The Big Question: Why is tension rising between China and Japan over the 'Rape of Nanjing'?

The Independent’s David McNeill wrote the background stories of the tension between China and Japan over the ‘Rape of Nanjing’, ahead of the 70th anniversary of the massacre.

Why are we asking this now?

Next week is the 70th anniversary of the infamous Rape of Nanjing, when Japanese soldiers went on an orgy of rape and murder in the then Chinese capital. Dubbed the "forgotten holocaust" by its most famous contemporary chronicler, Iris Chang, the massacre is the subject of no fewer than a dozen new American, German and Chinese movies, including the $53m (£26m) Purple Mountain, helmed by Con Air director Simon West. Nanking, released in China earlier this year, is reportedly already the most watched documentary in Chinese history.

What happened in Nanjing?

Virtually the only fact not disputed is the date that victorious Japanese troops poured into the city – 13 December 1937. China says that over the following three months, the soldiers murdered 300,000 people: women and young girls were raped in their thousands, men were tortured and butchered with bayonets and prisoners were mown down indiscriminately.

Eyewitness accounts by the handful of Westerners in the city appear to back up these claims. The American missionary Minnie Vautrin wrote in her diary: "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today." The United Human Rights Council called it "the single worst atrocity during the Second World War era in either the European or Pacific theatres of war."

News source: The Big Question: Why is tension rising between China and Japan over the 'Rape of Nanjing'? (The Independent)

News tag: Rape of Nanjing Nanjing Massacre Nanjing China Japan Sino-Japanese relationship

Related titles: The Rape of Nanjing (2008) Nanking (2007) City of Life and Death (2009) May & August (2002) Black Sun the Nanking Massacre (1995) Don't Cry, Nanking (1995) Massacre in Nanjing (1987)

Related persons: Simon WEST