HIS381H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Iris Chang, Korea Under Japanese Rule, Meiji Period
Document Summary
She says she doesn"t want to demonize the japanese people. But she talks about the character of japanese culture and military culture. She tends to generalize in order to explain the behaviour exhibited in. There is a rational and critical side of her arguments as well as the emotional. Iris chang put this whole event out in the open. She gave it the title, rape of nanking. Created this whole, global debate and in turn helped create new english resources for study. Emotions aside, iris was able to put things into context. Laid out events, date by date, in order to lead up to the invasion of nanking. There was propaganda and racism that dehumanized the chinese (and also occurred on many other fronts in wwii) Iris says that the violence and atrocities started long before nanking, although it probably intensified. So there may not have been a nanking massacre but just a massacre in general.
