Emily Matson ’12

Perspectives of the Nanjing Massacre from Chinese and Japanese College Students in Beijing

Although it occurred in World War II, the Nanjing Massacre still has a marked impact on Sino-Japanese relations today. Both the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and Japanese governments have used the event for their own agendas. In the PRC, the government currently overemphasizes the Nanjing Massacre in secondary education. In its  patriotic education, the PRC emphasizes the Nationalists’ cowardice in abandoning the city before the Japanese invasion. This is a “look at how much better we are now!” type of view on history. In addition, the attention on Japanese WWII atrocities tends to place current PRC weaknesses in the shadow.

In Japan, a fierce debate between the progressives (those who wish to portray the Nanjing Massacre as it occurred and come to terms with Japan’s “national shame”) and the revisionists (those who wish to “revise” history by toning down the Massacre or even denying it occurred) has been going on since the 1980s. In Japanese secondary education, although the Nanjing Massacre is usually mentioned, it is only mentioned briefly, and with scant attention to detail.

For my research, I wanted to gauge the prevalence of the Nanjing Massacre in Chinese and Japanese society today by interviewing Chinese and Japanese college-aged students in Beijing. In my interviews, I asked them when they had first learned about the Massacre and what their initial reactions were. In addition, I asked them how the Japanese military was portrayed to them in school, whether or not they had discussed the Massacre with friends or family members, and whether or not their viewpoints on the Massacre had changed over time. I was also interested in the media sources they had been exposed to which dealt with the Massacre (movies, books, documentaries, etc.) and whether or not they had Japanese/Chinese friends. For my Japanese interviewees, I was also interested in seeing if their views on the Massacre had changed or not after they had arrived in China to study abroad.

In my results, it was interesting to note that all of my Chinese interviewees – no matter where in China they were from (I had interviewees from Dalian in the far Northeast to Guangdong in the South, to Yunnan in more of the Southwest), they had all received extensive secondary educational information on the Nanjing Massacre. Their textbooks generally used very strong language to describe the Japanese military (such as 残暴, meaning ruthless and brutal). Most of my Chinese interviewees were also shown graphic pictures when learning about the Nanjing Massacre. They were all aware of the biased nature of their “patriotic education” – while the Japanese invasion of China in WWII was heavily emphasized, atrocities committed by the Chinese government, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, were often skipped or glossed over. Many of my Chinese interviewees had Japanese friends, and did not connect the modern Japanese people with the past at all.

For my Japanese interviewees, they were all very aware of the toning down of the Nanjing Massacre and other WWII atrocities in their education. However, I was surprised to find that two of my three interviewees were part ethnically Chinese, and were aware of the Massacre from the time they were little. Although the required curriculum lacked detailed information on the Nanjing Massacre (only a brief overview), there was more information in the supplementary materials, which one of my interviewees read to find out more. The Japanese interviewees were concerned that not more Japanese were aware of the Nanjing Massacre.

In summary, both my Chinese and Japanese interviewees, all of whom were educated and college students, were quite aware of their respective governments’ agendas, and the subsequent biases in their public education. There was a general consensus that while it was important to learn about (accurate) history, it was also important to move into the future. None of my Chinese interviewees demonized the Japanese or connected them with the past, and all had developed a marked capability to distinguish between the historical deeds of a nation and the individuals which live in it at present. It was encouraging for me to have such productive dialogue with my interviewees. Although they are by no means a representative sample of the Chinese and Japanese nations, I hope that they can help usher in an era of mutual understanding and cooperation between China and Japan.

Unfortunately, I only had time to interview 3 Japanese students who were studying abroad in China. I wanted to see if their perspectives and knowledge on the Nanjing Massacre had changed at all since coming to China to study abroad. This curiosity was inspired by my friend Ayaka, who was in Beijing with me during fall semester. Although, unfortunately, I was unable to interview her, we had several lengthy conversations about the Nanjing Massacre. Ayaka told me that she had written a paper about the Massacre when she was in high school. After coming to study abroad in China, however, she had learned additional facts and information that had been excluded for her secondary education. She was interested in continuing her research on the Massacre, and editing her paper to include the new information she had discovered.

My dear friend Ayaka and me at the Old Summer Palace (圆明园) in Beijing. I thank her for inspiring me to do my research, as she demonstrated a genuine, active interest in uncovering the truth about history.

