Book News June 6, 1999
War Again Is Raging Over Japan's Role in 'Nanking' History: Author
Chang attacked by those who say massacre didn't happen, and by those
who insist it did but say book hurts their cause.
By SONNI EFRON, Times Staff Writer
TOKYO--Once again, Japan is at war over history.
This time, the flash point is California author Iris Chang. The
Japanese edition of her best-selling "The Rape of Nanking" was
scrapped late last month after a long-running dispute between Chang
and her Japanese publisher, and the controversy has cast a spotlight
on this country's ambivalence about its wartime past.
In a bizarre twist, Chang has come under attack not only from
Japanese ultranationalists--who assert that the 1937 massacre of
Chinese civilians by Japanese troops never took place--but also from
Japanese liberals, who insist it happened but allege that Chang's
flawed scholarship damages their cause.
Chang accuses the publisher of caving in to right-wing threats.
But
Hiromu Haga, editor in chief of publishing firm Kashiwa Shobo, said
it wasn't the threats but Chang's unwillingness to correct what he
alleges were significant errors that led to the cancellation of
publication. Chang in turn charges that many of the "errors" were not
mistakes at all but differences of opinion, and she accuses Haga of
trying to censor her book.
Meanwhile, some Japanese and U.S. scholars are concerned that the
increasingly bitter flap will leave Westerners with the misimpression
that little has been written in Japan about Japanese atrocities in
Asia, including those in Nanking, now known as Nanjing.
In fact, the National Diet Library holds at least 42 books about the
Nanjing massacre and Japan's wartime misdeeds, of which 23 have been
published since 1992, 21 of them by liberals investigating Japan's
wartime atrocities.
In addition, geriatric Japanese soldiers have begun publishing their
memoirs and giving speeches and interviews in increasing numbers,
recounting the atrocities they committed or witnessed. And after
years of government-enforced denial, Japanese middle school textbooks
now carry accounts of the Nanjing massacre as accepted truth.
"Dozens of Japanese scholars are now actively engaged in research on
every aspect of the war," historian Joshua A. Fogel of UC Santa
Barbara wrote in a review of Chang's book. "Indeed, we know many
details of the Nanjing massacre, Japanese sexual exploitation of
'comfort women,' and biological and chemical warfare used in China
because of the trailblazing research" of Japanese scholars.
Revisionist View Still Top Seller But while the liberal view of
history has triumphed in the Japanese academic world, the
revisionists are scoring bigger in the mass market, according to
historians and publishers here.
For example, a well-respected 1997 study of the Nanjing massacre by
historian Tokushi Kasahara recently sold 55,000 copies--a huge hit
for a Japanese academic book, but nowhere near the 1.2 million sales
for the tomes of revisionist Tokyo University education professor
Nobukatsu Fujioka.
To showcase the accomplishments of liberal Japanese scholars, Akira
Fujiwara, the dean of Japanese World War II historians, said he plans
to publish--through Kashiwa--an edited volume summarizing Japanese
research about the Nanjing massacre, in order to make some of the
most important historical work here available in English for the
first time.
"If people [in the West] assume that all Japanese think like the
right-wingers, then we have a big problem," said Fujiwara, professor
emeritus of history at Hitotsubashi University.
But a vocal movement headed by Fujioka is trying to stop what it sees
as a "masochistic" and erroneous view of Japanese as war criminals,
typified by Chang's "Rape of Nanking."
The rightists are crowing over the cancellation of Chang's book,
which they have been vilifying as "anti-Japanese" and a "forgery of
history." The conservative Sankei newspaper, Japan's fifth-largest
daily, said in an editorial that publication of Chang's book would
"damage the pride of Japanese."
"It is fortunate that many Japanese will not be misled by its
erroneous historical description," the newspaper concluded.
Fujiwara and other liberals, who have struggled for three decades to
document Japan's World War II atrocities and to pressure their
government to apologize and atone, want Chang's book to appear in
Japan.
In interviews, Chang's erstwhile publisher and several leading
historians said they believe that Chang's indictment of Japan's
wartime atrocities and the country's postwar attempts to cover up and
distort history will help raise public awareness of the incident--and
of how Japan's behavior is perceived abroad.
'Impossible to Deny' That It Happened But at the same time, they fear
that errors in the book have given ammunition and succor to the
Japanese right wing's attempts to minimize the carnage at Nanjing and
portray the massacre as a "big lie."
"A campaign to deny the Nanking massacre itself by presenting the
weaknesses of Iris Chang's book is being developed," Fujiwara warned.
"The massacre denial groups have been using these kinds of tactics
to
maintain there was no massacre by presenting the contradictions in
testimony quoted or by the use of inappropriate photos.
"Yet it is impossible to deny the occurrence of the incident itself
because of these few mistakes,"
Fujiwara said. "It is an illogical jump in reasoning to deny that
the Nanking massacre ever happened by attacking her book."
Chang defends the integrity of her research. In a series of e-mails,
the author said that she did correct about 10 errors, including
misspelled names and erroneous dates for Japan's Tokugawa shogunate.
But Chang said she rejected attempts by the publisher to annotate
about 65 items in the book.
In an e-mail to Chang, Haga said he was putting himself in "a life-
threatening situation" by publishing her book but was determined to
proceed anyway if Chang would correct the problems.
But Chang asserted that the suggested changes were merely additional
details or interpretations or simply assertions by right-wing critics
for which no evidence was provided.
"I can assure you that virtually none of these errors had anything to
do with the historical description of the Nanking massacre itself,"
Chang wrote. "To insist that they could give any ammunition to
any
Japanese revisionist who denies the massacre is ludicrous."
Ludicrous or not, the publications and Internet Web pages of the
Japanese right are filled with gloating attacks on Chang. "Even
after this, can you still say there was a Nanjing massacre?" asserts
one such site.
The rightists say that very few, if any, Chinese civilians died at
Nanjing. Chang accepts the Chinese estimate of 350,000, while
other
scholars estimate 200,000.
Another Critical Book on the Way Next month, editor Haga will have a
chance to defend his liberal reputation when he brings out a Japanese
translation of "Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare,
1932-45, and the American Cover-Up," by Sheldon H. Harris, professor
emeritus of history at Cal State Northridge.
In a telephone interview, Harris said he has had "no heartache at
all" over the Japanese edition of his book, which details the
notorious Unit 731's experiments on live Chinese and Korean
prisoners. But he said his book is already under attack on a
right-
wing Web site run by Fujioka's allies--and he is ready for battle.
Meanwhile, Chang and her U.S. publisher, Basic Books, said they hope
to find another publisher for her book in Japan.
