Product Description

In December 1937, in what was then the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (Nanjing) and within weeks not only looted and burned the defenceless city, but systematically raped, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. The story of this atrocity continues to be denied by the Japanese government. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents in four different languages (many never before published), Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive, English language history of this episode.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45141 in Books
• Published on: 1998
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Some books you read for pleasure; others you read because they are too important to be ignored. Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking falls firmly into the second category. What most people in the West know about the Sino-Japanese war can usually be scribbled on the back of a postcard. It was a long way away, had nothing to do with us and besides the Second World War was a much bigger deal. This parochialism and chauvinism has obliterated one of the most obscene chapters from the already overflowing pages of man's inhumanity to man in the 20th century.

After fierce fighting in Shanghai, the Japanese occupied the old Chinese imperial city of Nanking on 13 December 1937. Over the next six weeks, the Japanese massacred more than 300,000 Chinese and raped more than 80,000 women. But these bare figures don't begin to describe the atrocities. The Japanese indulged in execution contests to see who could behead the most civilians in the shortest time, they burned their victims, they buried them alive, they set dogs on them. No form of mutilation and torture was too extreme or bizarre and no one escaped. Men, women, children and babies were all butchered.

What makes all this even more unbelievable is that there was no reason for this other than sadism. The Japanese army ran riot and indulged its blood lust; moreover it didn't even attempt to conceal what it was doing from eyewitnesses. The killings and the rapes all took place in public. So how come we all know so little about it? The answers, as ever, are part coincidence and part Realpolitik. The onset of the Second World War did overshadow events in China and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did help to cast the Japanese as victims, rather than aggressors, in some people's eyes in the post-war period. And in the aftermath of the war, everyone had a vested interest in keeping their mouth shut. Japan turned from enemy of the US to ally--as one of the strongest bastions of capitalism in a Far East they feared was becoming progressively more communist. Moreover, the People's Republic of China conspired to play down Nanking as it sought to gain an economic foothold in the world and didn't dare to alienate the West in the process.

So it is to Iris Chang's credit that she has dragged Nanking back into our collective consciousness. She doesn't sensationalise, neither does she spare us any of the details. She describes events from the point of view of the Japanese, the Chinese and the independent Westerners living in Nanking, but even so she fails to come up with a convincing explanation for the scale of the atrocities. --John Crace

About the Author
Iris Chang was a journalism graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana. She worked briefly as a reporter in Chicago before winning a graduate fellowship to the writing seminars program at Johns Hopkins University. Her first book, THREAD OF THE SILKWORM, received world-wide critical acclaim. She received the John T. and Catherine D. McArthur Foundation's Program on Peace and International Cooperation award. She died in 2004.

Customer Reviews

A shocking and necessary book.
With the publication of this book, we have been given a chance to learn about one of the most gruesome episodes of the twentieth century. In the space of seven weeks from December 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army raped, killed, and tortured hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war and innocent civilians in Nanking (present-day Nanjing). Iris Chang details and analyses this event with passion, intelligence, style, and a sense of duty to the forgotten victims of Japanese barbarism.

The book is organised into three main sections; the first looks at source material of the Rape as it happened from Japanese, Chinese and Western perspectives. The second section is an analysis of such things as how the Rape was reported on at the time, how the Japanese who perpetrated these crimes were, or in some cases were not, punished, and what became of the survivors of the Rape. The third and final section looks at historiography; the ways in which 'history' is made. Chang also attempts to ascertain why a shocking level of selective amnesia seems to surround the Rape, in both Japan and the West. This reduction of the Rape to a mere footnote in most history books dealing with World War Two is what Chang calls 'a second Rape'.

'The Rape of Nanking' is not a light book, and it contains descriptions and pictures of acts so brutal and sordid that it is impossible not to be shocked. But rather than merely describe the events which took place, Chang also sets out clear and convincing arguments about why they took place and in this way she also offers insights into human nature. When faced, for example, with the apparently irreconcilable politeness of Japanese people with the brutality of their soldiers in Nanking, the author argues that politeness may actually be linked to brutality in a Japanese cultural context; Samurai were entitled to chop off a peasant's head if, when asked a question, the peasant did not answer in a way which the Samurai deemed polite enough. It is these immensely perceptive discussions which help make 'The Rape of Nanking' such an important and intellectually powerful book.

In a book crowded with the details of horror, Chang also details the heroic stories of people who, through amazing strength and determination, managed to survive the horrendous mental and physical pain of the Rape. Also interesting are the stories of people such as John Rabe, a Nazi Party Member resident in Nanking at the time of the Rape, who was the head of the committee which ran the Nanking Safety Zone. Dubbed by Chang to be the Schindler of China, Rabe is credited with helping to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese.

Ultimately, 'The Rape of Nanking' is about how, in Chang's own words "the veneer of civilisation seems to be exceedingly thin - one that can be easily stripped away, especially by the stresses of war". The book ought to be read, because it will go some way to redress the lack of knowledge in the West about the Rape, but also because the event still impacts upon Sino-Japanese relations to this day. The Rape of Nanking is an event which we should learn about and never forget, and with this book, Chang has given us the opportunity to do so.

A history that I now know too well.
Before this book, I had never heard of the Nanking Massacre. If I had not read it, I probably would never have known about it. Yet after reading it, I asked my grandparents about it. Let me just say that this book directly corresponds with what they told me. My grandmother and her parents fled their homes near Nanking when it fell. Her grandmother refused to leave. She said that the Japanese would do nothing to an old woman and she did not want to leave their homes. Later, it turned out that they not only killed her- but sliced her in two. Perhaps I'm sounding much too gruesome, but I need to say it just to tell the people that said this book was not correct that it is. I read The Rape of Nanking thinking that it was simply something that happened some time ago, not an important issue to me. But the very fact that my great-great grandmother was killed in a way that was despicable and terrifying makes me feel a connection to anybody who died or lived through this tragedy. Please don't deny the truth about it. Please don't pretend that it wasn't as horrible as it really was. By doing so, you are letting the memory of an 100,000-350,000 people go to waste.

Disappointing...sloppy scholarship on an important subject.
Although the subject of the book, "The Rape of Nanking," is an important one, the author Iris Chang writes a rather simplistic , stereotyped, and often inaccurate presentation of the events. Since the Rape of Nanking is one of the greatest atrocities of this century, it is especially disappointing that one of the few English books written on this horrible event is done so with sloppy scholarship and mediocre analysis. Many historians have been concerned about her uncritical treatment of her sources, many of which are questionable. Especially frustrating is her frequent speculations and uninspired analysis of events which are patently implausible. I fear that many of the right-wing fringe groups in Japan may exploit the many flaws in her book. The importance of historical accuracy and careful scholarship cannot be stressed enough, especially when it comes to the topics of large-scale atrocities and crimes against humanity. Although it was a noble attempt by Ms. Chang, I'm afraid we would have to look towards the future for a more scrupulous account.