Yesterday’s discussions concerned mainly historiography. Maybe today we should return to the theme “What is to be written?” I am working on the Nanjing massacre of 1937. I have to confess that this subject makes me feel uncomfortable at different levels. The issue is one that remains to be resolved between China and Japan. I feel uncomfortable as a historian, because we are supposed to uncover the truth of the past, and this is one of the most controversial issues from the past. This is one reason why I think it is worth returning to this issue in order to confront epistemologically.
There are several types of responses to post-modernist criticism. There is no need to lose sleep over large abstract questions. A good narrative history can usually reach a wider audience. There is also an attempt to integrate memory into history. Suffice it to say, there are ways to take into consideration not only what historians write, but how society remembers the past. We should look at how historical knowledge is produced and passes on, which is similar to the term in Japanese rekishi ninshiki. The question of integrating history and memory has not yet been satisfactorily resolved, and I have raised reference to “ghosts” in the title of this paper.
In Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s famous story Rashomon, the ghost of the slain samurai was able to speak through a medium, hence providing the reader what might be considered a more truthful account of the perplexing murder/rape. One reading of this is that it is a more truthful rendition of the story, and that ghosts speak the truth that could not be known. In many ways, historians attempt to be that “ghost.” One of the most highly disputed aspects of Nanjing is actually how many Chinese were murdered. In China and Japan, there is a tradition that ghosts who have died unjust deaths must be put to rest. This is what the Nanjing massacre has come to represent and is something we, born long after the event, must deal with. One way to unravel this knot is to take into consideration different types of representation of this event. There is an advantage of trying to bring the different elements together and try to understand about how knowledge of the past is portrayed by different actors who have interest in making use of the past.
The first part of my paper is made up of recent works on the subject ? three keys to the past. We should look through multi-layered representation. The second part tries to take up the scope and scale of the rape of Nanjing.
The work that inspired me to think about the three keys to the past are two works, one a history of India, the other a history of China. Paul Cohen published a book in 1997 on the Boxer Rebellion as “event, experience and myth.” Cohen’s main interest is experience and myth. The term myth has often been used in the critique of various histories. In everyday usage the term myth is used to refer to something that is entirely untrue. The term “symbol” is less prone to misunderstanding, in that symbols and signs are necessary to make us understand the world and symbols and signs are embedded in language itself. “Event, experience and symbol” are very closely intertwined.
The Nanjing atrocity as experience tells us that it was experienced by tens of thousands of Chinese and Japanese. The experiences therein are enormous and there is a great deal of difference in the experiences. In recent years there have been gatherings to address the issue of war crimes, and these have a big impact on the public. Experience should be transmitted to a wider audience. Experience becomes a trans-generational experience in order to be preserved.
Nanjing could also be viewed as a symbol and the political and cultural milieu that shaped Nanjing. Whereas experience is ultimately individual, symbol is always constructed collectively in order to make sense of the experience. For instance, if woman W was raped in Nanjing in December 1937, there are different ways of describing this experience: Japanese soldiers raped her; or the Japanese raped her; or simply she was raped (by men). While they all describe the same incident and are equally correct in a factual and existential sense, they carry different meanings. Each conveys a subtle sense of different values, national allegiance, or ideological underpinnings. It can be considered an important element of what is called “frame of remembrance.” It is in this sense that, as Joan Scott points out, even raw experience itself reflects some interpretation of it.
Symbols are also important for collective representation. In the case of Nanjing, it is the symbol of Japan’s military aggression. Increasingly the line is getting blurred and the rape of Nanjing is coming to be seen as a Japanese brutality. This is nothing new and ethnic stereotypes have long endured. This reading of a Japanese brutality as a whole is coming to be foremost, but there are other subterranean symbols, namely that Nanjing was a symbol of the corruption and incompetence of the nationalist regime. Nanjing also came to symbolize Chinese suffering and weakness.
In post-war Japan, there has also been a similar representation of Nanjing as a war atrocity, but there has also been a representation as Nanjing as the evil of war. To other people, Nanjing represents the injustice of how history was judged at the end of the war. While the war crimes trials had many problems, the Nanjing verdict at these trials has come to symbolize the “victor’s justice.”
Historians must not give up their attempt to seek truth from the past, but must attempt to understand how knowledge of the past exists in society. When we learn to live with the ghosts of the past, only then can we put them to rest epistemologically and morally.
In India there is serious discussion of communal riots, but communal violence tends to be linked with partition violence in the 1940s. I think that the partition violence differed in two or three ways to communal violence. Communal violence had a bipolar structure.
In this paper I attempt to deconstruct the stereotyped image of partition violence, which has developed a fixed image over the last two or three decades. In the case of the Calcutta communal violence, the image was established in 1950 with the publication of the memoirs of British military personnel.
