cultura - Ingenta Connect

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTUREAND AXIOLOGY

20162

Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of

Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo-

ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro-

mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in

regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages

the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are

judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan-

ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world.

www.peterlang.com

CULTURA

CULTURA

2016 Vol XIII No 2

ISBN 978-3-631-71562-8

CULTURA 2016_271562_VOL_13_No2_GR_A5Br.indd 1 14.11.16 KW 46 10:45

INTE

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AL

JOU

RNA

L O

F PH

ILO

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Y O

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LTU

RE A

ND

AXI

OLO

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CU

LTU

RA

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTUREAND AXIOLOGY

20162

Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of

Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo-

ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro-

mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in

regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages

the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are

judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan-

ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world.

www.peterlang.com

CULTURA

CULTURA

2016 Vol XIII No 2

CULTURA 2016_271562_VOL_13_No2_GR_A5Br.indd 1 14.11.16 KW 46 10:45

CULTURA

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY

Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and AxiologyE-ISSN (Online): 2065-5002 ISSN (Print): 1584-1057

Advisory BoardProf. Dr. David Altman, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad Catolica de Chile, ChileProf. Emeritus Dr. Horst Baier, University of Konstanz, GermanyProf. Dr. David Cornberg, University Ming Chuan, TaiwanProf. Dr. Paul Cruysberghs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BelgiumProf. Dr. Nic Gianan, University of the Philippines Los Baños, PhilippinesProf. Dr. Marco Ivaldo, Department of Philosophy “A. Aliotta”, University of Naples “Federico II”, ItalyProf. Dr. Michael Jennings, Princeton University, USAProf. Dr. Maximiliano E. Korstanje, University of Palermo, ArgentinaProf. Dr. Richard L. Lanigan, Southern Illinois University, USAProf. Dr. Christian Lazzeri, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, FranceProf. Dr. Massimo Leone, University of Torino, ItalyProf. Dr. Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Complutense University, Madrid, SpainProf. Dr. Christian Möckel, Humboldt University of Berlin, GermanyProf. Dr. Devendra Nath Tiwari, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, IndiaProf. Dr. José María Paz Gago, University of Coruña, SpainProf. Dr. Mario Perniola, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, ItalyProf. Dr. Traian D. Stănciulescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, RomaniaProf. Dr. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Purdue University & Ghent University

Editorial BoardEditor-in-Chief: Prof. dr. Nicolae RâmbuFaculty of Philosophy and Social-Political SciencesAlexandru Ioan Cuza UniversityB-dul Carol I, nr. 11, 700506 Iasi, [email protected]

Editorial Assistant: Dr. Marius SidoriucDesigner: Aritia Poenaru

Co-Editors:Prof. dr. Aldo MarroniDipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze SocialiUniversità degli Studi G. d’AnnunzioVia dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti Scalo, [email protected]

PD Dr. Till KinzelEnglisches Seminar Technische Universität Braunschweig, Bienroder Weg 80, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany [email protected]

CulturaInternational Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology

Vol. 13, No. 2 (2016)

Editor-in-ChiefNicolae Râmbu

Guest Editors:Asunción López-Varelaand Ananta Charan Sukla

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

ISSN 2065-5002

© Peter Lang GmbHInternationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Frankfurt am Main 2016All rights reserved.

Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH.Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York ·

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Cover Image: © Aritia Poenaru

This publication has been peer reviewed.

ISBN 978-3-631-71562-8 (Print)E-ISBN 978-3-631-71635-9 (E-PDF)E-ISBN 978-3-631-71636-6 (EPUB)E-ISBN 978-3-631-71637-3 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/b10729

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CROSS-CULTURAL INTERMEDIALITY: FROM PERFORMANCE TO DIGITALITY

CONTENTS

Asunción LÓPEZ-VARELA AZCÁRATE 7 Introduction: Performance, Medial Innovation and Culture Ananta Charan SUKLA 13 Indian Intercultural Poetics: the Sanskrit Rasa-Dhvani Theory Krishna PRAVEEN and V. Anitha DEVI 19 Kathakali: The Quintessential Classical Theatre of Kerala Jinghua GUO 27 Adaptations of Shakespeare to Chinese Theatre Cyril-Mary Pius OLATUNJI and Mojalefa L.J. KOENANE 43 Philosophical Rumination on Gelede: an Ultra-Spectacle Performance María VIVES AGURRUZA 53 The Cultural Impact of the Nanking Massacre in Cinematography: On City of Life and Death (2009) and The Flowers of War (2011) Qingben LI 67 China’s Micro Film: Socialist Cultural Production in the Micro Era Annette THORSEN VILSLEV 77 Following Pasolini in Words, Photos, and Film, and his Perception of Cinema as Language Adile ASLAN ALMOND 83 Reading Rainer Fassbinder’s adaptation Fontane Effi Briest Yang GENG and Lingling PENG 103 The Time Phenomenon of Chinese Zen and Video Art in China: 1988-1998

