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The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University (Paperback)) 1st Edition

by Takashi Yoshida (Author)

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On December 13, 1937, the Japanese army attacked and captured the Chinese capital city of Nanjing, planting the rising-sun flag atop the city's outer walls. What occurred in the ensuing weeks and months has been the source of a tempestuous debate ever since.

It is well known that the Japanese military committed wholesale atrocities after the fall of the city, massacring large numbers of Chinese during the both the Battle of Nanjing and in its aftermath. Yet the exact details of the war crimes--how many people were killed during the battle? How many after? How many women were raped? Were prisoners executed? How unspeakable were the acts committed?--are the source of controversy among Japanese, Chinese, and American historians to this day.

In The Making of the "Rape of Nanking Takashi Yoshida examines how views of the Nanjing Massacre have evolved in history writing and public memory in Japan, China, and the United States. For these nations, the question of how to treat the legacy of Nanjing--whether to deplore it, sanitize it, rationalize it, or even ignore it--has aroused passions revolving around ethics, nationality, and historical identity. Drawing on a rich analysis of Chinese, Japanese, and American history textbooks and newspapers, Yoshida traces the evolving--and often conflicting--understandings of the Nanjing Massacre, revealing how changing social and political environments have influenced the debate. Yoshida suggests that, from the 1970s on, the dispute over Nanjing has become more lively, more globalized, and immeasurably more intense, due in part to Japanese revisionist history and a renewed emphasis on patriotic education in China.

While today it is easy to assume that the Nanjing Massacre has always been viewed as an emblem of Japan's wartime aggression in China, the image of the "Rape of Nanking" is a much more recent icon in public consciousness. Takashi Yoshida analyzes the process by which the Nanjing Massacre has become an international symbol, and provides a fair and respectful treatment of the politically charged and controversial debate over its history.

Editorial Reviews

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"Yoshida does the field a service in bringing myriad insights together in one manuscript. He succeeds in opening windows on the psychologies behind all positions in the debates, and in highly readable prose."--James Orr, Pacific Affairs

"The Nanjing Massacre is now an iconic event in international history. This book adroitly summarizes how this state of affairs came to pass."--Laura Hein, Northwestern University

"This is by far the most comprehensive and judicious survey of how Japanese, Chinese, and American journalists, scholars, and propagandists have interpreted and polemically exploited this tragic atrocity from its occurrence in 1937 to the present day. Yoshida's incisive, sensitive, and even-handed account is a must-read for anyone interested in World War Two, modern Sino-Japanese history, and East Asian current affairs."--Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, York University

"A serious, sobering dissection of the shifting and conflicting images of the Nanjing Massacre. Yoshida's eye-opening account shows how the popular media in each country have helped to frame the debates and stir controversies about Nanjing ever since."--Tom Havens, Northeastern University

Book Description

An examination of how views of the so-called Rape of Nanking, or the Nanjing Massacre, have evolved in history writing and public memory

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 4, 2009
Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195383141
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195383140
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.26 x 0.7 x 9.23 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #2,771,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #819 in Asian History (Books)
- #1,200 in Historiography (Books)
- #1,443 in Weather (Books)
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Gerald Figal
it is a great example of the malleability of history when it is ...
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2015
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Contrary to what the lazy misreaders of this book have suggested here, this is not a whitewashing or denial of the Nanjing Massacre. They either didn't really read it or read it with filters on. It is a detailed contextualized study of how the event entered into and out of and back into public media and textbooks in Japan, China, and the US from the time of its happening to the present day. As such, it is a well-researched and well-argued book that goes a long way to explaining why there are different perceptions in different places at different times. The negative reviewers apparently do not understand the subject matter of the book -- the reportage of the Nanjing Massacre in public media, memory, and textbooks, etc. over time in very different contexts. Maybe that is too "meta" for them. Whatever. In any case, it is a great example of the malleability of history when it is put to the service of different political presents--and I say that as a professional historian.

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Amazon Customer
this book arrived in good condition, thank you
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2023
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I used this book for school, and it was in clean condition with no markings, writing, or highlighting. I appreciate that.

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Kaodake
A rare balanced examination of a deeply polarized issue
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2009
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This is a rational, lucid exploration of the way the Nanking incident has been treated in China, Japan, and the United States. The author has managed to avoid outright denial, raging indignation and smug Japan bashing while dissecting all three. Truly unique. It is unfortunate that this book is not more widely available.

Anyone who wishes to explore this topic will find this short book a very good place to begin.

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Richard Dickens
Addressing some Concerns
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2012
I have given this book 5-stars, although I honestly believe it deserves between 3 to 4 stars. I gave it 5 stars to balance out reviews based on misreadings of this book.

I would like to address some points brought up in other reviews.

1) The book's goal is NOT to arrive as some kind of "truth" about the events that occurred at Nanjing. Rather, it is to trace how the memories of this tragedy have been exploited for various political purposes.

2) Yoshida's assertion that the Nanjing Massacre was largely overlooked in the greater international sphere is supported by many other scholars. People obviously knew about the Massacre, and I have no doubt that there were numerous accounts of the Massacre being published in China, Japan, and the US. However, the Massacre was NOT the emblem of Chinese suffering or Japanese aggression through the 1940s, 1950s, or 1960s.

