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''The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II'' (ISBN 0-465-06835-9) is a 1997 book by the late Iris Chang which presents a history of the 1937 - 1938 Nanjing Massacre . This book is by no means the authoritative book on the subject; however, according to William C. Kirby, Professor of History at Harvard University, "Ms. Chang shows more clearly than any previous account just what (the Japanese) did." It is one of the first major books to introduce the Nanjing Massacre to Western and Eastern audiences alike as it has been published in several languages. INSPIRATION When Iris Chang was a child, she heard from her immigrant parents, who had escaped from China via Taiwan to the US during the Second World War , how the Japanese “sliced babies not just in half but in thirds and fourths”. As she wrote in the introduction to her book: “Throughout my childhood Nanjing Datusha (Nanking Massacre) remained buried in the back of my mind as a metaphor for unspeakable evil.” But when she searched the local public libraries in her grade school and found nothing, she wondered if these terrible things had ever happened, since there wasn't a single book about it in the US. As she said, “I was suddenly in a panic that this terrifying disrespect for death and dying, this reversion in human social evolution, would be reduced to a footnote of history, treated like a harmless glitch in a computer program that might or might not again cause a problem, unless someone forced the world to remember it.” RESPONSE The book sold more than half a million copies when it was first published, and Chang became an instant celebrity in America. It landed on the New York Times' best-seller list for 10 weeks and sold more than 125,000 copies in four months. Hillary Clinton invited her to the White House and US historian Stephen Ambrose described her as “maybe the best young historian we’ve got”. The book received much media praise {Link without Title} :
This book is the main source of fame for Iris Chang, who is deeply respected in China and among overseas Chinese for raising awareness of the Nanjing Massacre in the Western world. After her suicide a memorial service was held in China by Nanking Massacre survivors at the same time as her funeral in Los Altos, California , and the victim memorial hall in Nanjing will add a wing dedicated to her in 2005 . DEBATE As to be expected from a subject of high sensitivity, Chang's book has provoked widespread response from readers and critics alike. Some American, European and Japanese scholars have disputed the accuracy of the book, claiming it contains many serious factual errors. Scholar Joshua Fogel has claimed that "no serious scholar of modern Chinese or Japanese history accepts (Chang's The Rape of Nanking's ) findings." He also cited the fact that Chang's book had become a tool of Japanese right-wing fanatics who had "been using the numerous errors in Chang's book to discredit all discussion of the Nanjing Massacre." {Link without Title} Critic Timothy M. Kelly describe the book as "simple carelessness, sheer sloppiness, historical inaccuracies, and shameless plagiarism" and presents a case that Chang plagiarised passages and an illustration from ''Japan's Imperial Conspiracy'' by David Bergamini. Robert Grey has argued that that "some of the best scholarly research on the Rape of Nanking has been done in Japan by dedicated Japanese scholars", [http://www.aasianst.org/Viewpoints/gan.htm in contrast to the view of Chang, who is not literate in Japanese, that Japanese scholars are too afraid of the subject to deal with it. David Askew describe the book as "a work that can only be described as frequently fabricated and/or fictitious" [http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html]. Chang was also attacked by "liberals, who insist the massacre happened but allege that Chang's flawed scholarship damages their cause." (Los Angeles Times, June 6 1999). In Japan, many regard her book as a significant blow to the "Great Massacre" school, which advocate the case for massacre. "Rather than concentrating on those who argue for a smaller death toll than what it sees as acceptable, the Great Massacre School has thus been forced into the (unusual) position of criticising a work that argues for a larger death toll". {Link without Title} Chang responded to criticisms of the book in a 1998 letter to the '''s correspondent in China which Japanese censors seized. The telegram told of 300,000 civilian deaths, more than the current Chinese government figure. Hirota subsequently relayed the telegraph. Chang cited this relayed telegraph as proof the Japanese government acknowledged the higher death toll. The Japanese translation was halted following disagreement between Chang and Kashiwa Shobo , the publisher. As a result of the controversy and evidentiary disputes surrounding the book, Kashiwa Shobo had planned to publish a critical commentary about some factual errors in the same volume. EXTERNAL LINKS
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