Carolina FERNÁNDEZ CASTRILLO 125 Lyric Simultaneities: From “Words in Freedom” to Holopoetry Janez STREHOVEC 137 Digital Art in the Artlike Culture and Networked Economy Stefano CALZATI 153 Representations of China by Western Travellers in the Blogsphere Horea AVRAM 173 Shared Privacy and Public Intimacy: The Hybrid Spaces of Augmented Reality Art

Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 13(2)/2016: 53–66

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The Cultural Impact of the Nanking Massacre in Cinematography: On City of Life and Death (2009)

and The Flowers of War (2011)

María VIVES AGURRUZA Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez,

Madrid, Spain [email protected]

Abstract. The Flowers of War (2012), based on the homonymous novel by Geling Yan, and City of Life and Death (2009) are recent Chinese films that deal with the so-called ‘Nanking Massacre’ or ‘the Rape of Nanking’. The events which inspired these stories in the context of the second Sino-Japanese War will be analysed through the study and comparison of both films, together with the reasons which led the directors to fictionalise a series of events so many years after they occurred in 1937. This analysis will be carried out based on the testimonies of the foreigners who eyewitnessed the events at the time, and who left written testimony of the facts, and a comparison shall be made between the fictional and factual events. Keywords: Nanking Massacre, the Rape of Nanking, City of Life and Death, The Flowers of War, Geling Yan, Iris Chang, II Sino-Japanese War

INTRODUCTION

The publication of The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997) by Iris Chang brought the ”Nanking Massacre” to global attention. Several other books and films, such as City of Life and Death (2009) and The Flowers of War (2011), based on the homonymous novel by Geling Yan, appeared. Thus, Iris Chang achieved her desire to inspire other authors and historians to investigate the stories of the Nanking survivors (McLaughlin, 2004 n/p).

Iris Chang, born in New Jersey, the daughter of two university professors who had emigrated from Taiwan. Accompanied by Duan Yueping, the assistant curator of the Memorial Hall of the Nanking Massacre, Chang visited Nanking to research the stories of the survivors of the massacre. Chang killed herself on November 9, 2004 when suffering from a severe depression in her home at St. Jose, California.

Among the photographic records of this tragedy are the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin, along with multiple letters to family or friends, the Japanese Embassy, and reports and articles from the

10.3726/CUL2016-2_53

M. Vives Agurruza / The Cultural Impact of the Nanking Massacre in Cinematography

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foreigners who lived through the events. Minnie Vautrin, a direct witness and survivor of the massacre and head of Gingling College contributed to save thousands of lives and thousands of Chinese women and girls from systematic rape by Japanese soldiers. “Exhausted and haunted by the images of those she could not save,” Vautrin killed herself in 1941 (McLaughlin, 2004n/p).

Most of these records were compiled by Zhang Kaiyuan in his edition Eyewitnesses to Massacre: American Missionaries Bear Witness to Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing, which also includes some testimonies to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – also known as the Tokyo Trials – which took place on April, 1946.

The events also reached the world at the time of the tragedy through the book by H. J. Timperley, What War Means, published with the title The Japanese Terror in China in the United States (1938). The volume included documents, photographs, letters as well as official and direct testimonies particularly appalling with regards to the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army (Kaiyuan, 2015: 33-5). For example, in a letter from John Rabe, a German businessman who belonged to the Nazi party, to Kiyoshi Fukui, Second Secretary to the Japanese Embassy, dated Dec. 17, 1937, Rabe mentions that “all 27 Occidentals in the city at that time and our Chinese population were totally surprised by the reign of robbery, raping and killing initiated by your soldiers on the 14th.” (Rabe, 1998: 271). The same day, George A. Fitch noted down in his diary: “Robbery, murder, rape continue unabated. A rough estimate would be at least a thousand women raped last night and during the day.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 91)The following day, Dec. 18, Robert O. Wilson wrote to his family: “Today marks the sixth day of the modern Dante’s Inferno, written in huge letters with blood and rape. Murder by the wholesale and rape by the thousands of cases.” (in Kaiyuan, 2015: 393)

In her report of the first month of the occupation, Minnie Vautrin pointed out: “Women were faced by a terrible dilemma in those days – it might mean that in saving themselves from being raped they were risking the lives of their husbands and sons, who might be taken away and killed.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 339). John. G. Magee, who testified in the Tokyo Trial, wrote on Dec. 19: “The horror of the last week is beyond anything I have ever experienced. I never dreamed that the Japanese soldiers were such savages. It has been a week of murder and rape, worse, I imagine, than has happened for a very long time unless the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks was comparable.” (in Kaiyuan, 2015: 171).


