Chang's over-the-top, biased look at the Rape of Nanking completely trivialized the entire event. Does anyone know if they are using any of her material? I sure hope not, or this will just be another lost cause.
shareI can never ever understand people like that. Have they ever read the book? Have they ever known or possessed of humanity to realize that she killed herself 'cause the event has taken her much further than she ever realized? It is the most horrifying history of humanity. Nothing can ever been compared to such atrocity and anomtnity of the degree. And reading so light a post as if it is just something completely trivial and forgetful from a magazine, is unforgivably an insult to the event. Have you (whoever posted it) know the historical event? Have you studied it? I mean, really objectively, to research what happened? Posting is trivial, but to refute what really transpired while you do know is the same as to commit a crime to those who suffered and died. I believe that none of us want to bear such a burden.
shareI can never ever understand people like that. Have they ever read the book? Have they ever known or possessed of humanity to realize that she killed herself 'cause the event has taken her much further than she ever realized? It is the most horrifying history of humanity. Nothing can ever been compared to such atrocity and anomtnity of the degree. And reading so light a post as if it is just something completely trivial and forgetful from a magazine, is unforgivably an insult to the event. Have you (whoever posted it) know the historical event? Have you studied it? I mean, really objectively, to research what happened? Posting is trivial, but to refute what really transpired while you do know is the same as to commit a crime to those who suffered and died. I believe that none of us want to bear such a burden.
share
"Chang's over-the-top, biased look at the Rape of Nanking completely trivialized the entire event. Does anyone know if they are using any of her material? I sure hope not, or this will just be another lost cause."
What does this Mungar guy know of Rape of Nanking or Iris Chang? Chang spent like five years of her life meticulously researching the event and gathering eyewitness testimony to form a highly accurate truthful perspective. Plus, I wouldn't call her critique biased when there are so many photographs and archival footage that give evidence of what actually took place in 1937.
I agree with you Brierside, it is people like this that refute this crime (like those that continue to refute the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide for instance) that demonstrate that "The Rape" still continues today.
I suggest that this guy Mungar go back to the Casey Affleck message boards or wherever popcorn poohole he crawled out from.
"I didn't know they made bastard's as sexy as you!"
I never refuted that the crime happened, it's a known fact that it did. However, when I read her book, I felt that she relied on over-exaggerations for events that clearly did not need that treatment. They were brutal enough as they were, but the language she used almost trivializes them. It's a shame.
share[deleted]
Actually, I'm Canadian.
shareIs somebody in your family Japanese? I went to Korea, alot of Korean dislike the Japanese, who can blame them. The Japanese commited some horrible atrocities on civilians and POW's during the war.
shareI didn't read Ms. Chang's book but I wouldn't blame her if there are parts that are over-dramatized.
You want the real facts, go to your local Chinatown and ask seniors what they know of Nanking, there's millions of Chinese people who have stories to tell just like there are millions in the Jewish community who have stories of German atrocities
so don't just trust a book, ask real people!
oh, and you think it's a shame that a writer can't remain impartial to incidents that happened to her culture or personally? hmm, god forbid if some atrocity were to happen to you or your family ... i wonder how impartial and detached you will be when you tell the story
Iris Chang committed suicide in 2004 at 36, partly because of the pressure from some quarters after her book.
During my years of teaching English to Japanese adults and children, I sometimes asked them to show me history books and translate the relevant pages (about the invasion of China.) There were a couple of pages only, running along the lines of: " The Japanese Imperial Army went to China. Many people died."
No, I think it's right to keep the pressure up on these euphemism-loving revisionists.
of course you are
you are so typical and pathetic
Just so you know, you're not alone. Though I highly respect Iris Chang's work I do agree that she had a tendancy to dramatize events, though I'm thinking more of her work with regard to ethnic Chinese in America. The events by themselves are horrible enough, but she does not look at them through the eyes of an impartial historian, rather the emotionally charged view of someone personally attatched to the event.
Because of this truly horrible events end up being used to accomplish political ends, and there is then an obvious motivation to dramatize everything to further those ends. In this way these events are actually triviliazed. Her work could have had greater utility as a reference and a better chance of continued usefulness, as it is it made best seller list but it's not a impartial summary of the rape of Nanking which will stand through the ages.