Out of the three Japanese students I interviewed, I was a bit surprised to find out that two of them were of mixed ethnicities – they were half or more Chinese! Wanli, one of my interviewees, has a Chinese father who actually emigrated to Japan during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Chida, another interviewee, is three quarters Chinese. His grandmother is Japanese, and during WWII emigrated to China and married a Chinese man. Their daughter was Chida’s mother, who also married a Chinese man. Chida was actually born in China, but moved to Japan when he was 6 years old.

Chida and Wanli both had more knowledge of the Nanjing Massacre than their classmates because of their family background. Both heard their parents discussing the events of the war when they were little; however, they did not receive much specific information on it at this time.

Wanli, Chida, and Masa, my third interviewee, all attended public school in Japan growing up. Wanli told me that in elementary school, they learned about the Japanese constitution that was created with US help after WWII, and he remembers a strong emphasis being put on peace – no war, no nuclear weapons, etc. He said that he started learning about WWII in middle school, but that they were taught in a very mild, casual (“清淡”) way regarding the actions of the Japanese military at the time. Their textbooks put the Japanese military in a very positive light. What happened in Nanjing was mentioned very briefly, but it didn’t go into detail about what had happened or pay special attention, just said that it had “occurred.”

On the contrary, Wanli said that the war with the US was discussed a lot in his textbook – especially the impact of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many Japanese people, he said, still don’t know about Nanjing. In fact, the first time Wanli ever heard about it was through personal reading. He thought it was terrible that so many people died, and that it was a serious problem that so few people were aware of it in Japan.

Chida told me that in his secondary education, his history textbook mentioned Japan’s invasion (侵略) of China, but that there wasn’t much detail; nor was their much detail about the Nanjing Massacre or the actions of the Japanese military. Their teacher didn’t mention much, either. He was taught that in WWII, many Japanese people didn’t want to go to war, but they were extremely pressured into doing so, and bullied if they did not comply.

Masa (who I interviewed along with Chida), said that they were taught in school that everything the Japanese military did was in the name of the emperor. There was a section of his history book about the comfort women (young women, mostly of Chinese and Korean descent, who were forced to accompany the Japanese army and “comfort” the soldiers),  but he said it was not explained very well. For him, he was confused by what the term “comfort women” meant throughout elementary school and middle school, because the term was not well explained or detailed in the book – he said he had felt like the textbook writers were hiding the facts.

Chida and Masa were both quite surprised when they learned about the Nanjing Massacre, but it didn’t come as a total shock. For Chida, this was because he had already heard his father mention the Japanese invasion of China. He was surprised that the Nanjing Massacre wasn’t discussed more in Japanese society. Both Chida and Masa expressed the opinion that this kind of tragedy is sadly unavoidable in times of war because of underlying human nature, which is cruel (残酷）.

Masa read the supplementary materials in his textbook on his own, where it included a lot of additional information and photographs about that Massacre. Like many of my Chinese interviewees, Chida had also seen the film “Nanjing, Nanjing,” which he said contained very detailed information about the actions of the Japanese military, comfort women, etc.

Wanli expressed concern to me over the fact that from his observations, the Nanjing Massacre is being mentioned less and less in Japanese history books. In this year’s textbook editions, he told me the event was not even mentioned anymore, and that the Japanese education system treats it more and more lightly (清晰). He said that certain terminology has been changed, such as the word “invaded” (侵略) being changed to “entered” (进入) in sentences such as”The Japanese military invaded/entered China.”

My three interviewees all had a certain awareness of the Nanjing Massacre before coming to study abroad in China. In Chida’s point of view, he knows that most Chinese (if not all) know about Japan’s military invasion of China, but he doesn’t see it affecting Chinese-Japanese relations too much at present.

Wanli said that the elderly Japanese generation think about the war and historical events a lot more than the youth of Japan do, and that this is also true for Chinese youth. His father influenced him greatly in his decision to study abroad in China, which sprung mainly out of a desire to learn more about Chinese society, language, and culture. He said that although he had already taken the Nanjing Massacre seriously before he came to China, after he arrived, he was very touched by how well the Japanese students were treated by the Chinese, despite the historical problems between their countries.