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Testimonies are abundant and overwhelming. George A. Fitch summarised the horrible situation in his diary thus:

Every day we call at the Japanese Embassy and present our protests, our appeals, our lists of authenticated reports of violence and crime. We are met with suave Japanese courtesy, but actually the officials there are powerless. The victorious army must have its rewards – and those rewards are to plunder, murder, rape at will, to commit acts of unbelievable brutality and savagery on the very people whom they have come to protect and befriend, as they have so loudly proclaimed to the world. In all modern history surely there is no page that will stand so black as that of the rape of Nanking (cited in Kaiyuan, 2015: 84).

HISTORICAL CONTEXT The events that form the basis for the storytelling in City of Life and Death and The Flowers of War took place in the context of the second Sino-Japanese War, known in China as Anti-Japanese War of Resistance. Japan’s expansionist policy annexed Taiwan in the first Sino-Japanese War, seeking food resources and accommodation for its dense population as well as greater strength against Western superpowers such as the United States and Russia. (Mori, 2015: 216, 221). The Japanese Imperial Army had already invaded Manchuria in 1931 and established a puppet state called Manchukuo, ruled by the Japanese military. In 1937, Japan began the invasion of North and East of China (Chang, 2011: 131; Mori, 2015: 36). After winning in Shanghai, they headed for Nanking, at the time capital of the Republic of China. In mid-November, Chiang Kai-shek held three meetings with his deputies to discuss whether to defend or abandon Nanking in the face of the forthcoming Japanese attack. Although most of the deputies felt that Nanking was not to be defended, Gen. Tang Sheng-chi insisted on fighting, since it was the nation’s capital and the site of the tomb of the father of the Republic of China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Gen. Tang Sheng-chi was appointed Commander-in-chief of the Nanking defence troops (Hu, 2000: 69).

On December 12, 1937, Tang Sheng-chi, along with the other commanders and most of the Chinese Nationalist army troops left the city. The 78th CCorps (36th Division) remained trapped in it (Pu-yu, 1974: 115). Chiang Kai-shek had ordered to keep the city at all costs, and prohibited the evacuation of civilians. Half of these civilians ignored the mandate, the other half were at the mercy of the invaders. Nanking eventually fell on December 13, 1937 (Pu-yu, 1974: 116; Mori, 2015: 525).


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Iris Chang explains the chaos and confusion that reigned in Nanking after Tang Sheng-chi’s departure, leaving the city without communication equipment and with the remaining soldiers exhausted after defending Shanghai (Chang, 2011: 70-2).

The incidents and violations of human hights in Nanking lasted for six weeks, from December 13, 1937, until February 1938. By then, “countless people had lost their lives and even more had been scarred for life.” (Mori, 2015: 659) Most Westerners who were in Nanking for business or in missionary journeys fled to their countries when the air attacks began on Nanking. Twenty-seven people refused to retreat and volunteered to organise the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone in order to prevent more harm to the city’s civilians. The Safety Zone was organized by Hang Liwu, who knew Father Jacquinot in Shanghai (Kaiyuan, 2015: 289-296). With the status of a third party’s nationality, they strived to help the invasion of the city, sending their protests and appeals to the Japanese military and diplomatic authorities and complaining about the constant violations of human rights. They kept a record of Japanese atrocities (Kaiyuan, 2015: 462-9).

The personnel involved in the International Relief Committee camefrom the U.S., Britain, Denmark, Germany, China itself. There was also Saburo Yasumura, Principal of the Baptist Woman's Bible School at Osaka, Japan (Kaiyuan, 2015: 443; 451). The Safety Zone would end up hosting between 200,000 and 300,000 people. The area was not bombed, but the Japanese made multiple incursions to hunt and kill Chinese soldiers who might be hiding there. As Chang (2011: 4) remarks, ironically, we only know the story of Nanking because those foreigners witnessed the horror and sent word to the outside world. This is so because very few Chinese survived as eyewitnesses. John G. Magee wrote that “it would have been impossible to believe that the Japanese could have done such things as have happened unless we had seen them with our own eyes.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 186).

