The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (review)

70 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999© 1999 by University ofHawai'i Press hifuron" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1978), pp. 78-79. Pauline Yu, in The Reading ofImagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition, pp. 185-187, translates and discusses the passage but does not mention the authenticity issue. 4.Wang Meng-ou ??????, "Wang Ch'ang-ling sheng-p'ing chi ch'i shih-lun" ??HSiEi2P K.ÄWIi, in the same author's Ku-tien wen-hsüeh lun fan-so ~^^ÎM%mWM (Taipei: Chengchung Shu-chii, 1984), pp. 259-294, esp. pp. 272-273. 5.Siu-kit Wong, trans., Early Chinese Literary Criticism (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 1983), p. 59. No less cautious a translator than David Knechtges manages to keep "inspiration" out ofhis translation but notes that '"stirring and responding' . . . refers to the moment ofliterary creation or inspiration." See Wen xuan, or Selections ofRefined Literature, vol. 3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 228-229. 6.Jullien, La valeur allusive, p. 126. Iris Chang. The Rape ofNanking: The Forgotten Holocaust ofWorld WarII. Foreword by William C. Kirby. New York: Basic Books, 1997. xi, 290 pp. Hardcover $25.00, isbn 0-465-06835-9. Iris Chang has written a vivid and highly readable account of the Nanking Massacre, one ofthe great atrocities inflicted on China by Japanese troops during the Pacific War. Furthermore, Chang has undertaken an admirable amount ofresearch in bringing this event to the attention of an English-speaking audience. However, this book has many flaws, foremost ofwhich is that Chang claims factuality for what are often nationalistic and emotion-laden assumptions. The writing is Chang's strong point. She describes in succinct and powerful language the battles leading up to the Nanking Massacre and the Massacre itself. Readers will cringe as Chang leads them through brutality and destruction, makes them feel what a massacre is, and bombards them with stories of individual terror and heroics. The effect is shocking and hard to forget, and this is as it should be. Drawing from the Tokyo War Trials, Western correspondence, Japanese diaries, and the recollections of Chinese witnesses, Chang's extensive use ofher sources adds a tone oflegitimacy to her narrative. In her search for sources, Chang found the diary ofJohn Rabe, a German who lived through the Massacre and who, along with a handful of other Westerners, did his best to protect the people ofNanking from the Japanese. Rabe's diary is an important historical document that adds to the writings of other Westerners who were in Nanking and who witnessed much ofwhat Chang recounts here. So extensive is the use of sources like these that I wish a bibliography of them had been included. Reviews 71 Not content with a simple narration of the Massacre, however, Chang also tackles a good number oftough questions that surround it. For example, she analyzes the possible reasons why Japanese troops would commit such inhuman acts, coming up with several believable explanations including the severity of Japanese military training and the hard-fought nature of the battles leading up to the assault on Nanking. She also discusses why the Massacre is not better known and the attempts by some in Japan to erase any knowledge ofit. In all, Chang addresses the Massacre from the events leading up to it to the repercussions that continue to this day. Hence, readers gain an informative view ofthe subject. The most interesting aspect of Chang's work is her blending ofrumor and fact to flesh out a very interesting narrative. This intellectual flexibility and the dependence on the work of Sun Zhaiwei, a leading Chinese scholar of the battle for Nanking, leads Chang to conclude that Tang Shengzhi, the Chinese general who was in charge of defending Nanking, was faced with an impossible situation and was not responsible for the city's rapid collapse. Rather, it was Chiang Kaishek , the leader of China at the time, who deserved blame for the poor defense of the city that resulted in the Massacre. An even more interesting conclusion by Chang is that General Matsui Iwane, the only Japanese military officer sentenced to death at the Tokyo Trials for his part in the Massacre...