Page 1 of 2 China, Japan still fighting over history
By Peter J Brown
Japanese and Chinese researchers who have been working for three years in an
attempt to produce an historical study and demonstrate that the old adversaries
could jointly produce an objective account of Sino-Japanese relations that
includes the dark days of World War II have elected instead to agree that they
disagree about a key event.
Thus, when describing the Nanking massacre of 1937, whereas the Chinese
scholars speak of a death toll exceeding 300,000 victims - using both the Tokyo
trials and a military tribunal held in Nanking as the basis for their estimate
- Japanese researchers came to a very different conclusion. The Japanese capped
their estimate at 200,000, while continuing to insist "there are also
other estimates that put the number killed at 20,000 or 40,000".
Dr Bu Ping, director of the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences is the leader of the Chinese team, while Professor Shinichi
Kitaoka from the University of Tokyo is leading the Japanese team.
"Both Chinese and Japanese scholars have made it clear in their papers that the
war fought between China and Japan from 1931 to 1945 was an aggressive war
Japan waged against China," said Bu.
Published reviews in the Chinese and Japanese media openly describe the
differences of opinion that persist, and more. Besides, when it comes to the
Nanking massacre, while there have been admissions on several occasions in the
past by the Japanese that an atrocity did occur there, the magnitude of the
event has been masked. As a result, this has not brought about the response the
Japanese might have wanted.
In an interview conducted by David Gergen, for example, which was broadcast by
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States in 1998 - the late
Chinese-American historian Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking: The
Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, described it in the following way:
Well,
in 1937, in December, the Japanese swept into the city of Nanking and within
six to eight weeks they had massacred more than 300,000 civilians and raped
80,000 women. And 300,000, please keep in mind, is more than the death toll at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Three hundred thousand is also more than the
combined civilian casualty count for several European countries during the
entire World War II period. So, in other words, if you add up the number of
people who died, civilians who died, in England, France and Belgium for the
entire World War II period, that would still be less than the number of people
who died in Nanking, just one Chinese city, in six to eight weeks.
Later in 1998, Chang was interviewed again on PBS, but this time Kunihiko
Saito, former Japanese ambassador to the US, joined her. This second interview
took place in December, just after former president Jiang Zemin of China became
the first leader of China to visit Japan. At that time, China was expecting a
formal, written apology to be presented to Jiang by then-Japanese premier Keizo
Obuchi. This did not happen. Obuchi made a verbal apology, while the written
statement only expressed "deep remorse".
"We do recognize that acts of cruelty and violence were committed by members of
the Japanese military and we are very sorry for that," said the Japanese
ambassador. "And we understand that the memory of those who suffered lasts
long, and I personally think that this is a burden which the Japanese people
will have to carry for a long time."
He went on say that the notion that Japan tried to conceal history from the
younger generation was "completely false".
"As to the incident in Nanking, we do recognize that really unfortunate things
happened, acts of violence were committed by members of the Japanese military,
and I'd like to point out that Japanese school textbooks mention - all of them
- when I examined about 20 available textbooks - all of them mentioned this
incident in Nanking."
Japanese history textbooks have often been deemed suspect because, according to
the Chinese, they downplay if not conceal entirely what really happened in
China during World War II.
In 2005, for example, when over 1,000 Chinese were surveyed by the Social
Survey Institute of China about how Japanese students were deceived by Japan's
historical accounts of the war, more than 95% of the respondents said "such
action had severely hurt the Chinese people's feelings and constituted an
insult to the Chinese people".
During this late 1998 TV interview, Chang grew increasingly upset - mention of
the textbooks did not help matters - and at one point it seemed as if she was
almost shouting at the Japanese ambassador.
Well, I think it's because
the Japanese government had delivered an apology to the South Korean
government, a written apology, and the Chinese government had expected the same
a few weeks ago. And I think that the reason why it became an issue was because
that expectation was pretty much dashed during Jiang's visit, which was, I
think, certainly a loss of a golden opportunity for Japan to properly show its
repentance for the crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army across Asia.
It's not something I think that's well known in [the US], that more than 19
million to 35 million Chinese people perished because of Japan's invasion of
China, and also the fact that Japan had enslaved hundreds of thousands of
women, Korean women and other Asian women, as sex slaves for their imperial
army. And these war crimes have really left a deep and gaping psychic wound in
China and also in other Asian countries.
Exchanges like this
one over a decade ago help to explain why Japan and China decided to undertake
their joint history project in the 21st century. Chang's statistics and the
overall accuracy of her accounts are often challenged, but her 1997 book on the
Nanking massacre is widely seen as a monumental work that has redefined and
reinvigorated the ongoing historical review process ever since its publication.
Tragically, Chang ended her life in late 2004.
Chang was able to sway public opinion in an effective way and public opinion
played a significant role in this latest historical accounting process as well.
"Since the very beginning of the joint research [project], we have underlined
the importance of mainstream public opinion," said Tao Wenzhao, a research
fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who helped draft the report.
"More than 70% of the Japanese public believes their leaders led a brutal war
of aggression in the 1930s and 1940s."
According to Tao, "China does not seek to in any way avenge Japan's past
aggression. Instead, China wants Japanese politicians and scholars to recognize
a consistent, correct perception of Japan's participation in World War II - so
never again will wartime history hinder the progress between Sino-Japanese
relations."
However, one Japanese historian told the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, "I
understand the project was conducted for our own national interest reasons, but
it was a waste of my time. I'll never do this again. I've had enough."
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