The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (Studies of the Pacific Basin Institute) - Softcover

Honda, Katsuichi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765603357 ISBN 13: 9780765603357

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

Synopsis

This book is based on four visits to China between 1971 and 1989 by Honda Katsuichi, an investigative journalist for Asahi Shimbun. His aim is to show in pitiless detail the horrors of the Japanese Army's seizure and capture of Nanjing in December 1937. Unvarnished accounts of the testimony - Chinese victims and Japanese perpetrators - to the rape and slaughter are juxtaposed with public relations announcements of the Japanese Army as printed in various Japanese newspapers of the time. The bland announcements of triumphant victories stand in bitter contrast to the atrocities that actually took place on the scene. The story unfolds with horrible detail as we watch the triumphant progress of the Japanese army whose troops were bent on rape and killing in the so-called "heat of battle." Yet by recalling the testimony of Japanese soldiers and reporters who were on the scene, as well as reproducing dispatches by Japanese Army authorities at the time, Honda makes it clear that the atrocities were part of a studied effort directed by the Japanese high command to impress the Chinese people with the power of its army and the folly of resistance to it - the estimate of 300,000 killed in these "military operations" is no exaggeratoin. Honda has worked with other Japanese journalists and scholars who have attempted to reveal the truth of the Nanjing massacre, provoked by the efforts of right-wing Japanese, including, sadly, many government officials, to whitewash the whole incident, even to the point of contending that a "massacre" never happened. This gripping account of the atrocities and cover-up joins other exposes - Chinese and now German - in keeping alive the memory of this shameful event.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Japanese

From Library Journal:

Japanese investigative journalist Honda's authoritative study of the Japanese Imperial Army's campaign of wholesale destruction, rape, and murder in central China (November 1937-March 1938) is far superior to Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking (LJ 1/98), a powerful but deeply flawed best seller that made its author an international celebrity. Honda's study, based on Japanese wartime soldiers' diaries, contemporary newspaper accounts, and numerous interviews in the 1970s and 1980s with Chinese survivors of the massacres, is an unflinching and relentlessly horrifying tale of the systematic savagery of Japan at war against the people of China. He confirms beyond any doubt that the massacres began as soon as the Japanese expeditionary forces landed in Hangzhou Bay, that they were sanctioned by the military commanders, and that they continued not for weeks but months. His refutation of the Japanese "massacre denial" literature is caustic and compelling. Essential for all academic and larger public libraries.ASteven I. Levine, Univ. of Montana, Missoula
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0765603357
• ISBN 13: 9780765603357
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 396