Famous Chinese Shopping City Books

The Rape of Nanking (book) Wikipedia

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is a 1997 book by Iris Chang (張純如) and William C. Kirby, which presents a history of the 1937-1938 Nanjing Massacre. This book is by no means the authoritative book on the subject; however, this is the most popular work outside of academia, and one of the first to introduce the Nanjing Massacre to the non-academic Western world|Western audience.

This book is the main source of fame for Iris Chang, who is deeply respected in China and among overseas Chinese for raising awareness of the Nanjing Massacre in the Western world. A memorial service was held in China by Nanking Massacre survivors at the same time as her funeral in Los Altos, and the victim memorial hall in Nanjing will add a wing dedicated to her in 2005.

As to be expected from a subject of high sensitivity, Chang's book has provoked widespread response from readers and critics alike.

Some United States|US and Japan|Japanese scholars have disputed the accuracy of the book, claiming it contains many serious factual errors. Critic Timothy M. Kelly says a "lack of attention to detail" call the book's credibility into question and presents a case describing Chang's plagiarising passages and an illustration from Japan's Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini. http://www.edogawa-u.ac.jp/~tmkelly/research_review_nanking.html

In Japan, while much of the criticism came from right-wing nationalists, Chang was also attacked by "liberals, who insist the massacre happened but allege that Chang's flawed scholarship damages their cause." (Los Angeles Times, June 6 1999).

Chang responded to criticisms of the book in a 1998 letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, in which she said there was no evidence that photographs in the book had been fabricated; that the photographs were properly captioned; that the Japanese Foreign Minister at the time, Koki Hirota, had given a figure of 300,000 civilians killed; and that her critics in Japan were right-wingers who denied the existence of the massacre and, in some cases, of the Holocaust http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/news/bamr/changletter.htm.

The Japanese translation was halted because of disagreement between Chang and Kashiwa shobo, the publisher. As a result of the controversy and evidentiary disputes surrounding the book, Kashiwa shobo had planned to publish a critical commentary about some factual errors in the same volume.

Last Modified:   2005-04-13