2003/09/modern-japanese-history-from-father-to-son.html)
April 10, 2005 @ 8:53 pm | Comment
55
By richard
I think JR is confused, Muninn. I suggest he go read your blog.
(JR’s a smart guy, but he’s very quick to defend China, which is natural for a Chinese guy, just as I instinctively defended the US, at least until Bush took power.)
April 10, 2005 @ 9:05 pm | Comment
56
By JR
Muninn,
“a book published by Jitsukyoushuppan in the same year had lots too, with a whole side bar section on the nanjing massacre, listing the inflated 300,000 figure used by the Chinese gov. (see the detailed research by David Askew on this, for example here http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html and in his Sino-Japanese studies articles on the subject – the numbers game is really not all that interesting to me, I’m more interested in the substance, see for example my blog entry at muninn.net/blog/2004/03/102-former-soldiers-in-nanjing-1937.html on this) and had 2 pages on the colonization of Korea and titled one section p80-1 “How did Japan invade Korea and Taiwan”
I was referring to the above paragraph before, maybe I was confused but I am going to go the links you provided above. I thought you were quoting from a right wing web site. I apologize if I have blamed you wrongly.
April 10, 2005 @ 9:07 pm | Comment
57
By richard
And Muninn, you can use html in these comments so people can get to your links faster.
April 10, 2005 @ 9:09 pm | Comment
58
By Muninn
ok noted, thanks Richard. I’ll think I will close my participation in this thread for now, happy blogging to all of you.
April 10, 2005 @ 9:17 pm | Comment
59
By JR
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html
“While it is possible, after all, to deny that a “great massacre” occurred (depending on one’s definition of “great” and “massacre”), it is impossible to deny that an “incident” occurred. ”
Did I read it wrong? I am very concerned if the author thought the great massacre occured or not depending on the definitions of the term. ( I am still reading that very long article.)
April 10, 2005 @ 9:37 pm | Comment
60
By JR
Muninn,
Were you saying that the Askew article not supposed to be biased? I don’t really think so after reading the majority of it. The article sends a chill in my spine it is so biased. Everyone please go there and read the whole thing, did I read the author wrong???
April 10, 2005 @ 9:46 pm | Comment
61
By JR
The Japanese go to such an extent, and so much energy and effort into denying the Nanking massacre. It tells you a lot about the Japanese culture.
April 10, 2005 @ 9:49 pm | Comment
62
By Muninn
JR, no offense, but I think that if anything it is your own highly reactive responses, without careful consideration of what you read that is the most “biased” There is no such thing as “unbiased” history (and certainly not Chinese historiography about the incident) and Askew’s article is no different. What the article is, however is careful consideration of the three major schools of thought: the nationalist revisionists “the illusion school” or “deniers” who he is against (that should make you happy) and a discussion of the “moderates” and those who claim that the numbers involved are in the 300,000 range etc.
Look at how carelessly you quoted him out of context: “This is true even as regards what term to use for the incident itself. Of the various terms that have been used, “Nanjing Incident” is used in Japan by all three schools examined here. It is, I believe, the most neutral term, and one that is particularly beneficial in combating the arguments of the deniers. While it is possible, after all, to deny that a “great massacre” occurred (depending on one’s definition of “great” and “massacre”), it is impossible to deny that an “incident” occurred. ”
He is “combating the deniers” who you too want to fight against…. he is saying that by using the word “incident” he is choosing a neutral term which doesn’t suggest that nothing bad happened…after all we have countless examples of incidents in history which led to great slaughter. For example, when the guomindang slaughtered tens of thousands of Communists or suspected communists in the pre-war period, we now call this an “incident”
He is trying to choose language which can engage everyone in the debate so that he can debate with and AGAINST the deniers.
He is cautious about the “great massacre” radicals (The Chinese sources mostly) because they in fact resemble the deniers: “Ironically, perhaps, the Great Massacre School can be said to share much with the Illusion School. Both can be highly ideological and dogmatic, both can be extremely violent in the language they use, and both can be more than careless with the historical facts and sources.” but, he has greater sympathy for the “great massacre” group: “Of the two, however, the Great Massacre School is clearly the more sophisticated, counting among its members a large number of academics who bring a great deal of authority to their findings.”
