The Nanjing Massacre (南京大屠殺)(三)

In 1999 a Japanese journalist Honda Katsuichi wrote The Nanjing Massacre: a Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame. Originally written in Japanese, it was translated into English by Karen Sandness and edited by Frank Gibney. In the Editor's Introduction, Gibney, on several occasions pointed out the inadequacy of the book by Iris Chang. He noted that Chang had given revisionists in Japan a chance to discredit their opponents, many of them were Japanese left-wing writers.


Previously Honda had wrote briefly about the Nanjing Massacre in his book Journey to China published in 1971. Later, as a journalist, he reported about the Vietnam War. This wartime experience drew his attention to the cruelty suffered by the Vietnamese, thus motivated him to write more on atrocity committed by Japanese soldiers during WWII. Honda started his book of 1999 by describing the landing of Japanese troops at Hanzhou Bay in China on November 5, 1937. Thereafter he reports on the atrocity committed by these soldiers along the way before reaching Nanjing a month later on December 13. Honda interviewed victims who had suffered atrocity in the hands of these soldiers: those who survived after being bayoneted, or escaped death from the machine gun firing squad. Honda also interviewed those who had physically involved in the burial work in Nanjing in early 1938. In the end of the book Honda pointed out that for him the most difficult part in writing the atrocity was how to draw the boundaries where atrocity was committed. Should it be started at the Hanzhou Bay or the city wall of Nanjing. Also, there was the question on the start time of the atrocity. Should it be from November 5, 1937 instead of from December 13, 1937. These considerations would have a bearing on how we should gauge the magnitude of the atrocity in general, and the total number of death in particular. (to be continued)