Journal of Japanese Invasion of China and Nanjing Massacre

No.2, 2023

1.TheJapaneseGendarmesinCentralChinaandtheNanjingMassacre

WangMeng(4)

The occurrence of atrocities during the Nanjing Massacre was closely related to the Japanese gendarmes in Central China. In the early stage of the total war of resistance against Japan, the Japanese gendarmes had failed to perform their duties in Shanghai and its surrounding battlefields. After the fall of Nanjing, the gendarmes in the army not only failed to maintainmilitary discipline, but also played a role of committing the war atrocities. With the recruitment of the corps of gendarme in Central China, the Japanese gendarmes in the Central China formed a relatively tight organizational system with more extensive authorities. Its work gradually focused on the secret service while the function of military police has been weakened. After the Nanjing Massacre, the authority established by the Japanese gendarmes in Central China based on the fear didn’t fundamentally solve the problem of the decadence of the Japanese military ethos and the deterioration of military discipline. Meanwhile, they obtained the unsupervised and dictatorial enforcement power and the right of disposal, and became a part carrying out a reign of terror in the occupied areas of Central China.

2.WhereistheOccupiedArea:AnalysisConceptofthe“OccupiedArea”duringtheTotalWarofResistanceagainstJapaneseAggression

ChenZizhu(15)

The concept of “occupied area” has existed since ancient times. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, with the advancement of the Japanese front, organs of Kuomintang government generally referred to the enemy's rear areas as “occupied areas”, which were questionable. Senior KMT officials therefore attempted to use the “battlefield” to replace “occupied areas” to express the semantic meaning of enemy’s rear areas, but led to a chaotic situation in which both new and old vocabularies such as “battlefields”,“theaters” and “occupied areas” were mixed together. In contrast, the CPC defined the “occupied areas” as the “enemy-occupied areas”, showing the CPC’s modernity in terms of its way of thinking and organizational mode, and further reveals the historical reason for the CPC to lead the people to win the war of resistance against Japanese aggression from the perspective of the party culture.

3.TheWartimeKoreanRiceExporttoNorthChinaundertheEconomicControl

FengGuolin(22)

In the early days of Japan’s full-scale invasion of China, serious rice shortage occurred in North China with a great demand for Korean rice. Korean businesses sectors were interested in the prospects of huge market have in North China , however, Japanese government restricted the export of Korean rice to North China to strengthen its food control. As the export of Korean rice to China was concerned, there were differences between the colonial authorities of Korea and the Japanese government, as well as conflicts among Japanese businessman in Korea The interested parties were engaged in a game. The massive export of Korean rice to North China was a special phenomenon in the early days of Japanese full-scale invasion. With the strengthening of Japan’s wartime grain control policy and the establishment of the Japanese army’s grain self-sufficiency policy in China, the export of North Korean rice to North China decreased, and the market in North China was basically lost.

4.Self-protection,PatriotismandSubmission:AProbeintotheMentalityofa“Collaborator”inthePuppetManchuriaRegime

JiangPeiWangXi(32)

After the September 18th Incident in 1931, the three provinces in Northeast China were occupied, and then under the manipulation of Japan, the puppet Manchukuo was founded and the puppet army was established. Shi Mingru, a junior officer of the puppet army, kept diary from 1937 to 1945, the diary shows that his mentality changed from worry and anxiety to acceptance and obedience, mixed with anger, humiliation and regret, which to some extent was representative among the people in the occupied areas of Northeast China. With the methods of historical psychology and fully considering the living status of “collaborators” , this author attempts to interpret the distortion of humanity caused by the pressure of war, emphasizing the fragility and complexity of human nature, in the hope of breaking through the previous single cognitive model of interpreting the history of occupied areas from the perspective of the nation state.

5.TheDilemmaofRefugeeReturnduringtheWarofResistanceagainstJapaneseAggression(1938—1940)

WanZhenfanHeJinhua(41)

During the total war of resistance against Japanese aggression, the cross-regional flow of refugees was not simply a one-way flow from the occupied areas to the rear. While refugees moving inward, there was a phenomenon of refugee return back to the occupied areas in early 1938. The main reasons are the existent crisis of refugees in the rear area and the attraction from the conciliation policy of the Japanese army. The return of refugees itself is a re-decision for survival, but due to the particularity of time and space, their return was endowed with political and realistic significance. One was a test on refugees’ integrity to be the righteous or obedient people, and the other was the practical need for manpower in the rear under the background of long-term war of resistance against Japanese aggression. The returning refugees’ need for survival and the National Government’s need for the resistance against Japanese aggression were actually a dilemma of conflicts. This contradiction and conflict not only reflects the infringement of ordinary people’s basic survival rights by Japan's invasion, but also demonstrates the enormous sacrifices and contributions made by the Chinese people to the ultimate victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

6.TheMassCommunicationofRadioSongsofResistanceinShanghaiduringtheWarofResistanceagainstJapaneseAggression

LinYuan(53)

In the 1930s, dozens of radio stations established in Shanghai carried a huge flow of information. After the September 18th Incident, radio stations, the good “infrastructure” of music communication, made Shanghai the Chinese music center for the resistance against Japanese aggression. The songs represented by the March of the Volunteers were popularized through radio. During the Battle of Shanghai on August 13, songs of resistance against Japan such as “Raising Winter Clothing” and “Defending Great Shanghai” in radio stations spread rapidly, and radio stations had become a stage for the propaganda for the war of resistance against Japanese aggression and charity performances. During the period of “isolated island” and the Japanese occupation, Shanghai’s radio music showed the characteristics of expressing emotions towards the moon and through scenery, as well as using “old tunes” to heal the wounds of war, confronting with the music of “fools” and “entertainment” in limited space. Throughout the war of resistance against Japanese aggression, songs of resistance against Japan with different themes were never absent from Shanghai Radio Station, serving as a coherent and clear main theme in music.