The German John Rabe, mentioned above, was elected chairman of the International Comitee. He benefited from the Anti-Comintern Pact signed on 25 November, 1936 between Japan and Germany. Whenever Rabe had problems with a member of the Japanese army, he “thrust[ed] his Nazi armband in their face and point[ed] to his Nazi decoration, the highest in the country, and ask[ed] them if they [knew] what that mean[t]. It always work[ed]!” recounts George A. Fitch, one of the Americans in Nanking (Kaiyuan, 2015: 95).


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The other foreigners were thoroughly impressed by Rabe, and even those who despised Nazism found his performance impressive. However, not even Rabe could protect Chinese soldiers who, in desperation, sought refuge in the Safety Zone (Mori, 2015: 622-627). The German company Siemens required the immediate return of Rabe to Berlin, and he left Nanking on February 28 taking with him a large number of source materials which documented the atrocities committed by the Japanese. At first he tried to publicise the incident conducting lectures on it and sending a report to the Nazi government. However, this was confiscated by the Gestapo, whose agents soon visited him and asked not to discuss the incident further (Mori, 2015: 640).

Miner Searle Bates testified in Court Record of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East on July 29, 1946 as a witness on behalf of the prosecution. Bates and Lewis S. C. Smythe concluded, as a result of their investigations, that twelve thousand civilians, men, women and children, were killed inside the walls of the Safety Zone. Many others, whose number was impossible to establish, were killed within the city of Nanking, and also large numbers of civilians were killed immediately outside the city, apart from the killing of tens of thousands of men who were or had been Chinese soldiers (Kaiyuan, 2015: 61-62).

Bates also explained that a peculiar form of treachery was practised to persuade men to admit that they had been soldiers. Using the proclamation issued by General Matsui before the Japanese Army took Nanking, and distributed widely by airplane, the proclamation declared that the Japanese Army would not harm the peaceful citizens of China if they did not resist the Imperial Army. “In one afternoon, two hundred men were secured from the premises of the University of Nanking and were promptly marched away and executed that evening along with other bodies of men secured from other parts of the safety one.” (Bates cited in Kaiyuan, 2015: 63).

Different approaches have been made to try to justify the reasons of the behaviour of the Japanese Army, among them “the samurai spirit”. Mukuro Mori thinks that Japan was merely convinced of its own superiority and adds other reasons, such as breakdown of discipline, racism, anger and frustration for the battle of Shanghai. (2015: 57-67) Mori also indicates that Japanese soldiers were accustomed to dehumanise their enemiesin order to make their execution easier (Mori, 2015: 492-509). Like the Germans at the time, the Japanese believed themselves to be a


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superior race; its uniqueness emphasised in the worship of their Emperor, in whose figure religious and worldly authority were fusedand became“as always, a recipe for totalitarianism.” (Mori, 2015: 189).

As the Japanese General in charge Matsui Iwane had promised that the population would be spared and that any soldier who brought dishonour upon the army would be severely punished, the officers encouraged soldiers to get rid of their victims. Some commanderseven encouraged soldiers to kill women if they had raped them (Mori, 2015: 558-62). Over twenty thousand cases of rape were reported to German authorities by John Rabe (Kaiyuan, 2015: 64).

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH & THE FLOWERS OF WAR City of Life and Death and The Flowers of War could serve as a response to a desire expressed by Minnie Vautrin in her diary when on Dec. 17, 1937 she wrote, I “wish some one were here who had time to write the sad story of each person – especially that of the younger girls who had blackened their faces and cut their hair.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 358).

The first productionreflects more accurately the actual facts and gives a broader view of the massacre. It retains some real characters (John Rabe, Minnie Vautrin), and introduces other fictitious ones, such as the Japanese soldier, Kadokawa, who, increasingly horrified, is present in the massacres perpetrated by the army to which he belongs. Lu Chuan, the screenwriter and director, tells his story from the point of view of this Japanese soldier, and by this means, he prevents the film from being considered anti-Japanese. Kadokawa, in the end, saves a man and a child from being executed and, not being able to bear such a horror, commits suicide evoking the film title: “Sometimes it is harder to live than to die.”

