Japan Focus Newsletter

[Mark Nornes]

There is also an American documentary coming out, and the Times had a  
piece on its producer yesterday. Wu Wenguang and Berenice Reynaud were  
just at Michigan; both had seen it and said it was atrocious....for  
different reasons, of course.

Markus








A. M. Nornes
Professor
Department of Screen Arts & Cultures
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
University of Michigan
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Suite 6111, 202 South Thayer Street
Ann Arbor, MI  48104-1608
Phone:  (734) 647-2094; FAX: x0157
Homepage: www.umich.edu/~amnornes



On Dec 10, 2007, at 9:47 AM, Aaron Gerow wrote:

> Note a new article at Japan Focus regarding the spate of films  
> coming out about the Nanking Massacre:
>
> http://www.japanfocus.org
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: Mark Selden <ms44 at cornell.edu>
>> Date: December 10, 2007 5:00:26 AM EST
>> To: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
>> Subject: Japan Focus Newsletter
>> Reply-To: ms44 at cornell.edu
>>
>>
>> An Asia Pacific Newsletter
>> New Articles Posted December 10, 2007
>> in this issue
>> David McNeill, Look Back in Anger. Filming the Nanjing Massacre
>> Takashi YOSHIDA, Revising the Past, Complicating the Future:
>> Toru Uno, C. Douglas Lummis, Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese  
>> Culture: an exchange
>> Dai Qing, Thirsty Dragon Prepares for the Olympics
>> Malcolm Cook, Recasting Japan-Australia Relations in the 21st Century
>> Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan Must Prepare for War Between U.S. and North  
>> Korea. North Korea's Nuclear Threat
>>
>> Greetings!
>> See the top ten articles at Japan Focus in the menu bar on the left.
>>
>> Japan Focus is a peer-reviewed e-journal and archive on the Asia  
>> Pacific. Its fully indexed site contains more than nine hundred  
>> articles. In addition to Japan Focus exclusives, it provides  
>> translations from Japanese and other languages as well as reprints  
>> of important articles. The coordinators of Japan Focus are Andrew  
>> DeWit, Laura Hein, Gavan McCormack, David McNeill, Mark Selden,  
>> Yuki Tanaka and William Underwood. Contact Japan Focus by email at info at japanfocus.org
>>
>> David McNeill, Look Back in Anger. Filming the Nanjing Massacre
>>
>> A crop of new movies released to commemorate the 70th anniversary  
>> of the Nanjing Massacre is set to again dredge up the controversy  
>> about one of the 20th Century's most notorious events. How will  
>> Japan react? One way to learn what happened in one of history's  
>> most noxious but disputed episodes is to ask Mizushima Satoru.  
>> After what he calls "exhaustive research" on the seizure of the  
>> then Chinese capital by Japanese troops in 1937, estimated to have  
>> cost anywhere from 20,000 to 300,000 lives, Mizushima offers a very  
>> precise figure for the number of illegal deaths: zero. "The  
>> evidence for a massacre is faked," explains the president of right- 
>> wing webcaster Channel Sakura. "It is Chinese communist propaganda."
>>
>> David McNeill writes regularly for a number of publications  
>> including the Irish Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He  
>> is a Japan Focus coordinator. This is a substantially expanded  
>> version of an article that appeared at The Japan Times on December  
>> 6, 2007. Posted at Japan Focus on December 6, 2007.
>>
>> Read More...
>>
>>
>> Takashi YOSHIDA, Revising the Past, Complicating the Future:
>>
>> In this three part series, we introduce historical museums in Japan  
>> and their role in public education. Following this introduction to  
>> peace museums, Ms. Nishino Rumiko, a founder of the Women's Active  
>> Museum on War and Peace (WAM), introduces WAM's activities and the  
>> 2000 Citizens Tribunal on the 'comfort women'. The final article is  
>> by Mr. Kim Yeonghwan, the former associate director of Grassroots  
>> House Peace Museum who describes the peace and reconciliation  
>> programs that the Museum sponsors. Both museums are privately  
>> funded and modest in size. One may perhaps call them micro museums,  
>> as their exhibition spaces are limited. What is noteworthy,  
>> however, is that both museums display artifacts that preserve  
>> memories of the victims of Japan's colonialism and devastating  
>> atrocities during the Asia-Pacific War; that is, the war that began  
>> in 1931 when Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria, and ended with  
>> Japan's defeat in 1945. The Women's Active Museum is dedicated to  
>> the women forced into sexual slavery. The displays of the  
>> Grassroots House Peace Museum relate not only to the so-called  
>> comfort women, but also to Japanese atrocities in China, such as  
>> the Nanjing Massacre. Both museums often organize public forums to  