Calcutta was plunged into a fury of Hindu-Muslim clashes exactly one year before India and Pakistan gained independence. They started early on the morning of 16th August 1946 and continued for five days until 20th. The British authorities managed to quell the disturbances only after resorting to emergency measures that had never been taken in the long history of the colonial city. A curfew was imposed for the first time and the military was called in to regain control of the city. The police and the military fired 876 and 1,916 rounds of ammunition respectively during the five days of rioting. The police used about 500 tear gas shells and grenades. Thirty thousand people had to be evacuated to safer places.2 When the surges of rioting passed, it became clear that, even on a conservative official estimate, 4,000 people were killed and 10,000 injured. Due to this alarming number of casualties and unprecedented intensity of rioting, the Calcutta Communal Riot of 1946 is often referred to as the 'Great Calcutta Killing'.
The Calcutta Disturbances marked a very crucial turn in the political developments during the last days of British rule.6 By the end of 1945 it had become obvious that the British had no choice but to grant independence to India. The visit of the Cabinet Mission to India in March 1946 with concrete proposals for India's independence confirmed this widely prevalent impression. British influence was decidedly on the wane, while the victory of the All-India Muslim League in the elections held during the winter of 1945-46 added a new dimension to nationalist politics. The Indian National Congress and the Muslim League became embroiled in a hard political struggle over framing the future independent state(s). The immediate political target was to gain the upper hand in the process of setting up an interim government. At the same time, the swelling tide of mass movements was beginning to scare the colonial authorities and the nationalist leadership alike.
It was in the midst of this political crisis that the Muslim League declared the 16th of August its Direct Action Day. The aim of such a bold tactic was to push its demand for Pakistan as well as to protest the maneuvers of the British and Congress regarding the formation of the interim government. The political offensive launched by the Muslim League met with a very hostile reaction from the supporters of the Congress and resulted in a tragic Hindu-Muslim riot, which erupted in the prime city of British India. The repercussions of the Calcutta riots were tremendous. Not only did it touch off a series of communal clashes, Partition Riots as they are sometimes called, which stormed Bihar, East Bengal (Noakhali and Comilla in particular) and the Punjab, but it also brought Hindu-Muslim antagonism to the point of no return, making any compromise between the Congress and the League virtually impossible. The Calcutta Disturbances broke out in a highly fluid, unstable situation. It was an historical event which took place in the power vacuum that was being created by impending decolonization. The British were bound to go and systemic breakdown was inevitable; but a nationalist political system to take their place was yet to assume a definite shape. In seeing the Calcutta Riots, its political aspect in particular, one needs to seriously take into account the problem of instability peculiar to such a transitional period.
It was through the bitter controversy over the issue of a public holiday that the national question of the Cabinet Mission proposals and the interim government was placed in the context of Bengali provincial politics. A breach of faith in the Congress and the British at the center, of which the Muslim League made a political issue, was set against the misuse of government power by the Muslim League at the provincial level, to which the Congress took the greatest exception. The Calcutta Disturbances had a two-tiered political structure which was charged with burning indignation at betrayal and foul play. It was within this structure that national and provincial issues reinforced each other with increasing intensity and sharp sectarian antagonism between Hindus and Muslims developed with a degree of momentum no one had expected.
In the case of the army it was not until the third day that attempts were made to gain control of Calcutta. Rioting continued to rage for about three days until effective intervention was made.
From the viewpoint of institutional politics, the Calcutta Disturbances possessed a distinguishing feature in that they broke out in a transitional period which was marked by the power vacuum and systemic breakdown. It is also important to note that they constituted part of a political struggle in which the Congress and the Muslim League competed with each other for the initiative in establishing the new nation-state, while the British made an all-out attempt to carry out decolonization at the lowest possible political cost for them.
At the initial stage of the riots, the Congress and the Muslim League appeared to be confident that they could draw on this tradition even if a difficult situation arose out of political showdown. Most probably, Direct Action Day in Calcutta was planned to be a large-scale general strike and mass rally which they knew very well how to control. However, the response from the masses far exceeded any expectations. The political leaders seriously miscalculated the strong emotional response that the word 'nation' as interpreted under the new situation had evoked. In August 1946 the 'nation' was no longer a mere political slogan. It was rapidly turning into 'reality' both in realpolitik and in people's imaginations. The system to which Bengal political leaders had grown accustomed for decades could not cope with this dynamic change. As we have seen, it quickly and easily broke down on the first day of the disturbances.
Immediately after the riots, Sarat Chandra Bose floated the idea of setting up an all-party government to overcome the crisis that the Calcutta Disturbances created; but neither the Congress' nor the Muslim League's national leadership supported it. Far from that, a second opportunity for showdown was set, when the Congress brought forward a non-confidence motion against the Muslim League government. This marked a second turn in the rapidly changing political tide. Not only were political leaders unable to deal with the new situation, but also began to follow the new political trend instead of taking the lead in mass politics.