The Flowers of War presents a similar resource: the creation of the Japanese Colonel Hasegawa, a music lover and a sensitive man who follows orders reluctantly. These clearly positive characters in a brutal and savage collective are the meeting point for the two countries and cultures, and a desirable point of reconciliation. Indeed, some original documents from the periodindicate thatcertain Japanese soldiers and officers regretted the horrific acts of their companions. For example, Robert O. Wilson comments on a Japanese officer who was very solicitous about the welfare of the foreigners in the Safety Zone and brought them a whole sack of beans and fresh meat. “I wish there were


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more like him,” concludes Wilson (Kaiyuan, 2015: 406). Matsui Iwane, the general in charge, when learning of the full extent of the massacres, wrote in his diary: “I now realise that we have unknowingly wrought a most grievous effect on this city. […] I cannot but feel depressed. I am very lonely and can never get in a mood to rejoice about this victory.” (cited in Mori, 2015: 564-7)

The first impression an audience might have when watching the film is that of disbelief. The events told seem to be too terrible to have taken place in reality. But, as mentioned before, taking into account the direct testimony of witnesses, City of Life and Death makes an accurate approach to the facts as they really happened, although it avoids to emphasise the most horrific cases related by the eyewitnesses. Nevertheless, the film includes the massive slaughter of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war, the establishment of the International Safety Zone, the incursions and raids of the Japanese soldiers to the zone and the construction of “facilities of sexual comfort”. The film which reflects the tragedy through hundreds of faces and slaughtered bodies.

Regarding the establishment of these brothels, Iris Chang remarks that between eighty thousand and two hundred thousand women – most of them from the Japanese colony of Korea but many also from China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesiawere purchased or kidnapped (2011: 53). Apparently, the Japanese military hoped to reduce the incidence of random rape of local women thereby diminishing the opportunity for international criticism. They also hoped to contain sexually transmitted diseases through the use of condoms, and to reward soldiers for fighting on the battlefront for long stretches of time. The first official “comfort house” opened near Nanking in 1938. (Chang, 2011: 52-4).

The conditions of these brothels were sordid beyond the imagination Untold numbers of women took their own lives when they learned their destiny; others died from disease or murder. Those who survived suffered a lifetime of shame and isolation, sterility, or ruined health. And because most of the victims came from cultures that idealised chastity in women, “even those who survived rarely spoke after the war – most not until very recently – about their experiences for fear of facing more shame and derision.” (Chang, 2011: 53) The choice of exhibiting the film in black and white may indicate a desire to take some distance from the facts, recognising that they are too hard to stare at without any filter. At the same time, this choice provides the film with a dramatic epic quality.


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The Flowers of War focuses more closely on the issue of women during the Naking massacre. It personalises the protagonism in Shujuan, Mo and John Miller but I also changes some aspects, such as the religion of Gingling College, Catholic in the novel and in the film, but Protestant in reality. Minnie Vautrin was an American protestant missionary and the head of this college which offered teaching training to women. When the Japanese entered the city, Gingling College became a safe haven for girls freeing them from raping soldiers. (Mori, 2015: 663) Women and girls went, as Minnie Vautrin records in her diary, “streaming in at the gate –the night had been one of horror. Many kneeled and implored to be taken in – and we let them in but we do not know where they will sleep tonight.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 360). They put up stars and stripes flags to emphasise that the Gingling College was North-American property, but this did not deter the Japanese soldiers, who constantly harassed Vautrin, looking for Chinese soldiers to execute and women for the brothels. “Often she was forced to watch helplessly as crying girls were dragged out to meet their fate.” (Mori, 2015: 664-8) This is the basis of Geling Yan’s novel The Flowers of War, although Gingling College appears under the leadership of a priest, when the ruler was Minnie Vautrin herself.

Geling Yan was interviewed on January 24, 2012 by Lawrence Pollard, and she explained that when Japanese soldiers arrived at Gingling College demanding ‘comfort women’ (their euphemism for sex slaves), Ms. Vautrin faced the dilemma of letting the so-called women go or giving them as prostitutes. If those women didn’t step forward, the Japanese would take civilian women. However, Vautrin’s diary does not mention any of this. The fragment of her diary which Yan said served as an inspiration for her novel dates from December 24, 1937 and states:

”About ten clock I was called to my office to interview the high military adviser for the – division. Fortunately, he had an interpreter with him, an old Chinese interpreter for the Embassy. The request was that they be allowed to pick out the prostitute women from our ten thousand refugees. They said they wanted one hundred. They feel if they can start a regular licensed place for the soldiers then they will not molest innocent and decent women. After promising they would not take any of the latter, we permitted them to begin their search, the adviser sitting in my office during the search. After a long time, they finally secured twenty-one. Some, they think, made off when they heard such a search was to be made and some are still hiding. Group after group of girls have asked me if they will select the other seventy-nine from among the decent girls – and all I can answer is that they will not do so if it is in my power to prevent it.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 363-4).


