The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture (Asia Pacific Studies) [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1845451805 | ISBN-13: 978-1845451806 | Publication Date: August 30, 2007 | Edition: illustrated edition

The "Nanking Atrocity" of winter 1937-8, also known as the "Nanking Massacre," lies at the core of bitter disputes over history, wartime victimization, and postwar restitution that preclude amicable Sino-Japanese relations to this day. This volume, which is both history and historiography, offers the most recent scholarship about what actually happened in Nanking and places those findings in the context of how Chinese and Japanese writers have attributed mutually incompatible meanings to the event ever since; an event that is coined, on the Chinese side, as "the forgotten Holocaust," after the subtitle of Iris' Chang's 1997 bestseller, "The Rape of Nanking", uncritically adopted by Western public opinion, a gross distortion according to the contributors of this volume. However, the authors also deflate Japanese narratives of exculpatory which, serving their own ideological agendas, holds that Nanking was a combat operation against unlawful belligerents, which produced only a few dozen innocent victims. This volume presents new facts and fresh interpretations with the overriding aim to "complicate the picture" and to debunk myths, expose fallacies, and rectify misconceptions that obstruct a clear understanding of the issues and prevent ultimate reconciliation between China and Japan.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi graduated from Tokyo University and received his PhD from Princeton University. After having taught at Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard universities, he was appointed Professor of History at York University, Toronto, specializing in Japanese political thought and World War Two in East Asia. His publications include Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan (Harvard University Press, 1986), Japanese Loyalism Recontrued (University of Hawaii Press, 1995), and Modern Japanese Thought (Ed.,Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 433 pages
• Publisher: Berghahn Books; illustrated edition edition (August 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845451805
• ISBN-13: 978-1845451806
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,096,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)