These “great massacre” radicals are HURTING the efforts of historians to explore the real horrors of the massacre that happened not only in and around Nanjing but throughout the Sino-Japanese war, especially Iris Chang’s book, which is full of mistakes that the deniers use:
” As even Kasahara (2001: 266) (polemically) notes, “In recent years more books questioning the massacre have been published [in Japan] than those confirming the facts of the incident”. Iris Chang’s work has clearly dealt the Great Massacre School a severe blow. Members of this school translated her book into Japanese but, through their publisher, the left-wing Kashiwa Shobö, had a public (and embarrassing) falling out with the author when she refused her translators permission to correct the enormous amount of mistakes her book is riddled with or to add translator’s footnotes, and also objected to the publisher putting out a sister volume in which the mistakes would have been explained. ”
The solution, I believe, is to stop worrying so much about numbers, but as in the recent collection of 102 soldiers and 102 victims published in Japanese and translated into Chinese and published in China (I saw it in Beijing last summer while book shopping) we can see that the rape and slaughter was massive, widespread and was a CONTINUATION of the kinds of behavior exhibited by these soldiers in other towns and villages throughout China – especially rape.
When people come along and get all emotional and detach themselves completely from the facts, you are HURTING the effort to shake some sense into the revisionists and their sympathizers.
When people like you come along and say that “the Japanese” put so much effort into denying the massacre when the BEST research AGAINST denying the massacre is being written by “the Japanese” and when you insult Japanese culture, then I can only say, that that like so many protesting Chinese out there, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
April 10, 2005 @ 10:44 pm | Comment
63
By Lisa
JR, I gave the Askew article a quick read. It’s somewhat dry and academic but I didn’t find it biased, at least on first glance. I don’t know enough about Nanjing – and I’m not an academic – to judge the merits of the various debates about the number of casualties. I have heard in the past that Iris Chang’s work has raised questions as to its accuracy – and also that she tried to rebut those charges before she died. I’m not knowledgable enough to judge the truth of the accusations or or her defense of her work.
But I thought Askew was trying to approach the subject as an academic, as a professional historian wanting to look to primary documents and attempt to get at a more accurate accounting of what happened in Nanjing. He talked a lot about different methodologies of various “schools” and the way they defined their parameters. He also talked about the need to be sensitive to Chinese feelings about Nanjing.
What’s missing in this article is a sense of how horrific the atrocities were, and regardless of how many thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people were killed there, it was still a horrific crime against humanity.
But making an emotional case was not Askew’s point in that article.
April 10, 2005 @ 10:51 pm | Comment
64
By JR
Muninn,
The author presented himself as levelheaded, and unbiased, but as a Republican pundit said before (on the “liberal” media), the most dangerous form of biased media are those acting as unbiased, because they convince people without them knowing it. I am quoting from the first part of his long article.
The author wrote, “The most objective Chinese language materials are the collections of various primary sources, including the recollections of many of the Chinese military personnel in Nanjing.[5] However, these collections show no evidence of any vigorous critical attempt to distinguish between valid primary materials and other materials: photographs, for instance, which are known to be fabricated, or from different areas and different times, continue to be used to “prove” Japanese guilt in the winter of 1937-38 at Nanjing.”
The most objective Chinese source is still too unreliable to the author’s eyes. How can he determine the Japanese sources are not as biased as the Chinese source.
“In another work frequently based on a vivid imagination rather than primary sources, Iris Chang (1997: 139) claimed that members of the international community jumped “in front of cannons and machine guns to prevent the Japanese from firing” on unarmed civilians.[8] However, although that did not happen – there is documentation of only one execution of one man that was witnessed by two members of the Western community who remained in Nanjing after the journalists left on 15 and 16 December – the work of the community is today highly lauded in all the literature on Nanjing and is one of the few areas about which all researchers of the Nanjing Incident can agree.”
Only gives note to the Iris Chang part but no note of facts provided by the author to prove his counter point to Iris Chang statement.
“The Japanese language literature is even more impressive. Unlike the debate in English, Japanese researchers have been debating – and truly debating – the incident for decades rather than only the past few years, so the Japanese language materials can only be summarised here.” “Recent popular interest in Japan about the Nanjing Incident has triggered a flood of books that together form a publishing industry. This was stimulated by the publication in English in 1997 of Iris Chang’s book, together with the publication in Japanese of John Rabe’s diary.[11] ”
No facts on ‘Japanese have been “truly debating” the incident for decades.’ However it gives readers the impression that the Japanese know much more about the “incident” than anyone else, note given unrelated to his point.
The author trys to sound like he is being fair but he is biased in a subtle way. I may quote more of his article later.
April 11, 2005 @ 1:17 am | Comment
65
By JR
Lisa,
I am not suprised if you heard that about Iris Chang, before Iris Chang’s passing, I typed in her name on google, most of the web sites that showed up were Japanese revisionist anti- Iris Chang sites. Now there is only one left.
On Askew, he did write a beautiful fair and balanced intro and conclusion, but my problems are the content. I just quoted the first several paragraphs he wrote, I may quote some more tomorrow.