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Thus, it can be observed that women were taken without their consent, and that not even the foreigners who were at Nanking at that time were able to save them. Yet, other incidents to serve as inspiration for the main conflict inThe Flowers of War were told by eyewitnesses. In a letter to the American Embassy, Miner S. Bates wrote: “Yesterday a soldier went through the main University gate in Company with a Chinese assistant, and found three women who were willing to go with them.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 20). John G. Magee also noted on Feb. 2, 1938:

”Ernest learned today from a member of the Self-Government Committee (the body set up by the Japanese to attempt to govern the city) that today in the morning a truck-load of armed soldiers came to their headquarters and demanded at least 13 girls or as many more as they could find. The Chinese tried to stall them off but they surrounded the place and were still there this afternoon. The Committee did succeed in finding two prostitutes but these were not enough. What the eventual result was I do not know.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 193).

The events mention above make more sense than those told by Minnie Vautrin, which Geling Yan affirms she chose as an inspiration for her novel. In addition, a similar incident was exposed in The City of Life and Death. In this case, as in Yan’s novel and its screen adaptation, women willingly offer themselves, either to avoid the destruction of the Safety Zone, or to save the girls from Gingling College from rape and sexual slavery.

In the film The Flowers of War noticeable differences from the novel can be found. The most notable one has to do with the main characters. In the filmic version, Father Engelmann is replaced by the gravedigger John Miller, played by Christian Bale. Whereas Father Engelmann leads the action in the novel, in the film, Fabio, his assistant, explains to John Miller that Father Engelmann has died after a Japanese bomb fell in the school yard. To some extent, Father Engelmann and John Miller are antithetical characters. The first does not exhibit a transformation, and is at all times a missionary committed to the protection of students. Miller, however, is presented as an opportunist drunk, who gradually turns into a hero. This change becomes credible when some information is given: Miller’s daughter, who had died five years before, had asked him to make her look beautiful, so Miller had become afuneral make-up artist, a profession which eventually led him to be in charge of burying Father Engelmann.

The final step in the transformation of John Miller from a mercenary in search of church money to hero committed to saving girls takes place


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in the passage where the Japanese come into the church and try to rape the students. Miller displays a banner claiming that he is the priest, and urges the Japanese to leave the church in the name of God: “You are honest men; behave as such” he tells them. But a Japanese soldier rips the flag down and resumes the chase for the girls.

As in the novel, one of the students, Shujuan, is one of the main narrators. In the film, Shujuan’s voiceover conducts the action, and the story is strongly focused on her point of view. If the first impression Shujuan gets from the prostitutes is that of fascination, in the novel these feelings are mostly of disgust. Games of glances between Shu and Mo, and John Miller and Mo are shown in the film in order to evidence Shu and Mo’s indentification with each other. Moreover, the film, as the novel, establishes a dividing line between Mo and the other women, among whom she stands out as a leader. However, while in the book only her beauty and her range of luxury prostitute are highlighted, in the film her leadership also implies moral superiority derived from the circumstances of her life. In the book Mo was given by her father to a cousin as payment for gambling; in the film, she was dishonoured by her own father and forced to prostitute herself. In addition, a strong identification between Mo and Shu is displayed in the film, as Mo explains that she once was like her, but fate led her to become what she is now.

The film acquires a directionality that makes it very interesting. Two goals are set at the very beginning. When the inability to get both of them simultaneously is discovered, the conflict emerges with full force. The goal of the Qinhuai River women is very explicit: “I want you to take us away from Nanking,” says Mo to Miller. The other goal takes shape more clearly when the Chinese official who has given his life to save the girls begs: “Please tell the students that they cannot get into the hands of the Japanese. Otherwise, my men would have died for nothing”. This is placed in a relation to the beginning, of the film when men of the still operating Chinese battalion made a guerrilla war against the Japanese to keep them from advancing to the school.

