Customer Reviews

The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (Studies of the Pacific Basin Institute)

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Honda Katsuichi has written what may possibly be the most brutally important book yet published in English on the truth about the Nanjing massacre, something which he conceived as an investigative journalist after interviewing tens of victims on his journey to China. It's a factual, highly authentic account of eyewitnesses' interviews after Katsuichi traces out en route batches of living victims which has survived those terrible times. Back in Japan, its Japanese original version was one of the few publications which forced academic recognition that the Nanjing massacre is no longer something which could be swept under carpet.

I wonder why some Japanese reviewers still strenuously refused to admit the truth of the matter, a thing which is even in Japan no longer denied. Are they really so uninformed by the Japanese mainstream history academia, or is it really something else? Taking one misleading example of the "truth" as reported by a previous reviewer, Hiromi, China has always tended to downplay the massacre in Mao's time, not to up-play it. One wonders how "anti-Japanese" Honda is; what he has done is merely to uncover the truth, and the accusation is the equivalent of branding a German who admits to the Holocaust as an "anti-German". This book is certainly even more credible and better-written than Iris Chang's Rape of Nanking, since it is written by a Japanese for the Japanese themselves.

This is one of several books detailing the atrocities Japan committed in China during WWII, atrocities the Japanese and their government have yet to face up to in a mature and honest manner. I suppose, for Japan, it's a matter of losing face, and if that's so, Japan has a lot face to lose. Those who deny the Nanjing butchery are so blinded by their hate of communism that any truth exposed by anyone who even minutely appears to support China's view is instantly shrugged off as a lie(s). The bottom line is, the Nanjing Massacre and other Japanese atrocities are about as untrue as the existence of the Comfort Women (Chinese and Korean women kidnapped by Japanese soldiers so as to whore themelves among the Japanese military), and the Bataan Death March where so many American and British military and civilians were murdered along the long walk to Japanese POW camps, none of which Japan has yet to come to terms with either. In fact, the Japanese government even refuses to discuss the Comfort Women.
Those who deny Japan's responsibilty are the same kind we in the west refer to as revisionists when they say the Holocaust never happened. They're not revisionsists; they're liars. A few of the reviews of this book are so full of philosophical and political claptrap that it reminds one of a cheap hamburger loaded with filler. Unfortunatley, the burger is so full of God-knows-what that instead of pleasing the customer with its juicy full rounded appearance, one distasteful bite and you instantly realize you're about to throw up.

This is the perfect translation of 'Nankin e no Michi'(The Road to Nanjing) written by Honda Katsuichi. Nanjing Massacre was not an accidental incident. The atrocities in China by Japanese soldiers began in Shanghai and resulted in the massacre in Nanjing. The author traces back the incident by detailed interviews with survivors, documents, diaries of Japanese soldiers and photographs. He doesn't argue about the numbers of victims, but why and how it occurred in the period. Appendix is also great.It consists of some significant victim interviews, quote from diaries and reminiscences of Japanese soldiers which are excerpts from other Honda's works. I'm sure this book will never disappoint the readers who really want to know the facts on Nanjing Massacre.

Mr. Honda has produced a courageous account backed by irrefutable interviews and thorough research into the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese Imperial Army in Nanking in 1937.
It is indeed shameful that 66 years after that episode and 57 years after the end of the war, Japanese rightists continue to deny that it happened. Imagine if Germans continued to extoll the virtues of their invasion of Western Europe and Russia! Or if they called the Poles liars for mentioning the Warsaw uprising or the horrors of Auschwitz! It is bad enough that so many Chinese died at Nanking (some Japanese and American apologists of the massacre continue to quibble about numbers of dead: let me ask them: does 40,000 dead make it acceptable versus 250,000 dead ???) It is equally horrible that the Japanese government continues to deny compensation to the victims of that massacre and further insists in erasing all knowledge of the event (We have apologized enough !!!) Others claim that the Chinese themselves caused millions of deaths during the communist regime as if to excuse the Nanking massacre! One massacre should not be used to condone another!! I continue to believe that in this atmosphere of apathy, amnesia and coordinated erasure of history that justice will in the end prevail.

