The Nanjing Massacre and the Making of Mediated Trauma

Hongtao Li, Shunming Huang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032058221
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000427868
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: Social Sciences

Drawing on cultural trauma theory, this book investigates how collective memory of the Nanjing Massacre is fashioned in China and how the mass media, political power and public praxis jointly shape the politics and culture of memory in contemporary China.

Allowing for the dimensions of history and different mediating spaces, the authors first conduct textual analysis of news reports from traditional media since the event took place, revealing that the significance of the Massacre was initially portrayed as a local incident before its construction as a national trauma and finally a collective memory. In a study of physical and online memorial spaces, including the Memorial Hall, commemorative activities on the Internet and new media platforms, the book unveils the production and reproduction of trauma narratives as well as how these narratives have been challenged. The final part further studies the interactions between media and other institutional settings while exploring issues of global memory and reconciliation in East Asia.

The title will be an essential read for anyone interested in memory studies, media and communication, and particularly the collective memory of the Nanjing Massacre.

1 Introduction: towards an enduring commemoration

So what should humanity remember? The short answer is: striking examples of radical evil and crimes against humanity, such as enslavement, deportations of civilian populations, and mass exterminations … radical evil consists, I suggest, of acts that undermine the very foundation of morality itself.

—Avishai Margalit

The Ethics of Memory 2004

可以宽恕，但不可遗忘却

Forgivable, but unforgettable

許すことはできても、忘れてはいけない

—John Rabe

This sentence is carved in Chinese, English, and Japanese on the walls inside the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.

1.1 The weight of memory

Around November 10, 2016, Chinese netizens discovered that a department store in America was selling hoodies with a print of the Nanjing Massacre scene on the back, in which a Japanese solider was beheading several kneeling Chinese civilians. This was strongly criticized and condemned among Overseas Chinese and domestically in China on social media. It should be noted that on the top of the print, which was extracted from the movie City of Life and Death, there were also two English words written in red: “Why Indifference?” In fact, the print was an edited version of the original film frame. The eyes of both the Japanese soldiers and the Chinese victims were covered by red blocks. In the lower-right corner of the print, the designer had added a Western woman sitting on a bench facing the opposite direction of the execution scene. The department store and the hoodie designer made a public statement saying this design was not meant to insult Chinese people but rather was a statement about being “anti-war” and “anti-indifference”.

However, critics did not accept this explanation. They insisted that as a historical tragedy, the Nanjing Massacre should not be treated lightly or represented in such a casual manner. For example, an Overseas Chinese netizen wrote on social media: “Would your company dare to put a picture of a Native American being slaughtered on a hoodie, and title it ‘don’t kill’ to rectify using the image? Or, would your company put a picture of an African American being enslaved on a hoodie, and then title it ‘no slavery’ to rectify using the image?” Many claimed that the intension of the design cannot make up for the fact that using a brutal scene as “an element of fashion” to be printed on a hoodie that represents popular culture and “making money by exploiting a history of pain and terror” is disrespectful to the historical event and to the Chinese community. Subsequently, the department store and the designer issued a public apology. The controversial hoodies were also taken off the shelf. Leaving aside the miscommunication, this incident manifested the “boundary” or “the appropriate representation” of the Nanjing Massacre. As one of the critics put it, “if it was an artwork in a museum or an exhibition hall, I would not be against it. But allowing people to walk around with it on their backs casually like that? Totally unacceptable!” (xsCha and Zhao 2016).

In 2016, another incident related to the Nanjing Massacre that caught the public’s attention was about amending a Chinese textbook. On May 23rd, a news report was titled “40% of the content in Chinese language textbook was replaced, including an article about the Nanjing Massacre”. Within a short period of time, it swept through social media and triggered a wave of criticism and accusations. Sina News attached a survey while reposting the article, asking readers for their opinion toward the decision of “deleting articles like The Nanjing Massacre and Major Lu Punching Butcher Zheng¹ from the textbook”. The result showed that 79.5% of the survey participants disagreed with this decision. In point of fact, the whole incident was based on a misunderstanding. Language & Culture Press never deleted the content about the Nanjing Massacre. They simply replaced the original article with a different one that covered the same topic.² In reaction to the overwhelming criticism, Language & Culture Press issued a statement and posted it on their official website that very night, saying:

Language & Culture Press Did Not Remove the Nanjing Massacre Article from the Chinese Language Textbook.

The widespread rumour that we are removing the Nanjing Massacre article from the Standard Experimental Textbook for Nine-Year Compulsory Education has no basis in truth. It caused confusion among the public. We hereby declare that this allegation was false.

