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Movie Takes
City of Life and Death
This fictionalization of the murder of 300,000 in Nanking can only leave the viewer numb — if not feeling superior.
Four years ago, the documentary Nanking by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman told the story of the horrific Japanese rape in 1937 of the city that was then the Chinese capital (it’s now called Nanjing). That movie had the tag-line: “The True Story of How a Few Brave Souls Saved the Lives of Thousands,” but this sounds a lot better than and is therefore movie publicists’ code for “The True Story of How Many More Thousands Could Not Be Saved.” That is, we like to justify becoming voyeurs of the horrible deaths and sufferings of others by (among other means) emphasizing the uplift to be derived from the few who escaped — and maybe the patriotic pride involved in their doing so, since their escape in this case was effected mostly through the agency of Americans and Europeans in the diplomatic enclave which the Japanese mostly didn’t interfere with. But for every one who escaped, hundreds more didn’t, and that’s what you were really watching when you went to Nanking.
This is even more true of the fictionalized version of the same story, City of Life and Death (Nanjing! Nanjing!) by the Chinese director Lu Chuan — except that here there is no pretense of uplift. It’s gruesome suffering all the way. Like the two Clint Eastwood pictures, Faith of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, that were based on the battle of Iwo Jima, this movie seems to be based on a vague assumption that realism must demand as confusing, mad, chaotic and incomprehensible a representation of warfare as possible on the grounds that that is how its victims — and pretty much everyone involved can be seen as a victim in one way or another — must have experienced it. Watching it all in Mr. Lu’s black-and-white version, you may find as I did that it is difficult to figure out much more than that the Chinese are losing, and losing badly, to the Japanese and that they are then being massacred by them once they have been disarmed.
There is a paradox in this kind of realism. For although “the fog of war” is well established as a perceptual reality, most wars — including even this one — would not have happened at all if those who fought them had only that kind of experience and had not had some comprehensible purpose in fighting and some rational approach to doing so. Therefore, to ignore the military rationale for what is happening on screen is actually a failure of realism. Moreover, this failure has its own rationale — and therefore should be regarded as a kind of success! For the real purpose behind movies such as this is not perfect truth-to-life but rather the ideological one of persuading people that war is merely confusing, mad, chaotic, and incomprehensible. The ideology behind them, that is, is pacifism.
Like most pacifism, too, it ostentatiously seizes the moral high ground at the opening of its scorched earth campaign. Do you dare to belittle or ignore the sufferings you are about to see? Can you seriously maintain that they have or can have any meaning? You had better bethink yourself: it is advisable to sigh and nod the head and say along with the movie-makers and all their right-thinking audience: “Poor people! They never had a chance! What a sense of pity and compassion I now feel, retrospectively, for their plight.” So much pity and compassion, indeed, that you may persuade yourself of the superior virtue of your sitting in comfort at home, minding your own business and not studying war anymore, no matter how superficially just or righteous the cause.
There is a further problem that Mr. Lu comes up against in City of Life and Death as a result of its fictionalization of historical events. It’s bad enough for a movie-history, like any other, to select the story it has to tell solely on the basis of its pathos, for ideological reasons; it’s even worse then to invent people and events in order to make that story even more pathetic. Cinematic drama, like any other, depends on the audience’s sympathetic participation in the characters’ choices, and those choices together with the ability to make them depend on those characters living a life in certain essential respects like the audience’s own — that is, in a choice-filled environment. In a drama where most of the characters have no choices but are merely the victims of overwhelming circumstance, that sympathetic participation is impossible. All we can do is stand back from the horror the characters experience and feel sorry for them.