At the end of my interview with Wanli, he made a very thoughtful comment which lies at the heart of my research. He said: “There is no future without thinking about history. Fewer and fewer Japanese youth, as well as Chinese youth, know about historical problems today. We [the youth] need to understand history in order to make the future better.”

So I probably mentioned previously that I interviewed college students in Beijing to gauge their impressions of the Nanjing Massacre. I ended up interviewing 6 Chinese students, 3 Korean students, and 3 Japanese students for a total of 12 interviews. One thing I regret is not being able to interview more Japanese students, but the interviews I did manage to have gave me some pretty good insights.

(The above picture is from one of the most famous contemporary movies in China about the war, called “Nanjing, Nanjing!” All of my Chinese interviewees had at least heard of the movie, and some had seen it – apparently, it’s a pretty graphic and violent film.)

First, I’ll start with some of what I learned from the Chinese interviews. Most students said they started learning about China during elementary school in classes such as Geography, or Society. They started learning about history more in depth in middle school. For most, their textbook highlighted the Japanese invasion of China, and they were left with the impressions of the Japanese as cruel and barbaric. It’s interesting – in the US, we spend most of our studies on WWII learning about Germany and the European side of the war; in China, though, the majority of their time is spent learning about the Japanese invasion of China, and there is often only a sentence or two about Germany!

One of my interviewees, Josie (from Guangdong in southern China), said she had to watch tons of movies in elementary school that were  on the war against Japan (in Chinese, it’s often called the War of Resistance, or 抗日战争). She said this was part of their patriotic education, or “爱国教育.” In her classes, she said that they were taught the Japanese [military] were all evil. The vocabulary used in her textbook was very intense – for instance, the text used the word “惨绝人寰 (can3jue2ren2huan2)，” which is a Chinese phrase meaning “extremely tragic, catastrophic.” The text emphasized how cruel the Japanese were not only by using strong language, but also by using photos! Josie watched videos and saw many photos about the Japanese invasion. She learned about the Nanjing Massacre formally in middle school in detail, and was very angry about what the Japanese had done, and about the government’s refusal to apologize.

Tangerine, another Chinese interviewee (from Dalian in Liaoning Province, Northeast China) also said the language used to describe the Japanese invasion was quite strong. However, she said the information in the textbooks had a strong bias. She said that most of the information in the textbooks was focused on the Japanese invasion in China, but almost no information was included about Japanese atrocities in other East Asian countries at the time. For instance, there would be phrases in the textbook such as “Japan entered Korea in order to invade China” ; in the textbook, the Japanese had been planning all along to invade China, for years, and were presented as total villains;  it was a very black-and-white view of history. She said that while in the US, it is taught that WWII ended because of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, in China, it is taught that WWII ended because of the heroic Chinese efforts in the War of Resistance Against Japan (抗日战争).

Clearly, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party, or 共产党) had an agenda in how they presented history. Also interesting was how Tangerine said her textbook had presented the Nationalist Party (国民党). In the textbook, apparently it was all due to the CCP efforts that the alliance between the CCP and Nationalist Party was formed in the first place in order to fight the Japanese. It was the Nationalist Party’s fault that the alliance dissolved, as they had always had ulterior motives and plans to attack the CCP.

Not surprisingly, Tangerine said she was never taught about the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen, or the Korean War in high school. It was only when she entered university at Peking University that she was taught formally about these events.

Another Chinese girl I interviewed (who chose to remain anonymous) said she watched black and white films from the WWII time period when she was in elementary school, which depicted the Japanese invasion. When she learned about the Nanjing Massacre, what impacted her the most was that the Japanese army killed ordinary people, and that the way they killed them was quite inhumane.

Also interestingly, this girl said she was very suspicious of Japanese exports to China, and thought that the best Japanese exports went to Europe, the US, and other western countries, while the worst quality ones were saved for China. She herself participated in a Japanese product boycott, and demonstrated in front of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing.

For the most part, my Chinese interviewees, although they had strong reactions to the Nanjing Massacre when they first heard about it, did not hold any feelings of animosity toward the Japanese. If they had any angry feelings, these were directed toward the Japanese government. Many of them had Japanese friends, and thought that it was important to distinguish history from the present. While it is helpful to remember history, it is also important not to blame events of the past on individual people today.

In my next post, I will talk about what I learned from my Japanese and Korean interviewees.