In 2013, our publishing house started amending the 2001 version of the Standard Experimental Textbook for Nine-year Compulsory Education. During the process, we decided to replace Wen Shulin’s The Nanjing Massacre with Escape from Death, which is an excerpt from Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking. The reason behind this decision was that the newly selected article, Iris Chang’s Escape from Death, not only described the inhumanity of the Nanjing Massacre, but also portrayed the heroic image of a Chinese woman, Li Xiuying, who bravely resisted the brutality caused by the Japanese devils. Her story reflects the Chinese People’s courage and wisdom, as well as our unbreakable resolve in resisting foreign aggression. Therefore, the content about the Nanjing Massacre in the textbook was not removed by our publishing company.

Hereby declared.³

Language & Culture Press

2016 May 23rd

(Wu 2016)

The full text of this statement is worth quoting not only because it clarified the basic facts, but also because it demonstrated how the publishing house invoked the “master narrative” when explaining why certain changes were made to the textbook. The statement emphasized that the new article not only showed “the inhumanity of the Nanjing Massacre” but also highlighted the Chinese People’s “brave resistance”. However, it failed to calm public anger. The publisher, Wang Xuming, reposted the publishing house’s statement on his personal Sina Weibo page. In the comment section, netizens expressed their disapproval for the title of the new article Escape from Death. The top three comments were: (1) “Language & Culture Press has become the “Temple of the Holy Mother”.⁴ From now on, the Opium War should be called “Poppy Blossom”; the Destruction of the Old Summer Palace should be called “The Fiery Palace”; and the Double-Seven Incident⁵ should be referred to as “The Tale of the Marco Polo Bridge”. So beautiful and harmonic!” (1,227 likes); (2) “Please be clear about the Nanjing Massacre!!” (688 likes); (3) “The Nanjing Massacre cannot be renamed!” (681 likes) (Wang 2016).⁶ While these comments can hardly be considered reasonable, since replacing an article with a different title in the textbook is not the same thing as renaming the historical event, the powerful nationalistic response reflected how much the memory of the Nanjing Massacre means in the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. On May 31st, Language & Culture Press made the final decision of retaining Wen’s article The Nanjing Massacre and listed Chang’s Escape from Death as additional reading. It encouraged students to read them side by side, since one of them “focused on the macro perspective of the event (referring to The Nanjing Massacre) while the other was written from an individual’s perspective. Reading both of them will allow the students to fully and deeply understand the crimes of Japanese imperialism, to stimulate patriotism among students, and to further nourish their spirit of nationalism” (Gui 2016).

Controversies over both the hoodie and the textbook incidents revealed certain facets of the modern memory of the Nanjing Massacre. They showed us that the disagreement does not only exist between the “self” and “others” (referring to the American department store in the hoodie incident or, more typically, the Japanese government and Japanese right-wing forces), but also exists within the “self”. The Nanjing Massacre has become a part of the divine memory of the nation-state. Its sacredness is manifested in being incompatible with commercialization and resisting any amendment to its dominant narrative. The memory of an historical event usually follows a natural trajectory. When the generation which carries the memory passes away, the lived memories become history. They will be carved onto a monument, then slowly fade out from the public view. However, the trajectory of the memory regarding the Nanjing Massacre took a different path. The event attracted a great amount of attention domestically and abroad during and immediately after the Second World War. It then faded away in the following decades, but was revived in the early 1980s. Since then, it has profoundly shaped the collective consciousness and imagination of modern Chinese people.

Different from an individual’s memory, collective memory can only be a metaphor because a social collective does not share a brain. But this metaphor has an enormous amount of “weight”. As for the Nanjing Massacre, what are the logic and the dynamics behind its remembrance and commemoration over the last 80 years? Where is the origin of its “weight” in today’s public life? These are the fundamental questions we aim to answer. In this book, we will attempt to tell two theoretical stories. One story will focus on the Nanjing Massacre. It will trace how this historical event was written and commemorated in different media settings as well as how it was reproduced in different mediation processes. The other story conceives of the Nanjing Massacre as a particular case of mediated trauma, so as to explore the relationship between the media, the collective memory, and the making of cultural trauma.