This book was apparently published to disprove Iris Chan's claim that Nanking is a "forgotten" Houlocaust. For better and for worse, it is definately NOT forgotten - if only because some people are still quite vocally denying that it happened at all. But today, most people in Japan - including the majority of rightists - believe that it happened, thanks in part to the works of the equally vocal leftist people like Honda.

But this translation seems to hold back some of Mr Honda's most biting comments. The pro-communist, anti-capitalist harangues seem softened for the American public. It may make the book easier to read, but if it carried the spirit of the original it would have given the reader an idea of the extent of the author's courage as well as a better understanding of why he was threatened so much.

Also, it is a shame that the introduction did not describe the author's shortcommings. For several years, Katsuichi Honda refused to believe in the genocide by Kumer Rouge in Cambodia and, although he was stationed there to cover the story, denied that it was happening. He even ridiculed those writers who take "American propaganda" at face value as "laughable". When it became no longer possible to deny that genocide was happening, he silently deleted the passage from the second printing of his book and got busy denying that he ever denied it. His wig and sunglasses, often explained as a cover to protect him from Japanese rightists, may in fact offer equal protection from angry survivors of the Kumer Rouge genocide. All of this poses an interesting symmetry with his position on the people who are denying the Rape of Nanking.

As courageous as the book is, it still has the same shortcomings of the books by earlier historians and journalists on the same topic that left ample room for rightist denial. For example, he never found any of the victims and survivors that he interviewed. They were prepared for him by the Chinese communist government and their testimony is uncritically reproduced in his book. He never compares Chinese testimony with the actual Japanese troop movements and logistics records. (There are some glaring incongruities. A chunk of the massacre was supposedly commited by portable machineguns that the Japanese did not have and the Kummingtang did. Japanese machineguns were large, heavy, slow and few, designed for shooting horse-mounted cavalry at a distance, and were short on ammunition.) He never once mentions if there were any children born of all those rapes. (None were ever found.) He also uses photographs of questionable provenance. (They come from the same government that famously airbrushed the "Gang of Four" out of existance.) The post-war execution of a few ranking Japanese officers are described, but he totally ignores what happened to the vast number of footsoldiers who were the arm of the genocide. People who commit atrocities at war tend to screw up in civilian life later on, which is better evidence than any, but Honda totally neglects to track them down. (In fact, violent crime was famously absent in post-war Japan.) One can argue that these things are mere details whithin the massive scope of the atrocities commited, but, with all respects to his courage, Honda, like so many other chroniclers of the Rape of Nanking, is undeniablly sloppy with the facts. Most damning of all, these criticisms had been made decades ago and Honda has yet to produce a rebuttal to address these charges. The legacy of his omissions have outlived his attentionspan.

We really have yet to see a truely scientific historical documentation of the Rape of Nanking that could finally quiet down the deniars. That would be hard to pull off because Nanking is still governed by people who claim the Tienanmon Incident never happened and the Tibetians were never massacred - which all reflect badly on the main source of information. Honda should be applauded for trying. But inevitablly, he falls short.

In Japan Honda Katsuichi has been revered as among his country's finest journalists in print media. But sadly, his excellent journalism pertaining to the horrific acts committed by Imperial Japanese military forces against helpless Chinese prisoners of war and civilians during the three month-long campaign in late 1937 and early 1938 that led to the fall of Nanking (Nanjing) - then the Republic of China's capital - has been ignored or harshly criticized (or both) by his fellow Japanese, who still cling stubbornly to the historical fiction that they too, were victims, because of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (I have a question for those Japanese - including several previous Amazon.com reviewers who've demonstrated that they are delusional - who still deny the great, wanton crimes against humanity inflicted upon Asians, Americans and Europeans by the Empire of Japan in its ruthless attempt to create a "Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" in the 1930s and 1940s. Why do you think the United States felt compelled to use the atom bomb against Japan? Could one of the reasons be the savage, genocidal war which Japan's military forces waged against the Chinese from 1937 to 1945? In stark contrast, Germany, Austria, and Italy have atoned for their crimes against humanity. When will Japan's elected government make the same admission?).