Also I think the extremely emotionally charged responses on this page show that we are still not yet able to impartially discuss the rape of Nanking. You posted an extremely reserved criticism, and you got berating responses that go so far as to accuse you of ignoring or even supporting what happened to the Chinese in Nanking - a gigantic leap to say the least. As long as conversations on the topic go as below I don't think it's possible to have a logical discussion of the topic.
Person A: "I really don't think that every woman in Nanking was raped by the Japanese"
Person B: "WHAT!! So WHY do you support rape and continue to deny the fact that so many women were HORRIBLY raped in Nanking? You are a horrible person!"
Perhaps in another generation we'll be able to actually give both sides their due.
Canada pass motion 291 showing the justice in this country. Please Google this motion then you will understand what The Rape of Naking is.
Yeah, just like the Holocaust was used to further "political ends".
Spare me, please. What political end would there be, aside from actually forcing a government that tried to cover up/diminish the problems to acknowledge and apologize? And what evidence do you folks have that actually contradict anything that Chang has researched? You mean, the Japanese Government's official responses and opposition research? Come on.
And please also spare me with the strawman Person B. It's not that people like you are "trying to deny the event", it's the attempt to diminish the atrocity, lessen the impact, and to put 'balance' something that's indefensible. Because every one of the things you have argued for can be said to exactly all the same atrocities elsewhere in history, whether it's the Holocaust, the genocide of the Armenians, or the genocide of the Native Americans.
You and Mel Gibson are two peas in a pod.
[deleted]
>>Spare me, please. What political end would there be, aside from actually forcing a government that tried to cover up/diminish the problems to acknowledge and apologize? And what evidence do you folks have that actually contradict anything that Chang has researched? You mean, the Japanese Government's official responses and opposition research? Come on.
It's obvious you don't know the way the Chinese government manipulates the feeling of its people to get its way in diplomatic affairs.
Also, the wording of your post ("forcing" a government to "apologise") demonstrates an ignorance of the way nations can reconcile. Forcing an apology won't achieve anything.
Japan and China need to work together, AFTER China stops manipulating a gullible Chinese national consciousness to hate the Japanese (even the young Japanese of today who may be misinformed, undereducated on issues of WWII but who are certainly not all terrorists and murderers, as many Chinese children believe).
And actually, many Japanese prime ministers since the war have expressed "deep regret" that these atrocities happened. The recent nationalist trend in the Japanese gov't doesn't tell the whole story. Just because a couple of people visit the Yasukuni shrine does not mean that the whole of Japanese society is unrepentant. People like Shintaro Ishihara are not representative of the whole of Japanese society.
Yes, the Japanese are largely ignorant of what really happened in WWII, and that is the fault of the (nowadays increasingly right wing and nationalist) government, not the people. So comments like "sucks to be Japanese" are bang out of line.
Just to make my position clear, I am NOT defending the Holocaust OR the rape of Nanking, unit 731, or any other mass atrocity, or killing at all. I am just saying to you all, please do not swallow wholeheartedly the Chinese government's line. After all, China is one of the last states in the world where there is no free speech. It is easy for the government to exaggerate and face no criticism from its own people.
Just because an event is atrocious as Nanking clearly was, does not give anyone a free licence to emotionally blackmail another country almost 70 years on. That's like jumping a queue and excusing yourself because you've got cancer. It's not that we don't care about it, but you have to be reasonable.
It's obvious you don't know the way the Chinese government manipulates the feeling of its people to get its way in diplomatic affairs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Err, and what does this have to do with the American documentary "Nanking"? Should the Chinese government have prevented the American film-makers from interviewing Chinese survivors-- just so you cannot accuse them of being manipulative? See the irony in your position?
P.S. political parasite alert.
I think it has everything to do with the American documentary. This is because it's easy for anyone in the world to be swayed by Chinese propaganda, because it's so impassioned (and rightly so). And it reaches other countries. I'm not saying that the Chinese government should have prevented interviews, far from it. I think much research needs to be conducted into this event, so that the information we have on WWII is more reliable and Japan and China/Korea can reach some consensus on the basis of reliably researched information, and only then could they truly reconcile.
It doesn't help that under Mao the subject was not researched at all because the communists were much more obsessed with doing down the nationalists and emphasising their triumph over tyhe bourgeois nationalists rather than dwelling on the suffering caused by the Japanese. China made nothing of the Sino-Japanese war until after Mao. Because of that, research into the subject was delayed by 40 years, which doesn't help, with many reliable eyewitnesses either dying or getting very old by now.