On the other hand, the British Raj became an ailing administration during the last few years of its rule in India. It appears that the British came to realize that they did not have enough police or military forces to meet every possible situation, and concluded that they should concentrate their limited resources on a few carefully selected political targets. What the case of Calcutta Disturbances strongly suggests is that they had attached greater importance to the prevention of anti-British riots, in other words, protection of British interests than to other concerns such as the suppression of communal riots. It is only in this context that the Emergency Action Scheme of the Calcutta Police and the stubborn opposition displayed by such British high officials as Sixsmith and Walker to military intervention make any sense. We cannot emphasize enough that this partition riot should be seen as a political struggle among the three major political forces, in which the British consistently pursued their own political interests.
It has been said that “history is mystery.” History is not like history we
know from a textbook. Unless we follow the remnants of evidence, we will
never know what has happened in the past. “Ghosts” will haunt us forever
if we do
nothing.
It is “the rape and other forms of sexual assaults” against women that have characterized the armed conflicts in the 1990s and 2000s. Women who belonged to an ethnic group A were easily attacked by soldiers, militants, or even neighbors who belonged to an ethnic group B. Acts were committeed in ordinary residential areas of public space under the military siege as well as in concentration camps.
This is the grave reality of contemporary international society, even through it is not happening everywhere. This the phenomenon in the world where more and more people come to know the idea of human rights and work for them. Under the United Nations umbrella, many international organizations are committed to various policies to enhance the situation of human rights.
Such an attitude of avoidance to see the massive human rights violations in armed conflicts could lead to a cognitive failure to grasp the grave situation. Such a gap is not limited to the arena of political research. In the field of economics and sociology, there is an obvious gap between what is going on and what is recognized by professionals in high strata.
When thousands of people get killed and sexually abused, if it is not fairly reported and filed in public, if the authority does not try to identify the cause and result of casualties in order to do justice and to rescue the victims, the incidents will be completely left out of history. Other people can run an ordinary time without knowing those awful affairs.
It has taken a considerable time and tremendous efforts of concerned people to reveal even the partial reality of genocidal wars and rapes, in spite of a voluminous flow of information through media and Internet at the time of globalization.
Popular voice could be uttered if two conditions are fulfilled: one is local initiatives to empower themselves to speak out, the other, initiatives from inside and outside of their society to encourage the victims and witnesses to open their mouths and to seek adequate help from others. There are various types of challenges against the hegemony of the repressive regime in order to break this complicity of silence.
In order to analyze such a political process, I will refer to the recent cases of massacre and sexual violence against women, including in Kashmir and Gujarat.
In Kashmir, the pamphlet Grim Realities of Life, Death and Survival in Jammu and Kashmir, writes that “Kashmir is both grievously neglected and constantly in the news. In view of the unending blood-letting there, Jammu and Kashmir must be in the news, but in its own right.” A team was organized of eleven human rights activists from civil democratic and human rights organizations in Indian to conduct a fact-finding tour in troubled areas during May 2001. Since this trip was done in dangerous part so the land at the time of violence and uncertainty, the team observed the repressive regime still affected the people’s behavior and way of thinking. The report states, “While questions pertaining to rights violations by the armed forces would often be answered frankly enough, through some times people would ask not be quoted, political questions usually elicited oblique answers in the past.
On June 2001 three women of Bihota who had spoken to us about the routine aggression and violence and also about the mass sexual assault at Butangal, were raped and then taunted by soldiers. Following the rapes, the women, including teenagers, were taken to the district hospital for treatment. An FIR was lodged at the police station, but no action was taken.
The elite are vocal. They do not have to be scared when they talk. People in inferior positions are quiet. Talk may cost a lot. On the other hand, because they are weak, they cannot fight back with arms or other means. To talk is one of very few weapons of the weak. They have to use speech to fight back.
Although women’s activities in the case of Bosnia did not change the masculine and militarized world instantly, they have constructed a new historical consciousness of gender for the perpetrators as well as reporters and human rights activists. Along with women’s activities on Bosnia, similar initiatives were being pursued in other parts of the world, including India as we have seen here. The “women who have helped collect, distribute, and analyze the information about the rapes in Bosnia are historically rooted, at the very time they are attempting to redirect history by their action.” Recovering historical truthfulness for the victimized people is a step forward to discover alternative popular history at present.
The papers raise very good points. All the papers are about violent and traumatic
events and how they take place at a particular historical juncture.
Professor Yang’s paper raises an important issue on raising the status of memory in historical writing. Memory is an unmediated voice from the past and the question remains, whose voice is valid, the victim or the perpetrator? Both have their own separate realms of validity.