To Mr. Lu’s credit, he does scoop out of this welter of suffering humanity two or three characters who do have choices to make. One is Mr. Tang (Wei Fan), a Chinese family man and secretary to the German businessman and Nazi official John Rabe (John Paisley) — a man unlike the real John Rabe, who rescued thousands, but who seems to stand for the Westerners’ lack of choice by continually apologizing to the Chinese for what he has no power to prevent. Mr. Tang imagines that he and his family will be safe from the Japanese onslaught because he works for Japan’s ally, Germany. When this proves not to be the case, Mr. Tang imagines that he has the choice of saving his own family by betraying to the Japanese some Chinese soldiers being treated in the Westerners’ hospital in their Safety Zone — and then a further choice beyond that one. These choices will either damn or redeem him in our eyes.
Another moral agent in the film is the Japanese Sergeant Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi), a sensitive youth who has his first sexual experience with a Japanese “comfort woman,” Yuriko (Yuko Miyamoto), and then imagines himself in love with her. Yuriko’s own experience appears to involve very little more choice than that of the Chinese women called upon to perform the same services for their conquerors in exchange for enough food and fuel to get themselves and their children through the winter. But the sergeant’s touching innocence, together with the terrible choice he subsequently feels himself driven to make, is then used to persuade us of an underlying sense of decency even among (at least one of) those whom we have seen behaving so barbarously to the conquered Chinese.
I have no fault to find with either of these little dramas so far as they go, nor even with the attempt to see things, to this very limited extent, from the barbarians’ own point of view. The problem is that such moral studies are overwhelmed by the sheer horror of the atrocities going on all around them. It becomes difficult to care as much as we should about the fates either of the Tang family or of Sgt. Kadokawa when they unspool in the midst of so much and so much greater human misery (on the one hand) and moral squalor (on the other). In this flat and featureless dramatic landscape, the few stories that emerge involving something more than just rape and murder therefore create a false impression of dramatic coherence and meaning. The only meaning Mr. Lu’s film really has to offer is that war — and especially this war — is hell. You may have heard that before.
About the Author
James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.
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Stuart Koehl| 6.21.11 @ 6:21AM
As Joseph Stalin observed, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Thus, it is only by creating moral vignettes within mass horrors like the Holocaust, the Holodomor, or the Rape of Nanking that we are able to grapple with these enormities.
Henry Drummond| 6.21.11 @ 7:33AM
It will be interesting to see a sensitive Chinese film about the Korean war.
Michael A.| 6.21.11 @ 7:49AM
Unfortunately the last paragraph shows that the author himself misses the point that the real world actually intrudes on our ability to separate the reality of the situation from the moral issues. Unfortunately, the situation that the author decries in the film is the norm, and the ideal situation that he wishes to be presented in order to consider the various moral aspects of the story is not.
Hillel| 6.21.11 @ 8:49AM
The fact is the Japanese were not especially ashamed of what happened in Nanking. In fact they took pictures of it! A brave drug-store clerk made copies and they now exist. (See Photo-Book of Rape of Nanking if you stomach is strong enough--mine wasn't.)
Having been A-bombed the Japanese feel absolved of all guilt."The "comfort woman," and germ warfare. (Curiouslly they were researching a caucasian specific germ) In the meantime they dropped bombs containing plague carring fleas on Chinese villages spreading bubonic plague.
The Nissan Motor company is the successor to the KEMPETI Truck co. started in Muckden.
Stuart Koehl| 6.21.11 @ 9:14AM
Sad but true. Unlike the Germans, the Japanese feel no guilt over World War II, only remorse that they lost. Japanese school textbooks on the subject are disingenuous to the point of prevarication.
Harry the Horrible| 6.21.11 @ 10:06AM
The Japs ain't like us.
IIRC, Japan is a "shame" culture, not a "guilt" culture. They don't feel bad about doing something wrong, they feel bad about getting caught.
(That is assuming I understood something far more complicated correctly when I was studying it...)
They are not going to feel "guilt" over this issue. The first impulse of a samurai, caught in a dishonorable act, would be to lash out those who caught him and kill them (if he couldn't do that, his second impulse would be to commit suicide to expunge the dishonor). I suspect that the Japanese, as whole are responding in a similar, if more moderate, fashion.