1.2 From “historical event” to “affective memory”

The hoodie incident and the textbook controversy indicated that the Nanjing Massacre is not a “dead past” sealed in a dusty file, but rather a “living memory” closely related to contemporary reality. As Sun Ge said in the early 21st century while commenting on the case of Shiro Azuma:

For several generations of Chinese, the Nanjing Massacre is not simply a historical event that took place in December 1937. It has become the most significant symbol that helped construct the Chinese People’s affective memory. It symbolizes the crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army on Chinese soil during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It symbolizes the Chinese People’s rage toward the Japanese government and the Japanese right-wing forces who even today still refuse to truly recognize their guilt. It symbolizes the emotional trauma that has never healed even more than 50 years after the war and created an unfillable chasm between the Chinese and the Japanese. (2000: 12)

Mizoguchi Yūzō also argued, the Nanjing Massacre and the second Sino-Japanese war are “not only historical facts that belong to the past. They also pose themselves as ‘history’ while existing in the present. Their complex existence relies on breeding oppositions and creating emotional scars between us”. He argued that because “the existence of affective memory is recognized as a history in the present tense … the complexity of an event like the Nanjing Massacre is not only caused by the historical facts per se, but also by the vital affective memories. These factors together formed a multi-layered structure where the complexity of the Nanjing Massacre is rooted”. In other words, it is “a duet of affective memories and historical facts” (Mizoguchi 2001: 4, 8).

How do events transform into memories, symbols, and traumas? What is the underlying thread of these transformations? This book attempts to answer these essential questions, but first we need to acknowledge that these transformations did not happen overnight. They did not progress by following a linear pattern or the result of accumulations. The paths for these transformations are filled with twists and turns. They are affected by the “entangled history” (Kiyoshi 2000) between China and Japan, which sometimes also involved other countries (South Korea and the United States). They are also influenced by the discourses of the War of Resistance in Chinese society both during and after the war. Before we dive into the discussion of the mediated construction of the collective memory of the Nanjing Massacre, we need to have a basic idea of how this event is remembered today. We can do that by using key words mentioned by Sun Ge, such as “event”, “affective memory”, “symbol”, and “trauma”.

First, what is that “historical event”? It seems like a simple question. On many occasions, this particular catastrophe has been narrated as:

The Imperial Japanese Army openly opposed international treaties and basic moral principles. From December 1937 through January 1938, they slaughtered more than 300,000 innocent people in Nanjing over a period of six weeks. They committed war crimes including but not limited to sexual assault, looting, arson and massive destruction.⁷

On December 13th 1937, the Japanese invaders who had committed countless heinous crimes in China started a massacre in Nanjing. During the following six weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese citizens were brutally murdered. Based on the death toll and the level of brutality, the Nanjing Massacre should be defined as an atrocious crime against humanity. Similar to the events at Auschwitz, this is also a historical event that serves as a witness to the great disaster brought upon humanity by Fascism. (RMRB 2014)

These two paragraphs contain some basic facts, including “when” the massacre started (December 13th); “how long” it lasted (six weeks), and “how many” people died because of it (more than 300,000). Besides facts, they also contain “definitions” and “assessments”. For example, the second paragraph made an analogy between the Nanjing Massacre and Auschwitz.

Even when talking about historical facts, these narratives incorporate remarkable “presentist” elements. For instance, the death toll of more than 300,000 was based on the court verdict from the 1947 Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal making it a historical fact that exists in the past. However, the contemporary nature of this narrative lies in the dispute between China and the Japanese government or Japanese right-wing forces.⁸ The latter questions the death toll from time to time claiming that the number is an exaggeration, whereas China insists it is an historical fact that is beyond doubt. This dispute also exists in academia (Sun 2007, Zhang 2007, Wei 2009, Zhang 2012, Sun 2013), as well as among civilians, which can be seen in platforms like Wikipedia. Moreover, the number of “300,000” is not only significant because it shows the degree of the brutality, it also bears strong emotions and deep-rooted subconscious thoughts. For Chinese people, “the 300,000 number is a number that manifests the emotional intensity toward those Japanese who refuse to make amends ‘even until this day’” (Mizoguchi 2001: 3). “Based on how the Japanese conceive the number 300,000, Chinese people identify friends from enemies” (Sun 2000: 12). Paradoxically, some Japanese argue that “this number can also be used to ‘fabricate’ the Nanjing Massacre, thus to undermine the history of aggression toward China … later, it is used to ‘reasonably’ erase the affective memory in the name of ‘history’. Eventually, it is used to dehistoricize the event” (Mizoguchi 2001: 3–4).

Furthermore, the Nanjing Massacre was not an isolated event. It was often juxtaposed with other atrocities committed by the Japanese troops and considered as one of the most extreme examples of a series of war crimes. This is obviously expressed in the establishment and narrative of the National Memorial Day. On February 27, 2014, during the seventh session of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Translators’ Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: towards an enduring commemoration
• 2 From atrocities to massacre
• 3 The narrative about humiliation and the construction of trauma
• 4 Marking the “site of memory” with numbers
• 5 The making of the online memorial space
• 6 The collaboration and contestation over cyber memories
• 7 Conclusion
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index