Also, Prof. Yang uses a novelistic perspective on the Nanjing event, and individual experiences are equally valid as the broad picture as a whole. It is fascinating how the victims speak out. The meaning of suffering is not the same when the victims represent different perspectives. I am puzzled about the controversy about exact numbers in the case of Nanjing. What does the controversy over the gap stand for in historical debate?
Prof. Nakazato has covered the fateful five days in August 1946 in Calcutta. This is the first focused and detailed account of the Calcutta riots. The process of partition is rounded out by an account of those five days. I admire the multiple contexts that Prof. Nakazato brings to the event, including police and army tactics and Congress strategy and tactics. He says that it is a three-pronged analysis. Muslim perspectives are particularly important, because they have not been covered in any previous accounts.
The riots of Calcutta forced communities to join together in self-defense. In this context, the role of the newspapers and the All India radio in their reporting would help to see what parts are missing.
The Congress remains a shadowy presence in the account of the Calcutta riots, and the paper could benefit from a little more discussion in this area.
I liked the different types of leadership described in the paper, each representing a mass base.
Chiharu Takenaka covers human rights violations and points out a crucial absence in the accounts of violence. There is a thick contextualization, but what remains missing is an account of the violence itself. It is difficult to write about it and there are various problems. It is also difficult not to appear sensationalist. There are certain problems about record keeping. Civil rights activists have a great problem in that memories are fleeting.
I think that Takenaka’s paper raises a different order of problems concerning how far the victims can speak.
Concerning Gujarat, the people who take testimonies see what human rights should never see. There are deep ethical questions here. Sometimes the investigator cannot write any more, or look anymore. As that silence expands, the state fills in the gaps with its own disinformation.
I would like to add that what was new about Gujarat was the destruction of Muslim babies, born and unborn. I would refer to the excellent report that exists on this matter. What is not important is not the single act of rape, but the process that leads to that and the exuberance of violence that exists.
Asraf from Indonesia stated that Indonesia has many conflicts and it is very difficult for people to speak out. It is difficult for NGOs to act independently of government and military.
Prof. Usuda posed a question to Prof. Nakazato, stating that the findings of his paper seem to rely on the methodology of conventional history writing. He asked about Prof. Nakazato’s stance on non-conventional historical writing. He suggested that some historians have an emotional commitment to what they write about and asked Prof. Nakazato what his stance was in the milieu of historical research.
Prof. Fujiwara referred to Prof. Yang’s paper and the subjectiveness of truth. He referred to the bombing of Hiroshima as another example of controversial history.
Prof. Abinales asked why governments refer to numbers in the case of massacres, yet rapes are referred to in their quality. He also asked Prof. Takenaka how she writes about rape victims if they didn’t want to talk about their experiences.
Prof. Kojima asked a question to Prof. Yang concerning how historical events can be understood in generality and at the same time singularity.
Prof. Seth asked how important it is to remember, and whether there was a sense in which it was important to remember and move in, or remember in order not to forget. Is there also an ethical duty to forget?
Prof. Takenaka responded that it is very important to understand the whole framework and background to why an event occurred. The consciousness of scholars, human rights activists and the media change when the past is raised. In Bosnia and Rwanda there were also cruel examples of violence against babies. Concerning writing about women who don’t want to talk, Professor Takenaka stated that it was very difficult to do this.
Prof. Nakazato responded to the issue of political and social organizations other than the Muslim League and Congress and their attitudes. He stated that at the present stage of research it was difficult to provide a concrete answer, but stated that the Calcutta Tramways Union was under communist control at the time and yet could not reach a conclusion on how to respond to the Muslim League. Direct Action Day was therefore very difficult for the Communist Party of India. Prof. Nakazato added that communal riots did not spread to industrial areas, according to the official view, however, there are accounts of violence occurring in factories. He mentioned that he would pursue the issue further.
Concerning his stance as a historian, Prof. Nakazato stated that in relation to new historiography, he had planned the research project as an attempt as history from below. He stated that historians are now at a crossroads, and that he is now looking for the next step. He pointed out that it is necessary to explore new paths for historiography.
Concerning memory, Prof. Nakazato stated that concerning the Calcutta riots, collective memory had been suppressed for a long time, maybe in order to protect a sense of solidarity in Calcutta.
Prof. Yang stated that Prof. Sarkar was spot on when she referred to the Japanese journalist who traveled to China to record testimonies from Nanjing survivors. He pointed out that the journalist was accused of wholesale acceptance of Chinese propaganda upon his return to Japan. The backlash against the journalist had a political underpinning to it also. Compared to what we have now as historical evidence, the testimonies the journalist gained had an explosive impact.
Concerning victim testimonies, Prof. Yang stated that it was important to remember that they define the categories that historians use.
Concerning individual and collective memory, Prof. Yang agreed that it was indeed difficult to determine whether it is best to forget, or continue to remember. There is a danger that if a traumatic event has not been worked through, it may come back to haunt us when the climate favors the use of history to justify the present agenda.