For example, Daqing Yang (PhD Harvard and BA from NANJING University, Sino-Japanese History) notes that the event was "hardly ever mentioned" in Chinese or Japanese newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s. (See Daqing Yang, "The Malleable and the Contested: The Nanjing Massacre in Postwar China and Japan"). For those who read Chinese or Japanese, I would challenge them to go to a major historical newspaper database (like Kikuzo) to see for themselves.

3) Yoshida is most critical of the way that the memories of the Massacre have been exploited by all sides: American, Japanese, Chinese (PRC) and Taiwanese (ROC) ethnocentric nationalists. We see all kinds of ridiculousness: the PRC originally put ultimate blame for the massacre on Western missionaries, Japanese ultranationalists deny the very existence of a massacre, etc.

Anyways, my problems with this book have nothing to do with Yoshida's supposed "subtle whitewashing" of the Massacre, but rather his failure to address the vast scholarship on memory studies that's out there. There's important work being done on individual memory, how this is shaped in a community, etc. that would have added immensely to this work.

But anyways, take what you want from this review, but I honestly think a few of the other reviews were a bit unfair in their reading of this book.

(In the interest of disclosure, I'm Korean American).

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Rs
Good unbiased review of Nanking from 3 countries
Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2013
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Interesting book, opened my eyes to another side of pre-WWII Japan. Author is fairly unbiased and presents both sides of the arguments from 3 different countries. Good Asian history book

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User in NJ
Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Distortion of WWII History
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2011
Although Takashi Yoshida's book came out of a study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University (based on Yoshida's 2001 history Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia University) and was published by Oxford University Press in 2006, the book is a subtle, and not so subtle, distortion of the Nanking Massacre. Such distortion is best illustrated with several quotes from the book.

* "In truth, however, the image of Nanjing as the site of particularly brutal atrocities is a more recent construction." How can one honestly claim that the image of the brutal atrocities of the Nanking Massacre is a more recent construction when there were so many well-documented eyewitness oral, written, pictorial, and film archives recorded at that time by numerous foreign journalists, businessmen, missionaries, college professors/administrators, and diplomats. One example of such historical eyewitness accounts was the home movie made by the American missionary John Magee [...], who was also the chairman of the Nanking Committee of the International Red Cross Organization. Magee filmed several hundred minutes of movie, which was smuggled out of China and shown to members of the U.S. government, as well as others, including the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade them to institute sanctions against the Japanese government who was their war ally. These brutal atrocities were also acknowledged by many former Japanese soldiers who took part in those atrocities. There were also eyewitness accounts of thousands of Chinese survivors, including many currently residing in the U.S.

* "The massacre as it is discussed today did not exist in either national or international awareness until decades after the event." Again, the Nanking Massacre was international news at the time of its occurrence in 1937-1938, and was also part of the trial of the Far East International Tribunal Court under the United Nations' War Crimes Investigation Committee that took place between August 1946 and February 1947.

* "Initially an event with primarily local repercussions, the Nanjing Massacre has evolved over decades into a matter of extraordinary international significance." As already discussed, this event was much more than "of local repercussions," and had extraordinary international significance from the very beginning. Although it might be true that China did not publicly focus on this event during the 1950 and 1960's when it was trying to establish itself as a unified country under a new form of government and trying to achieve diplomatic recognition from other countries, including the U.N., it definitely does not mean that it was not of international significance from the beginning.

* "No single account or interpretation of the massacre has emerged as dominant, in part because there is no agreement even as to the basic terms of the debate. Commentators have been unable to agree on the very definitions of the matters they are discussing. They differ as to the proper meaning of words like `victim', `perpetrator', `atrocity', and `civilian'." It seems that the author is trying to lead people to believe that because there might not be universally agreed upon terminology such as whether a victim should only be a civilian and should not include captured soldiers, then the massive inhuman atrocities reported by the eyewitnesses should not be believable.

Because Yoshida also criticized the revisionists in Japan who even go as far as denying the existence of the Nanjing Massacre, people may think that Yoshida presented a fair and thorough treatment of the events. Unfortunately, a fair and thorough treatment is clearly not the case when you realize that Yoshida also wrote "Had there not been intense challenges from the revisionists, the history and memory of the Nanjing Massacre might have remained a domestic issue rather than becoming an international symbol of Japan's wartime aggression."

Being published by the Oxford University Press under Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute may lend a lot of prestige and credibility to Yoshida's book. In reality, Yoshida's book presents a revisionist view of the Nanking Massacre under the disguise of scholarly research, and is trying to create confusion in the general public so that people may think that other accounts of the Nanking Massacre were over exaggerated. It is important to note that the Japanese influence in academic Asian studies in the U.S. is substantial through their funding to establish various professorships and research grants.

[...]

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5.0 out of 5 stars it is a great example of the malleability of history when it is ...

5.0 out of 5 stars this book arrived in good condition, thank you

5.0 out of 5 stars A rare balanced examination of a deeply polarized issue

5.0 out of 5 stars Addressing some Concerns

4.0 out of 5 stars Good unbiased review of Nanking from 3 countries

1.0 out of 5 stars Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Distortion of WWII History

it is a great example of the malleability of history when it is ...

this book arrived in good condition, thank you

A rare balanced examination of a deeply polarized issue

Addressing some Concerns

Good unbiased review of Nanking from 3 countries

Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Distortion of WWII History