Nurturing History's Miseries

Feb. 25, 2014 8:25 a.m. ET

Memories of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, when Japanese troops went on a six-week rampage of murder and rape in the southern Chinese city, still haunt the country. China’s World columnist Andrew Browne explains why the Communist Party wants to keep these memories alive.

NANJING, China—The politics of North Asia are shaped by historical memories. In China, these memories are filled with loathing, especially toward Japan.
The memories are kept current by vast museums such as the “Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders” that sprawls over 18 acres in this southern Chinese city. In 1937, Japanese troops went on a six-week rampage of murder and rape here. At the time, Nanjing, then known as Nanking, was the capital of China when it was ruled by the Kuomintang.
China says 300,000 died in the carnage. Many Japanese historians dispute the official Chinese death toll. But it’s clear that an enormous crime was perpetrated.
This is what makes the lurch to the political right by the Japanese government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe so fraught with danger—because it plays into poisonous memories of Japan in China. At moments like these, China is swept by anti-Japanese resentment that has been nurtured in museums, the state media and schools through a so-called Patriotic Education campaign.
That resentment was stoked by Mr. Abe’s December visit to the Yasukuni war shrine, where 14 Class A war criminals from World War II are enshrined along with millions of other war dead. Memories are jolted again every time a prominent Japanese figure denies Japanese war atrocities, or the two countries exchange barbs in their territorial dispute over a set of rocky islets in the East China Sea.
At the Nanjing museum’s Hall of Testimony, a huge underground chamber reached by a long flight of stairs—the “80 steps down to Hell,” as the tour guide puts it—grainy black-and-white photographs catalogue the evidence: the severed head of a young Chinese man, a cigarette stuffed between his lips; an old woman, anguish and bewilderment on her face, as a Japanese soldier pulls open her clothes; piles of naked corpses washed against the banks of the Yangtze river. The horror goes on—3,500 photos in all. Five million visitors troop down the stairs each year, including many school groups.

A security guard stands guard inside the Memorial Hall at the Nanjing Massacre Museum in Nanjing, Jiangsu province last week. Reuters

“The more I look at this history, the angrier I get,” says museum curator Zhu Chengshan, referring to a recent Japanese media report that quoted a governor of Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, a political appointee of Mr. Abe, denying that the Nanjing massacre took place, Mr. Zhu adds: “It’s outrageous and ridiculous.”
The Nanjing museum, built in 1985 and greatly expanded several times since, is the most important in a network of similar institutions dotted around China that remind the Chinese public about the country’s “Century of Humiliation” that preceded the Communist revolution in 1949. They play a central role in influencing the way a generation of Chinese view their Japanese neighbors. And they help define how Chinese people view themselves.
Others spotlight the imperialist sins of Britain and Russia. A museum in the northern city of Harbin memorializes the victims of Japan’s infamous Unit 731 that conducted germ warfare and chemical experiments on live humans.
Keeping alive these painful memories serves several purposes for the Communist Party. It bolsters the Party’s legitimacy by accentuating the role it played in rescuing China from its miseries. And it deflects popular frustrations away from the Party toward external enemies and threats, both historical and in the present day.

Japanese soldiers stand guard in Shanghai in this 1937 photo. ASSOCIATED PRESS

It’s no coincidence that the effort to play up the history of foreign bullying of China shifted into high gear following student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that came close to toppling the regime. Since then, it has become the emotional core of the nationalism that filled the ideological void when China dumped Marxism in favor of markets.
Mao spun a very different narrative for the China of his time. He favored heroic tales that reflected the triumph of his revolution. Japanese atrocities didn’t get much mention in these epics. But now, in the modern telling of the national story, the victor has become the victim.
Many Chinese maintain that Japan owes a historical debt to China that must be repaid with blood—even though the war ended almost 70 years ago with Japanese surrender. But such sentiments may only gain popularity as historical memories are manipulated in both China and Japan in very different ways.
Mr. Abe wants to restore new confidence in Japan and its economy. He’s tapping into a yearning among many Japanese, particularly the younger generation, to cast off the burden of wartime memories and look to the future.
In Nanjing, meanwhile, an effort to refresh wartime memories—in fact, to enhance them — is gathering pace. Zhang Xianwen is the head of the Nanjing University Institute for the History of the Massacre, which is closely linked to the museum. He is leading a team of 100 historians and researchers scouring the world for additional evidence. He’s published his findings so far in 72 volumes filled with 50 million Chinese characters.
“Chinese people don’t forget history,” he says.
Write to Andrew Browne at andrew.browne@wsj.com

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