>> educate the public about the atrocities committed by the Japanese  
>> state during the war.
>> According to one study, more than 220 museums in Japan deal, in  
>> whole or in part, with the wars that Japan fought between 1868 and  
>> 1945.[1] The majority of these museums concern the Asia-Pacific  
>> War. The impressive number of diverse museums devoted to the Asia- 
>> Pacific War suggests that Japanese society has yet to achieve a  
>> consensus on the history and memory of the war.
>>
>> Takashi Yoshida is assistant professor of history at Western  
>> Michigan University and author of The Making of the "Rape of  
>> Nanking": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United  
>> States. This article was written for Japan Focus. Posted on  
>> December 2, 2007.
>>
>> Read more . . . ?
>>
>>
>> Toru Uno, C. Douglas Lummis, Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese  
>> Culture: an exchange
>>
>> What is the nature of Japanese Culture? Japan Focus published  
>> Douglas Lummis's critique of Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the  
>> Sword, arguably the most influential work ever written on Japanese  
>> culture. Below find a response from Toru Uno and Lummis's  
>> rejoinder. Japan Focus welcomes further contributions to this  
>> debate. Find the original article here: http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2474
>> This exchange between Uno Toru and C. Douglas Lummis was posted at  
>> Japan Focus on December 4, 2007.
>>
>> Read more . . . ?
>>
>>
>> Dai Qing, Thirsty Dragon Prepares for the Olympics
>>
>> The picture on this page was taken by a People's Pictorial  
>> photographer in 1953. The sixty-year-old Mao Zedong had just  
>> finished writing a calligraphic inscription that read "Celebrate  
>> the successful completion of the Guanting Reservoir Project." The  
>> man sitting next to him was my father-in-law, Wang Sen, the project  
>> manager for the dam. Mao and Wang Sen in 1953 The photograph was  
>> probably published in some newspaper or other around that time.  
>> Even if I'd seen it, I wouldn't have paid any attention to it. I  
>> certainly never imagined that fifteen years later I'd marry the  
>> project manager's son, Wang Dejia, thereby becoming the daughter-in- 
>> law of a man once shown relaxing on the bank of the dam, chatting  
>> and laughing with the "Great Leader."
>> One of China's leading critics of the Three Gorge mega-dam, Dai  
>> Qing, offers an assessment of the dam and its consequences.
>>
>> Dai Qing is a writer and an activist who has long fought the Three  
>> Gorge dam project. This letter appeared in The New York Review of  
>> Books. Volume 54, Number 19 ? December 6, 2007. Posted at Japan  
>> Focus on December 3, 2007.
>>
>> Read more . . . ?
>>
>>
>> Malcolm Cook, Recasting Japan-Australia Relations in the 21st Century
>>
>> On 12 October the Lowy Institute hosted a conference to analyse the  
>> recent decision by the Australian and Japanese governments to  
>> launch free trade agreement negotiations and to sign the joint  
>> declaration on security cooperation.
>> Malcolm Cook's summary of the discussion addresses the important  
>> and neglected subject of the Japan-Australia relationship. Gavan  
>> McCormack comments.
>>
>> Malcolm Cook is program director of the Asia Pacific Region at the  
>> Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. Posted at Japan  
>> Focus on December 4, 2007.
>>
>> Read more... ?
>>
>>
>> Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan Must Prepare for War Between U.S. and North  
>> Korea. North Korea's Nuclear Threat
>>
>> Once the closest U.S. ally on North Korean issues, Japan is now  
>> feeling alone and isolated. The Bush administration has reversed  
>> its stance toward Pyongyang and appears to be on the verge of  
>> removing the country from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.  
>> China and South Korea are racing to invest money into North Korea.  
>> Russia backs both inter-Korean engagement and North Korea's  
>> integration into the global economy. Still Japan holds back. Tokyo  
>> has expressed considerable displeasure over Washington's decision  
>> on the terrorism list, as the abduction issue continues to cast a  
>> heavy shadow over policymaking in Japan. Tokyo went so far as to  
>> send a delegation to Washington to plead its case in November
>> This article appeared in The Yomiuri Shimbun on Nov. 18, 2007. It  
>> is the sixth and final installment in a series focusing on North  
>> Korea's threat to Japan and future tasks for the nation's security  
>> policy. Posted at Japan Focus on December 7, 2007.
>>
>> Read more . . . ?
>>
>> Quick Links...
>>
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>>     email: ms44 at cornell.edu
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