My gripe is that, far from extending research and learning, the Chinese government uses these historical events as political tools, thus stifling any progress that could be made between the nations to reach an eventual accord. Since the fall of real socialism in China after the death of Mao, China has been using nationalism and patriotism to justify its position and keep attention away from domestic problems. Thus, China's been digging up every bad thing that Japan did, and demanding apologies to prove China's own might and feed patriotism. This is after 40 years of silence on the matter. Japan doesn't want to issue a written apology (note: many Japanese prime ministers have verbally apologised to the people of Korea, China and other Asian nations which it occupied) because what many Chinese claim as facts are politically motivated propaganda. How can you apologise based on an exaggerated crime? If you didn't know all of that then I'd say that you weren't really qualified to talk about Asian issues.
I'm not saying that this film is without value, I'm saying that it's a point of view, there is an agenda. I'm not criticising the filmmakers, or Iris Chang, and I'm certainly not accusing them of manipulating people.
It's just that the only point of view anyone in the rest of the world ever hears is the Chinese point of view, because China wants the moral high ground over Japan. And it would be hard for Japan to say anything without sounding imperialist or weak and yielding. Consider Japan's situation for once. You might say that China's is a justified moral high ground. To that, I would say that it would be justified, if (as people are saying) the Japanese are "proud of what they did" or they were knowingly insensitive about the matter. The fact is, generally, people in Japan don't know what happened in Nanjing. Of course, there are some ultra-rightists (unfortunately on the rise in Japan, but still a small minority) who are proud of what happened, and are unrepentant, as well as ex-soldiers who don't feel any remorse. But they were ordered to do the things they did. It's like Nazi Germany. It's quite natural for them to have a skewed vision of right and wrong when they were told by an authority figure that to kill and maim and rape is serving the cause. Unfortunately Japan was ruthless, imperialist and militarist. They are not any more.
So, some ultra-rightists try to trivialise the event. But most people JUST DON'T KNOW. Is that their fault? No. They're just underinformed, and that's the fault of the government, not the people. Even in Britain where I live and which is supposedly a free society with unlimited access to information, the people who are interested can look up Britain's imperial past, but the vast majority of people don't know anything about the atrocities Britain committed in Australia, Africa, etc. because they're not taught it in school. Same with Japan.
I'm trying to be as sensitive as I can, and I regret that the things in Nanjing happened, because they were terrible. But, as I said, just because you have suffered a wrong does not mean it's right or acceptable to hold a grudge for such a long time. Two wrongs don't make a right. And I'm not disrespecting Iris Chang's efforts (I haven't read her book). I'm criticising the Chinese government.
Which is why I don't criticise Chinese kids for hating Japanese people. When I lived in China last year, the American university shooting occurred. It was in Tennesse, was it? When a Chinese kid of 14 that I knew heard that a Japanese student was among those killed, he laughed and said "hearing that makes me very happy". See what's wrong here? I felt sick and angry with the kid, but then I realised that I couldn't blame him for the education he's had.
I'm a British citizen with ties to both China and Japan. I really don't want this issue to cloud relations between the two nations. I'm pro-education, pro-information, pro-cooperation, and pro-reconciliation. I don't think my opinions are unreasonable.
P.S. I had an account here before I wrote these posts. I'm not a political parasite.
I think it has everything to do with the American documentary. This is because it's easy for anyone in the world to be swayed by Chinese propaganda, because it's so impassioned (and rightly so).
-------------------------------------
Sigh, actually the reverse is equally true-- it's also easy for anyone in the world to be swayed by ANTI-Chinese propaganda, because it's so impassioned (and at least half-true.).
P.S. I had an account here before I wrote these posts. I'm not a political parasite.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are being political parasite if you try to use IRRELEVANT movies as a platform to launch your political points. Using an American film documenting the EVENTS of 1937 to score political points about present-day China (or Japan) is one such example-- notice that the film is NOT about present-day China (or Japan). Almost like those people complaining about "liberals" in the boards for The Killing Fields, etc......
As the American producer of the film mentioned, in an interview about why he made the film-- he just wanted to document the events and tell people what happened (because he had never heard of it before), but it was the vocal group of Japanese deniers who have succeeded in making an international incident out of it. If those people had just accepted it as something that happened in their history, then everyone else would also have just accepted it as something that happened in their history-- and this would just be another historical documentary.