Stuart Koehl| 6.21.11 @ 7:16PM
Let us remember this goes in spades for the Chinese as well.
russel| 6.21.11 @ 10:36AM
Stuart , I've heard the texts are absolutely void of facts . The only acknowledgement to the Hiroshima bomb is a little plaque on a building . Our socialist's insist on digging up our ' misdeeds ' while Japan would like to see that history buried and forgotten .
Occam's Tool| 6.21.11 @ 4:05PM
Indeed. A failure of MacArthur.
That is just one reason why I fell no remorse over the A-bombings. The Japanese bought and paid for it, and then paid the installation costs. For those who have not ever seen it, a visit to Las Cruces New Mexico and the Bataan Death March Memorial Statue is well worth while. I used to drive by it going to work every day.
TrueBlue| 6.21.11 @ 7:00PM
They also don't feel the need to pay for the decisions of their ancestors, but to improve and make their own way in the world instead of wallowing in sorrow.
It's better than how we do a lot of things over here IMO, where we keep trying to make ourselves feel better about something our predecessors did instead of paying attention to the road ahead.
KyMouse| 6.21.11 @ 9:54AM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a decade or so ago, when some Japanese leader apologized for his country's role in WWII, he apologized in Japanese -- to his people, not to the rest of the world. That was pointed out by a novelist who has written many books about Japan. The apology was to his Japanese people for disturbing the balance of their lives and culture -- for creating disharmony. Not for enslaving nearby countries and causing injury and death to millions of people.
A. C. Santore| 6.21.11 @ 9:04AM
I have not seen the motion picture, but I have read much on the specific subject of the Rape of Nanking, and far more on the general subject of Japanese atrocities during World War II.
Mr. Bowman might have benefited from some of that reading. It is not reasonable or even possible to show the enormity of the Rape of Nanking or the Rape of Manila, or the dozens of other horrific acts, so one has to tell a microcosmic story.
A man who had survived the Bataan Death March, one of many with whom I have discussed that atrocity, spoke to me about it. He started by saying that he could not tell me everything because I simply would not believe it.
He then proceeded to tell me what he thought I could handle, and shocked me repeatedly. I don't want to even try to imagine what he left out.
Butchering several hundred thousand human beings in the most brutal and personal way is really butchering one person at a time - which is the way Nanking was "raped." To tell that kind of story, one must give a representative sample of those individual horrors.
Stuart Koehl| 6.21.11 @ 9:15AM
Thank you for using the word "enormity" properly.
froglegs| 6.21.11 @ 10:24AM
A distinction between Manila and Nanjing was that in Manila, the Japanese fleet set sail and abandoned the Japanese army resulting in the army committing the atrocities upon and entirely innocent civilian population. Whereas in Nanjing, a large part of the Chinese army shed their uniforms and retreated into the city and hid as civilians resultion in the atrocities. This is not to suggest that atrocities would otherwise not have happened, but rather that the army of China was not without some guilt in the matter.
Stuart Koehl| 6.21.11 @ 7:19PM
This is not entirely true. General Yamashita ordered the troops in Manilla to abandon the city and retreat into the hills. However, those troops were part of the Japanese Naval Landing Force (equivalent to the USMC), and they refused to obey his order. The troops holed up in the Intramurale (the old walled city), and had to be blasted out, block by block. Before they went down, they went on a rampage, murdering upwards of 60,000 civilians.
Bill| 6.21.11 @ 9:24AM
The film has Sergeant Kadokawa having sex with a JAPANESE comfort woman? Since when did the Japanese force Japanese women into that role? I thought that Korean women became comfort women, Korean women and the women of other occupied nations.
Also, I have read that the slaughter in Nanking (Nanjing, whatever) was a function of deliberate Japanese war-making policy in which the conquered were to be oppressed so savagely that resistance became unthinkable. I don't suppose the movie explores that issue.
rongordo | 6.21.11 @ 10:39AM
Koreans were made to learn Japanese and practice Japanese customs. It's possible that her name was put upon her this way.
