A Past Revisited: Representation of the Nanjing Massacre in City of Life and Death

This reaction paper discusses the article “A past revisited: Re presentation of the Nanjing Massacre in City of Life and Death” by Yanhong Zhu (Zhu, 2013). This article explores the ways in which the movie by Lu Chuan “Nanjing! Nanjing!/City of Life and Death” which was released in 2009, takes a divergent route to representation of the Nanjing Massacre. The article finds that the film is able to see the history of the event from a reconstruction perspective where the focus is not on perpetration and victimisation, but on creating a multi-perspective mode of narrative (Zhu, 2013). This reaction paper finds much merit in the article.

The ‘Rape of Nanjing’ is one of the most important events in the Chinese history in the 20th century, when for six weeks in 1937-38, Japanese army killed, raped, looted and plundered in Nanjing. Interestingly, the People’s Republic of China chose to not dwell on this part of the Chinese history in order to focus on national pride and it was not till the 1980s that the government started to nationalise the memory of Nanjing massacre (Zhu, 2013). However, when this happened, the narrative was that of victimisation (Zhu, 2013).

Zhu (2013) argues that the value of the film Nanjing! Nanjing! is in its break from the dominant representational model of victimisation, where the filmmaker has tried to focus on the true events of the history rather than stick to the dominant narrative of Chinese as victims. I agree with Zhu (2013) on the need to break away from such representational historical narrative. Although, this may also mean that the history is also located from the eyes of Japanese soldiers. By adopting a more multi-focused approach to the Nanjing massacre, the film is able to depict history from a more multi-dimensional aspects rather than unidimensional perspective of the victims (Yang, 2000). As Yang (2000) has pointed out, despite the many works on Nanjing massacre in both Japan and China, few historians have actually tried to capture historical truth, and most have focussed on the question of representation of the Japanese or the Chinese. This raises the need to question the historical evidence of the event.

To some extent, the film does raise the question of those Japanese officers and soldiers who may have been caught in the war between their own humane instincts and the orders of their superior officers. It is hard to believe that all the Japanese soldiers were inclined to loot, rape and plunder. As Zhu (2013) notes, the film forces the viewers to think of history from all perspectives so that a deeper understanding of the issue is gained. This argument finds support in Weiss (2016), who argues that the images of the incident are contested between the Japanese and the Chinese versions. Therefore, it is important that all perspectives are attended to.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Zhu (2013) makes an important point in the article where he finds that the film is an important break from the dominant narrative of the Nanjing massacre in China, wherein it is useful to see history from multiple perspectives.

References:

• Weiss, A., 2016. Contested Images of Rape: The Nanjing Massacre in Chinese and Japanese Films. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 41(2), pp. 433-456.
• Yang, D., 2000. The Challenges of the Nanjing Masscre. The Nanjing Massacre in history and historiography, Volume 2, p. 133.
• Zhu, Y., 2013. A past revisited: Re presentation of the Nanjing Massacre in City of Life and Death. Journal of Chinese Cinemas , 7(2), pp. 85-108.