But present-day politics are preventing many people, such as you, from looking at a documentary as a documentary-- or maybe it is present-day politics which are encouraging many people, such as yourself, to make political mileage out of every aspect of the media. To the extent of trying to distort the theme/message of the film (to one side or another) when it so clearly and delicately shown.
Mungar:
And just what caused you to feel she relied on "super-extra-over-exaggerations" in writing her book? What is your allegedly superior knowledge of events based on?
Iris Chang committed suicide over what she found in researching her book.
Like the Nazis, the Japanese army took photographs AND film of their atrocities (But of course, they did NOT consider them atrocities, since to their eyes, the Chinese were not fully human)
It's the same thing that happened (to a somewhat lesser extent) in Vietnam and is happening in Iraq, or in most wars. Soldiers are TRAINED to think of the "enemy" as less than human. Ask any HONEST soldier who has been in basic training.
While I can understand Chang's intentions in writing the book, it is actually filled with historical errors - some of which are very basic. Also, all photos in the book are proven fakes. (just do some basic research)
Comparing this to holocaust deniers is silly because the Holocaust actually has irrefutable evidence behind it.
The Nanking massacre is a tragic event no doubt, but there is also a lot of propaganda mixed in with it.
What???
I can understand many do like the Chinese Communist govenment. Me neither. HOwever, your hate seems to cloud your judgement.
Chang's book contains errors but do you really believe "all photos in the book are proven fakes" ?
Are you saying Holocaust is irrefutable and Rape of Nanking is not?
Iris Change commited suicide. From what I understand, she was depressed. I belive it's her line of work that led to her depresion.
shareCongratulations, you have an opinion. Iris however studied Nanking for most of her adult life. I'll go with her qualified expertise.
shareMungar, your ignorance is breathtaking. My parents, as well as the parents of so many 1st generation American-Chinese, know first hand about the atrocities of the Japanese War. How dare you or anyone suggest that Chang was being dramatic? How dare you or anyone dare suggest that the Massacre was anything less? Tell us what it is like to have barely escaped death. Our parents can.
shareI suggest to Mungar to watch movies about Unit 731 ... specifically "Men Behind The Sun".... Actually I've been reading books on Japanese biological warfare tests...and other human experiments. As a Jewish-American...but more specifically as a HUMAN being I find these actions despicable. My only concern are those who claim that any one of these events is the worst in human history. I would claim that the Holocaust was worse...the Chinese would claim that Nanking and Unit 731 were...the Japanese would claim that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were (I am opposed to what happened on August 5th) and Americans would claim that September 11th was the worst. I believe they all were horrible and different but constant reminders of the darkness in humanity. I pray that we can learn from these inhuman acts and learn to respect the basic humanity of our fellow human beings. Peace!
shareI believe it is also very helpful and important that ignorant or naive opinions, and even ethnic or religious prejudice, is allowed to be aired in these boards. They provide an excellent opportunity for open discussion and education. There can be no Peace without Justice, but there can be no Justice without Understanding.
shareAs for the one writer who said he doesn't blame the Chinese kids for hating the Japanese I take exception to that. I am Jewish and had a few relatives killed by the Nazis. I don't hate ALL Germans and do NOT condone people hating anybody because that just further perpetuates the hatred that caused the Holocaust and other atrocities in the first place. Furthermore, while the Chinese have every reason to be upset about Nanking .... what about what they are doing to their own people? I say the same to my government who says that 911 was the "worst event in human history"...I totally disagree with that statement. It's said to say the very least but there have been others just as bad if not worse. Nagasaki and Hiroshima come to mind....the Trail of Tears.... the Holocaust ... the Armenian genocide... the Inquisition...etc. The other thing that struck me as odd are the children that the one writer mentioned...the weren't even alive 60 some years ago...any more than I was during the Holocaust. Once again, I don't hate Germans I hate the Nazis...and that is different...well i hope this is just one more perspective on this controversial issue.
share[deleted]
Does anyone know if they are using any of her material?
Whether the writers used any of Iris' information, I don't know. But I can tell you, she was not involved in the direct making of this movie, as she comitted suicide in late 2004.
Your OP doesn't make a lot of sense, considering Iris' research was completed long before 1997, and her book Nanking Massacre: The Rape of Nanking, was published in 1997.
Also, even though Iris was ACTUALLY AMERICAN, the people of Nanjing regarded her research, and information, HIGHLY! I Doubt they regard her information and published book as a "trivialization"!
What, just for once in your life can't you be serious?