Stuart Koehl| 6.21.11 @ 7:20PM
From the Japanese perspective, Korea was part of Japan. Enforced "japanization" had been ongoing for some decades.
Rich Rostrom| 6.22.11 @ 12:30AM
Many Japanese women were also forced to be "comfort women". This history was suppressed in postwar Japan. The 1974 film "Sandakan 8" explored this crime.
George True| 6.21.11 @ 10:03AM
I doubt that any new book will eclipse the definitive story of the rape of Nanking by the late Iris Chang.
The lesson that jumped out at me from that book was how different an outcome there may have been if the Chinese troops in and around Nanking had chosen to fight instead of giving up and surrendering to the Japanese. Their surrender was not honored or rewarded. Instead, they had their hands tied behind their backs with wire and were then slaughtered wholesale in the most horrific ways imaginable. Imagine if instead of surrendering they had fought savagely and sold their lives dearly.
This is a lesson we would do well to remember today. There is never anything to be gained by accomodating or giving in to evil. Evil forces, be they communists, fascists, or jihadist theocracies must be resisted with every fiber of our beings.
rongordo | 6.21.11 @ 10:36AM
Mr. Bowman, you're missing a very large point of this film (which I haven't seen, but is fact nonetheless). It is to continue to inspire anger toward Japan. The rape of Nanking is continuously used for this purpose, 70 years after the fact. It was surely aproved by the Chinese government. Notice a lack of films about Tienamin Square.
Le Cracquere| 6.21.11 @ 2:39PM
Whatever ulterior motives there may be at the state level, Japan incurred such anger honestly. Truth is truth, however convenient it may be to the Chinese government.
Ed| 6.21.11 @ 11:22AM
During WWII, the Japanese were an equal opportunity oppressor. They treated everybody, including Allied POWs, like the SS treated Jews and Slavs.
Stuart Koehl| 6.21.11 @ 7:23PM
Numerically, the Chinese and other Asian civilians suffered the most. After the Doolittle Raid, Japanese retaliatory operations killed an estimated quarter million Chinese. Filipinos, Burmese and Malayans also suffered heavily, putting a lie to the Japanese claim of Asia for the Asians.
Renaissance Nerd | 6.21.11 @ 3:06PM
I think the constant drumbeat of 'war-is-hell' from the left has finally become as banal and meaningless as charges of racism. Yes, yes, we heard it the first hundred bazillion times. The problem is with their methods; showing us the horror of war inspires some to put their bodies between the rest of us and war's desolation. It does nothing to create a peaceful world, because it convinces nobody. Pacifists are already hiding behind braver men than themselves and need no convincing, while those who fight know better than the rest of us who shelter behind them how terrible war is--and continue to be our shield. The fact remains that 'those who have not swords can still die upon them.' This movie's pacifist undertone is wasted, because it's really a call to arms, as the cynical communists in charge of approving propaganda know well. If your choice is fight or be a victim of such an atrocity, well, that's not much of a choice, is it? I've often wondered what China intended to do with their bumper crop of boys who can't possibly find wives, and this may be a portent.
Alan Brooks| 6.21.11 @ 8:57PM
We were right to nuke the Japanese so x times Nanking would not have occurred 1945- '46--
as we traded half of Europe to Stalin for the Western part. It was trade-off, not morality per se.
POST American| 6.21.11 @ 11:42PM
---WHILE the IMF disabled, Fukishima
devastated Japan sinks over the horizon---
STILL MORE cunningly ill-timed DIS-traction as our 4 decades old Globalist-RED China sellout, set up and TREASON op rounds off utterly unnoticed. Utterly unmentioned Utterly unprosecuted.
For the history challenged ---our 'fave' economic
miracle was itself the staging ground for the
extermination of 90 MILLION ---decades AFTER
WW2---in 'peacetime'.
