|
|
Thursday, November 11, 2004
|
|
REST IN PEACE
I've just finished reading the Maximum Leader's latest post at Naked Villiany and was saddened to learn of the death Monday night of historian Iris Chang. Mrs. Chang was but 30 years old when her masterpiece of history, The Rape of Nanking was published to wide acclaim.
As someone who has admired the book since its release, I am still amazed that it was written by someone so young.
The Rape of Nanking details the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan in China during World War Two. While the crimes of Nazi Germany are accepted by all but a lunatic fringe, yet the equally - and frequently more horrifying - crimes of the Japanese Empire are forgotten, if in fact they were ever known by the greater publics of the West.
Historian Hannah Arendt referred to vicious crimes of Germany in the 1940's as "the banalty of evil." The Nazis generally, and their conduct of the Holocaust more specifically, were industrialized to the point of impersonality. The mass murder of Europe's Jews became a task little different than manufacturing rivets. This is what makes the Holocaust so inconceivably chilling. That genocide could so easily become yet another step in the progress of industrialization is something that humanity has still never fully reconciled.
Those questions never arose in China. The mass murder in Nanking was intensely personal. There was no industrial facade to hide it behind. In fact, the Japanese press widely reported the atrocities committed against innocent Chinese citizens by its soldiers. At one point, it had become a matter of personal, even national pride. Mrs. Chang documented the crimes of the unrepentant Japanese in detail that will make your skin crawl.
I have read history since my early teens. Far from being shocked by man's inhumanity to man, I have come to expect it as surely as the sun rises each day. It takes spectacular cruelty to surprise me. The widespread amputation of infants arms in Sierra Leone was such an event. So was 9/11. The Rape of Nanking litterally made my stomach churn several times a chapter.
In recommending Mrs. Chang's book, which I have at various times to virtually everyone I know, I have decribed it as "a nightmare for people who don't dream."
The greatest testimony to the book is the ferocity with which the Japanese government attacked it. Beyond never atoning for their sins in China, Japan has yet to even acknowledge them. Thus, in the minds of many, those sins continue to this day.
Iris Chang was 36 years old when she took her own life. As much as readers of history and Asia scholars will miss her work, no one will miss her as much as her husband and two year old son. My thoughts are with them in this hour and I join them in hoping that she finally found the peace that she sought so desperately for herself.
Permalink
|
|
|
| |
