A Real Tragedy
by Wendy at 10/14/2004 01:00:00 PM
"Great news!", I thought when I saw this article ("Rape of Nanking Comic Draws Ire"). The Japanese are finally showing some sensitivity about the Rape of Nanking, during which up to three hundred thousand Chinese were brutally raped, maimed, tortured and killed by invading Japanese soldiers in 1937. The publisher of Weekly Young Jump magazine received almost 200 angry phone calls from Japanese citizens protesting the portrayal of the Rape - the Holocaust of China - in one of the magazine's comics.
Unfortunately, as I got to the end of the article, I realized that the Japanese weren't upset that the comic was portraying the Rape in an insensitive manner, but that it was portraying it at all. The Japanese still insist the Rape of Nanking never happened.
Unfortunately, as I got to the end of the article, I realized that the Japanese weren't upset that the comic was portraying the Rape in an insensitive manner, but that it was portraying it at all. The Japanese still insist the Rape of Nanking never happened.
In War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges argues that several things have to occur before one nation goes to war with another. Among these are that the people must consider themselves victims, and they must consider their enemies to be something less than human. These two positions are used to justify the killing and atrocities committed during wartime.
After a war ends, it is his opinion that for the people to return to normal, there must be a period of reckoning in which the acts of war are openly discussed and evaluated (e.g. "Truth and Reconciliation" in South Africa).
I think that this happened in the US years after WWII ended, when acts such as a-bombs, firebombing, and Japanese internment were analyzed, and we came, in some sense, to a decision about why we did these terrible things and if they were justified. Universal agreement isn't important - what's important is the recognition that these things occurred.
In Japan perhaps, they have never really done this. It might have been easier for us, as the victors in the war and the beneficiaries of a culture where honor and the infallibility of our leaders is not paramount, to analyze ourselves and ask if we had done wrong. Many Japanese might have prefered to forget their "humiliation" and were therefore prevented from beginning to reckon with their past. As the generations passed, so did interest in that period, maybe encouraged by the politics of nationalism that are still important in Japan today.
A bit rambling, I admit, but I'm just thinking out loud.
I think, generally, both sides have to think that. Not down to the last person in either nation, certainly, but it would be part of the popular sentiment.
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