THE MAKING OF THE "RAPE OF NANKING": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University)

THE MAKING OF THE "RAPE OF NANKING": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University). By Takashi Yoshida. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. x, 268pp. US$55.00, cloth. ISBN 0-19-518096-8.

The mayhem accompanying the Japanese capture of China's then capital in late 1937 and early 1938 has been remembered in myriad ways serving numerous interests. As shown in Takashi Yoshida's fine monograph, remembrance has been coloured by the rise and fall of ethnic consciousness, as well as domestic and international political interests as they shifted over the years.

In Japan's case, there was hardly any awareness of the Nanjing atrocities in wartime, such sensibilities being deprived of fuel by censorship and overwhelmed by popular war fever and the desire to see Japan as the champion of international justice. Although the Nationalist Chinese did not ignore Nanjing, Japanese use of chemical warfare and bombing of civilian populations proved more...