Honda Katsuichi's "The Nanjing Massacre" isn't an easy book to read, since it is replete with many eyewitness accounts, by Chinese survivors whom Honda interviewed personally in the 1970s and 1980s, that provide clear, compelling evidence of countless acts of genocide by Japanese military forces against the Chinese, and especially, brutal treatment of civilians, including, most infamously, raping adult women and girls, and sexual molestation such as stabbing them in their vaginas with bayonets and swords. It is a better, far more accurate, book than Iris Chang's justly celebrated "The Rape of Nanking", since it shows that Japanese acts of genocidal brutality did not begin with the fall of Nanking in mid December, 1937, but instead, started as soon as Japanese troops waded ashore at Hangzhou Bay, more than a month before. This American edition also includes excerpts from previous and more recent books written by Honda on Japanese military atrocities during the campaign to take Nanking, as well as revealing excerpts from the diaries of Japanese soldiers who were guilty of committing these crimes. If nothing else, Honda's books ought to be required reading in Japanese classrooms, and the English translation of this book may one day compel the Japanese government to atone for the genocidal actions of its military forces - most notably the Imperial Japanese Army - in the 1930s and 1940s.

Mr Honda Katsuichi does a very good job of compiling an exhaustive litany of personal interviews from participants and victims of the Japanese campaign to Nanjing in 1937. He sets the political and military background of the campign to provide enough context in which to see the subsequent evolution of rape, murder, looting and eventually genocide.

The strengths of the book are its personal narrative quality, and attention to detail. The sketch maps are excellent, and the footnotes are a must read, as many refer to details of sensitive issues even today, including frank discussion of feuds betweem Mr Katsuichi and other Japanes journalists over the "truth" of Nanjing. The author has made several trips to China and has interviewed many people--the "cascade effect" of so many personal stories, dispersed in time and space, is to render the denials of Nanjing absurd.

If you are looking for a book that directly considers and confronts the Japanese military culture, the way of the warrior, the psychology of the killer and decision and implementation of genocidel policies, this is not it. However, as a primary source reader for a truly troubling episode in 20th century history, it is invaluable.

A subtle advantage of this book for the more than casual reader of genocide is the differences that arise between the Japanese, german, Russian and Rwandan models. While the beheadings are a "popular" aspect of the Nanjing story, there was also a lot of mass machine-gunning, something not ususally found, for example, in the German example [Entefest excepted].

Bottom Line:

If you are a serious reader of genocide, this is a book you should read, but if you are looking for a one volume "primer" on Japanese genocide against the Chinese in WWII, this is not it.

After study and work in Japan for 8 years, I am sure there are very little Japanese can really face the Nanjing Massacre and the Japan's National Shame. Most Japanese only consider the war made Japan as a victim of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they never think about the reason of these victims are linked to the victims in Nanjing Massacre. The history can tell the future. It means, without understand the link between Nanjing and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, history may be repeated again in future. God bless both Chinese and Japanese to stop this cycle.

The author has presented a strong work in an objective manner, unlike Iris Chang in her recent book. The objectivity and Mr. Honda's lack of finger-pointing somehow actually makes the condemnation of the Japanese Army even more forceful. A great read of all.

Katsuichi's investigation is useful when used as a historical complement to (and NOT a replacement or refutation of) Iris Chang's "Rape of Nanking", which courageously and correctly examines the top-down imperial framework that made the genocide possible, as well as exhaustively detailed firsthand accouts. Former CIA officer, thinktank chief and CIA asset/apologist Frank Gibney attempts, laughably, to discredit Chang, and UTTERLY fails. It is easy to see Gibney's agenda: a limited hangout that pins the genocide on 1. ground troops under pressure and 2. the "right wing".