As in the novel, in the film it is Mo who takes the initiative in exchanging herself to save the girls. However, things occur in a different way. Events rush, because Shu, leading the students, chooses suicide over abduction. All the girls go up to the bell tower of the church with the intention of jumping off from there, but Mo and the other women


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discourage them by saying they will protect them and prevent the Japanese from hurting them. Thus, they offer to go in their place. Some of the women protest, saying that the girls have treated them badly, but Mo argues that Shu had protected them, and that had not been for her intervention, everything would have been discovered. In the novel there is not such intervention and the women choose unselfishly to save the girls in spite of their rudeness towards them. The heroic act is ready to be consummated when Miller helps the women to disguise using the girls’ uniforms and cutting their long hair.

In the end, Mo begins to recite an old poem while another woman completes it for her: “Prostitutesdon’t care about a fallen nation. They sing and dance while others are dying.” Mo tells the others that they have the opportunity of doing something heroic and change that old way of thinking. That is what makes the women take their final decision. The speech that John Miller makes about those women as brave, wonderful, and skilful, concludes that “they love and hate like the rest. Maybe they know more about that than any of us.” And he goes on to praise them: “These women and you have a force and beauty that will never die.” The film ends with the women singing a song of the river Qihuai heading their destiny.

Heroism is the most important message in both The Flowers of War and City of Life and Death. Indeed, many of this heroic acts were recorded by eyewitnesses. For example, Lewis S.C. Smythe wrote on March 9, 1938 that Japanese soldiers came to Mr. Hwang’s house and asked him to lead them to the women. When he refused, one of the soldiers stuck him with a bayonet through the left groin, “piercing his flesh one-half inch. The man jumped back and at the same time pushed the bayonet aside with his right hand but cut his hand in so doing.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 315-316).

The American film critic Roger Ebert was very critical about the fact that the protagonist of The Flowers of War was also an American: “Can you think of any reason the character John Miller is needed to tell his story? Was any consideration given to the possibility of a Chinese priest? Would that be asking for too much?” (2012: n/p). However, his commentary reveals a certain lack of knowledge of history and of how the events unfolded. Disastrously, what he proposes could have never happened, as in the Nanking Massacre every single Chinese person was like a Jew for the Nazis.

Lewis Strong Casey Smythe, who eyewitnessed the facts, wrote: “We soon learned that the Japanese sincerely believed from the common


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private up through the highest men here that while it was necessary to show some regard for foreigners they could do anything to a Chinese.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 307). Only this third party’s nationality enabled the foreigners to avoid death, although in many cases they were slapped and wounded.

Although the power of the foreigners was actually very limited, John Rabe had a stronger position before the Japanese due to his Nazi condition. However, the power of the Americans was very restricted, and Chinese people were completely deprived of both power and their most basic human rights. It is for this reason that the Nanking Massacre may be compared to the Nazi Holocaust: a community taken as a whole, deprived of their human rights and even regarded as sub-human by a collectivity who considers itself superior. As a matter of fact, Shiro Azuma, one of those Japanese soldiers, told in his memories: “We were taught that we were a superior race since we lived only for the sake of a human god —our emperor. But the Chinese were not. So we held nothing but contempt for them.” (Kamimura, 1998: n/p). John Magge reported that when he saw two Japanese soldiers who had shot a man twice in the head, they were no more concerned “than if they had been killing a rat and never stopped smoking their cigarettes and talking and laughing.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 171). Azuma, the quoted Japanese veteran, remembers, “There were many rapes, and the women were always killed. When they were being raped, the women were human. But once the rape was finished, they became pig’s flesh.” (Kamimura, 1998)

In writing about “The Rape of Nanking”, Iris Chang emphasizes thinks that those horrible facts did not penetrate the world consciousness just like the Holocaust or the Hiroshima bombing. She indicates that this occured because the victims themselves remained silent. (2011: 4) Had it not been for those foreigners, the only survivors of the extermination, the extent of the massacre would have remained silenced.

Miner S. Bates wrote that “Japanese Embassy officer told us the generals were angry at having to complete their occupation under the eyes of neutral observers, claiming (ignorantly, of course) that never in the history of the world had that been true before.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 16) Similarly, Ernest H. Forster pointed out that “we [foreigners remaining in Nanking] have been a thorn in the flesh of the J[apanese] military as it is.” (Kaiyuan, 2015: 128).


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CONCLUSION The cinematographic productions of City of Life and Death and The Flowers of War, as well as the novel by Geling Yanwhich upon which the latter is based, represent a review and a retelling of Chinese history made by giving voice to the silenced Chinese people. Too atrocious and evil to tell, the weight of the films and the novel falls upon the heroic acts performed during the Japanese occupation of Nanking. Through these works, Chinese culture tries to exorcise the demons of its past, offering a broader view of the massacre in order to do justice to the victims of the slaughter without being influenced by hatred or vindictiveness, repairing and restoring itself in a sort of Confucian way through the characters who portray real people and selflessly gave their lives for others.

References Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking. The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York:

Basic Books. 2011. City of Life and Death. Dir. Lu Chuan. With Liu Ye, Gao Yuanyuan, Hideo

Nakaizumi, Fan Wei. China Film Group / Jiangsu Broadcasting System / Media Asia Films / Stellar Megamedia. 2009. Film.

Ebert, Roger. Flowers of War. RogerEbert.com, January 18, 2012. In: http://www.rogerebert.com/

The Flowers of War. Dir. Zhang Yimou. With Christian Bale, Ni Ni, Xini Zhang, Shigeo Kobayashi, Atsurô Watabe. Beijing New Picture Film Co. / Edko Film / New Picture Company. 2011. Film.

Higashinakano, Shudo. The Nanking Massacre: fact versus fiction: a historian’s quest for the truth. Tokyo: Sekai Shuppan. 2006.

Hu, Hua-Ling, American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 2000.

Jiao, Wu. “Nanjing pays tribute to ‘Conscience of Japan’”. China Daily, January 1, 2006. Retrieved 2013-10-08. In: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/

Kaiyuan, Zhang (Ed.). Eyewitnesses to Massacre: American Missionaries Bear Witness to Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing . New York: Routledge. 2015.

Kamimura, Marina. “A Japanese veteran attempts to make peace with haunting memories.” CNN.com, August 16, 1998. In: http://edition.cnn.com/

Kirby, William C. Foreword to The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, by Iris Chang. New York: Basic Books. 2012.

Long-hsuen, Hsu, Chang Ming-kai (compilers). History of The Sino-Japanase War (1937-1945). Translated by Wen Ha-hsiung. Taipei, Taiwan: Chung Wu Publishing Co. 1985.

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López-Varela, Asunción; Ananta Charan Sukla (Eds). The Ekphrastic Turn: Inter-art Dialogues. New Directions in the Humanities, Champaign: Common Ground Publishing. 2015.

Lu, Suping, Minnie Vautrin, Terror in Minnie Vautrin's Nanjing: Diaries and Correspondence, 1937-38. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. 2008.

Magee, John G. “Extremely rare evidence of Nanjing Massacre filmed by US pastor in 1937.” CCTV News. Published on December 9, 2014. In: https://www.youtube.com/.

McLaughlin, Kathleen E. “Iris Chang's suicide stunned those she tried so hard to help – the survivors of Japan’s ‘Rape of Nanking’”. Chronicle Foreign Service. November 20, 2004. In: http://www.sfgate.com/

Mori, Mukuro. The Nanking Massacre. History of Chine, Japan, and the Events Surrounding the Rape of Nanking. Amazon Media, 2015.

Pollard, Lawrence. “The story behind Chinese war epic The Flowers of War.” Interview to Geling Yan. BBC News. 24 January 2012. In: http://www.bbc.com/

Pu-yu, Hu. A Brief History of Sino-Japanase War (1937-1945). Taipei, Taiwan: Chung Wu Publising Co. 1974.

Rabe, John. The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe. Woods, John E. (trans.), Erwin Wickert (ed.). New York: A.A. Knopf. 1998.

Pengfei, Zhang. “China begins publishing Nanjing Massacre survivor testimonies.” CCTV News, Beijing, September 18, 2014. In: http://english.cntv.cn/

Tillman Durdin, Frank. “Butchery Marked Capture of Nanking.” The New York Times, December 18, 1937. In http://www.cctv-america.com/

Yang, Geling. The Fowers of War. Nicky Harman (trans.). London: Harvill Secker. 2012.

María VIVES AGURRUZA received her PhD. in Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid with the dissertation “From Theatre to Cinema: Towards a Theory of Adaptation. (Three versions of Macbeth)”, which achieved the distinction Cum Laude and a mention for obtaining a PhD. Extraordinary Award. She has worked in the cultural foundation Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez and in the S.O.L. Project (Servicio de Orientación de Lectura, today Canal Lector). She is a film critic in Miradas de Cine and a member of the magazine’s team Reseña of Cine para Leer, as well as a member of the SIIM Project (Studies on Intermediality and Intercultural Mediation), from Complutense University of Madrid.

https://www.youtube.com/

http://www.sfgate.com/

http://www.bbc.com/

http://www.cctv-america.com/

http://english.cntv.cn/

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