April 11, 2005 @ 1:32 am | Comment
66
By Muninn
JR, I think it is time for us to put this to a rest, you are fighting the wrong people on this issue. If you are interested in learning more about the Nanjing massacre, send me an email (I have a contact page at konrad.lawson.net) and I would be happy to provide you with a bibliography of materials for you to look at. Askew’s essay has some references since his essay online is an overview (he has several more detailed and even more dry and boring essays in the fantastic journal Sino-Japanese studies) but Yang Daqing, Joshua Fogel, Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, and others have written excellent essays in English. Some of the excellent Japanese anti-revisionist material in Japanese has been translated to Chinese.
Anyways, I’m going to stop following this thread now so I’ll miss any further of your essays, but feel free to email me if you want to learn about the massacre and all the sources materials we have available in English. I have a dozen or so Chinese books on the topic which I bought about 5 years ago but they aren’t up at school with me (I left them behind at my parents place because they were often very unprofessional in their nationalistic approach, often with few or no footnotes and a lot of faulty source material) but there is one great Chinese translation of all the western journalist accounts and of the rabe journal.
Anyways, good night to everyone!
April 11, 2005 @ 1:34 am | Comment
67
By JR
Muninn,
I did not mean to choose and pick, let’s quote the whole paragraph, “this is true even as regards what term to use for the incident itself. Of the various terms that have been used, “Nanjing Incident” is used in Japan by all three schools examined here. It is, I believe, the most neutral term, and one that is particularly beneficial in combating the arguments of the deniers. While it is possible, after all, to deny that a “great massacre” occurred (depending on one’s definition of “great” and “massacre”), it is impossible to deny that an “incident” occurred. ”
Now why would the author choose to do that??? Stand one step back and look at the whole picture: He is saying, lets call the massacre an incident so that the Japanese people are not offended and hopefully one day they will realize that it was really a great massacre not an incident. Do you see the fallacy of this way of thinking? This also explains what I said about the Japanese culture earlier.
Who said “the truth will set you free?” The Japanese definitely don’t understand this concept of truth, or we won’t have to struggle just to call a spade spade.
April 11, 2005 @ 1:43 am | Comment
68
By JR
“These “great massacre” radicals are HURTING the efforts of historians to explore the real horrors of the massacre that happened not only in and around Nanjing but throughout the Sino-Japanese war, especially Iris Chang’s book, which is full of mistakes that the deniers use:
” As even Kasahara (2001: 266) (polemically) notes, “In recent years more books questioning the massacre have been published [in Japan] than those confirming the facts of the incident”. Iris Chang’s work has clearly dealt the Great Massacre School a severe blow. Members of this school translated her book into Japanese but, through their publisher, the left-wing Kashiwa Shobö, had a public (and embarrassing) falling out with the author when she refused her translators permission to correct the enormous amount of mistakes her book is riddled with or to add translator’s footnotes, and also objected to the publisher putting out a sister volume in which the mistakes would have been explained. “‘
Muninn,
I am not taking side right now, but I would be VERY interested to read the “full of mistake of Iris Chang’s book” I have already read the anti-Iris Chang revisionist web site. http://www.jiyuu-shikan.org/nanjing/contents.html
Are your informations different from those of the right wing revisionist web site?
April 11, 2005 @ 2:04 am | Comment
69
By Other Lisa
Dear JR,
Regarding Iris Chang’s book – I think there’s a big difference between those who question some of her methodologies and casualty numbers and those who try to pretend that Nanjing never happened. If she did make some mistakes, that doesn’t invalidate everything she did, and it doesn’t mean that Nanjing wasn’t a horrific crime. I do believe that historians like Askew are primarily interested in producing as accurate a history as they can. Japanese revisionists have an entirely different motivation.
Interestingly, if you look at the article in today’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/international/asia/11japan.html?)
you’ll note that the journalist quotes the higher casualty figures from Nanjing, saying the deaths were between 100,000 and 300,000 people. This seems to have become the accepted numbers in any discussion of Nanjing in the mainstream Western press.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that I doubt very much Askew is a tool of Japanese revisionists, though I’ll hold out the possibility that I might be wrong.
And it’s far too late for me to make much sense right now, so zai jian all…
April 11, 2005 @ 2:32 am | Comment
70
By JR
Lisa,
Thank you for the link, I need to go to work right now, talk about it later.
=)
April 11, 2005 @ 8:57 am | Comment
71
By Imagethief
Q: Why haven’t I written about the anti-Japanese protests in China?
April 12, 2005 @ 7:39 pm | Comment
72
By Imagethief
Q: Why haven’t I written about the anti-Japanese protests in China?
April 12, 2005 @ 7:39 pm | Comment