7.TheRevolutionaryTransformationofFolkDanceintheResistanceBaseofTaihangMountainandtheMobilizationfortheWarofResistanceagainstJapaneseAggression

WangLixia(64)

During the war of resistance against Japanese aggression, the folk dance rooted originally in rural society experienced historic changes under the reform and social mobilization by the CPC. The rich folk dances in the Taihang region have become one of the important means for the CPC to mobilize for its characteristics of being simple to learn, strong life-oriented with high participation. The CPC reformed the folk dance to meet the needs of mobilization during the War of Resistance, which had a profound impact on various aspects such as politics, society, and culture during the war. Folk dance has become an important part of the culture of the War of Resistance. The revolutionary transformation of folk dance witnessed CPC’s wartime mobilization, and was a concentrated reflection of Mao Zedong's statement that “l(fā)iterature and art is affiliated to politics” in his “Talks at Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art”. It also reflects the evolution of folk dance in the context of war.

8.MutualExclusionofInvestigationandMediation:RestudiesontheLyttonCommissionandtheSeptember18thIncident

ChenHaiyi(76)

The value judgement on the Lytton Commission is mostly made as the general “failure”, which ignored the subjective initiative of the Lytton Commission with a cognitive bias. The core mission of the Commission included the investigation of the whole story of the September 18th Incident and the exploration of a mediation plan for the situations in Northeast China, and the investigation result was both reflected in the report and in the further interpretation by the Commission members. The results of the investigation and the mediation plan received different feedbacks from China and Japan, which led the Commission to take measures to maintain the effectiveness of the investigation. However, Japan did not recognize the suggestions in the report, even denied its authorities. By sorting out the mediation of the Commission and re-examining their words and deeds, it is possible to rejudge the success or failure of the Lytton Commission.The success of the Fact-checking in Northeast China indirectly caused the ineffectiveness of the mediation plan, the investigation and the mediation were exclusive to each other in effect, which showed the extent and limits to which the League of Nations and its mechanisms could be possibly applied to East Asia.

9.OntheInvestigationinHankowbytheLyttonCommission

QuShengfeiJinNan(95)

The investigations in Hankow by the Lytton Commission was a result of Japanese insistence. Japan maintained that the Lytton Commission should visit Hankow for an investigation, with the aim of delaying the Commission’s visit to Northeast China and attempting to solidify various so-called accusations against China to conceal the fact of its invasion of China; China was well aware of Japan’s conspiracy and opposed the Commission’s investigation in Hankow. However, China’s position as a weak country made it unable to express a strong opposition but a passive acceptance. The Commission’s reason in terms of the investigation in Hankow was quite high-sounding, but it could not conceal the suspicion of meeting Japanese demande. It conducted public and private investigations in Hankow into Japanese accusations against China, with the result actually acknowledged Chinese progress in recent years and indirectly denied Japan’s false accusations. Although the investigation conclusion by the Lytton Commission was somewhat acceptable to National Government in Nanjing the process was passive, which suggested its weak position in the international diplomatic stage.

10.TheDailyLifeandExperiencesofaLocalGentryaroundtheBattleofShanghai——CenteringonXuZhaowei’sDiary

HuYongjun(112)

The Japanese War of Aggression against China resulted in countless Chinese families being separated and displaced, and their lives being ruthlessly destroyed. Before and after the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai , Xu Zhaowei, a local gentry in Changshu, paid great attention to the war situation every day. His daily life was deeply influenced by the war. After the fall of Changshu, he and his family went to many places to seek refuge and encountered various dangerous situations during their escape. His home was robbed by the Japanese army as many as seven times. During this period, the people of Changshu suffered not only from rape and plunder by the Japanese army, but also from the ravages of local tyrants, bandits and local armed forces. Xu Zhaowei’s experiences indirectly reflect the changes in the daily life and emotional world of the people before and after the fall of Changshu, as well as the chaotic wartime situation of local social order.

11.TrialofJapaneseWarCriminalsbyWuhanMilitaryCourt

ZhangHaiyu(123)

From June 1946 to January 1948, the Wuhan Military Court conducted trials on cases of Japanese war crime in three provinces of Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi, and some areas of Henan and Anhui Provinces within its jurisdiction. Due to the vast jurisdiction area and the coexistence of war zone and occupied areas, the Wuhan Military Court showed certain particularity in the procedures, scope, and objects of trial of war criminals. The process and results of the Wuhan trial highlighted the the subjective and objective unpreparedness of the trial and the unawareness of the people to safeguard their rights. These factors directly affected the results of the trial of war criminals, some of whom were sentenced lightly or even escaped the trails.

【English abstracts translated by Cai Dandan】