C Smith| 6.22.11 @ 1:18AM
"The only meaning Mr. Lu has to offer is that" life... is hell, and we, "merely victims of overwhelming circumstance."
Yet, in another image, a copper engraving (A. D. 1550), there is a meaning in death that will echo throughout the halls of eternity:
TWO YOUNG GIRLS
“Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).
About the year 1550, it happened in the bishopric of Bamberg, that two young girls espoused and received Christ by faith, were baptized upon their faith, according to the doctrine of Christ, and arising from sin, sought to walk in newness of life with Christ. On this account the antichristians sought to hinder them in this good resolution, and to quench their good intention as much as lay in their power: They therefore cast these two young lambs into prison, where they tortured them with great severity, and sought also with other unchristian means to cause them to apostatize; but as they were firmly built upon Christ, thev remained faithful and steadfast during the entire trial. Col. 2:7; Rev. 2:10. Hence, the authorities, who herein generally follow the advice of the false 'prophets, condemned them to death; at which they were joyful and undaunted. When they were led out to execution, their persecutors, by way of reproach and mockery, placed wreaths of straw upon their heads; whereupon one said to the other, "Since the Lord Christ wore a crown of thorns for us, why should not we wear these crowns of straw in honor of Him? The faithful God shall for this place a beautiful golden crown and glorious wreath upon our heads." Thus these two young branches armed themselves with patience, according to the example of their Captain Jesus, remained faithful unto death, died steadfastly, and. obtained, through grace, the glorious crown with God in heaven.
To these girls their adversaries accord the praise, that they died quite undauntedly and steadfastly, and that they had the true foundation and ground of the Christian faith in their Redeemer Christ Jesus, whom they openly confessed, and called upon in their distress, wherein they steadfastly died with a firm hope; so that doubts were entertained among their adversaries, as to whether they themselves were not in greater error before God, than these young girls....
Martyrs Mirror, TWO YOUNG GIRLS, ABOUT A. D 1550 (Page 500)
http://martyrsmirror.blogspot......-1550.html
weddingdresses | 6.22.11 @ 5:46AM
As Joseph Stalin observed, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Thus, it is only by creating moral vignettes within mass horrors like the Holocaust, the Holodomor, or the Rape of Nanking that we are able to grapple with these enormities.
Octavia| 6.22.11 @ 7:04PM
A brief correction is in order. Clint Eastwood directed, Flags of Our Fathers (based on the James Bradley book), not Faith of Our Fathers.
Stuart Koehl| 6.23.11 @ 5:17PM
Dee See, is that you?
Norm | 5.13.12 @ 1:06AM
"Moreover, this failure has its own rationale -- and therefore should be regarded as a kind of success!"
What kind of gobblydegook is this? Not to be unkind, this sounds like gibberish from either a tired or overwhelmed author.
It's now May 2012 and I reluctantly watched this movie.
I was reluctant to watch because I already knew the story of Nanking. As brutal as the film was, it was soft soap compared to the real thing.
Fact is they had documented head chopping contests treated like sports events to see which officer could cut off the most. And one book claims that since it was against the rules to rape a woman, the woman had to be killed afterwards. No harm, no foul. Even better, as the soldiers ran low on groceries it was, says the book, not uncommon to rape a woman and then eat her. (Only the best cuts, of course.)
Americans did bad things too. The difference is that a GI might get hung, while the Japanese were told to go to it and have fun.
The Japanese had lost their moral compass. Americans still had theirs and it all goes back to the way our country was constituted with the Bill of Rights and Constitution. No way would the politicians or generals turn the guys loose. And chances were that if they had the GI's may have turned on their bosses.
Today the Japanese have brainwashed themselves that Nanking never happened. Ancient history.
And of the Chinese? Well, Nanking was a picnic compared to what they did to themselves a few years later.
What I get out of this sorry mess is a warning and lesson for Americans. Don't let it happen here.