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Hello Mr. Ted Leonsis,I’ve heard that you are directing the movie of Iris Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking.” As a Japanese, I’d like to present my opinions.The so-called “Nanking Massacre” is a sensitive issue between Japan and China that there is still no agreement whether it is a historical fact or not. Even the number of casualties what China presents as its evidence is various and greatly inconsistent,The Chinese have strived to make it as a historical fact but there is no credibility on any testimonies or witnesses they present, without exception.As you already know, the Chinese is the people who most hate Japan in the world. Because of the previous war? It is just only a good reason for them. Indeed, they have really a complicated feeling against the Japanese — mixed feeling of inferiority and superiority.Of course, they are not happy about the close relationship between Japan and the United States because they wish China as a leader of Asia and believe all East Asia is under the Chinese. Have you learned anything about their historical definition, “Sinocentrism,” or how they define the Western people as?I am not quite sure how much you realize about the Chinese mentality, and what intention you are aiming at by making this film. Perhaps, is the huge market of 1.3 billion people attractive for you, or do you just believe you are the justice? Whatever reason you have, the Chinese people will be very happy about it and they will build your statues everywhere in China.Figuratively speaking, if you were a lawyer. ﾓHere is a Japanese who is under suspicion of a mass murder. However, no dead bodies have been found. Only the evidence is testimonies of people who call themselves as bereaved families. They are very active to propagandize everywhere in the world so many people have believed that the Japanese man is a bloodthirsty killer.A heroic and warm-hearted lawyer is taking upon himself to support the families. His name is Ted. By his excellent effort, the judge decided the Japanese man sent to the gallows. Afterward, he gets to know that it was a false accusation. What will he do?ﾓYou will decide what you should do by your belief. I hope that you won’t feel regret.
Ted, There are still a few of us remaing who fought against the Japanese on the side of our Chinese allies in China during the war against the Japanese. The Japanese still will not recognize the facts of the behavior of their troops in China.I applaud your efforts. The American people and all the people of the world must know the lessons that history teaches us! Bob Hoe
Ted, Mr. Shoushimin does have one correct factual statement in his letter: “Close relationship between Japan and the United States”. Partners in crime after the crime syndicate so formed became the ruler of the world indeed would have close relationship. Nobody who truly cares about justice and the peril facing hamanity today can afford to not read the two books that can explain our “through the looking glass” world after 1945. I think Mr. Shoushimin may indeed be one who have read them, hence his determination to perpetuate myth. Those two books are: Meeting At Potsdam by Charles Mee, Jr., and The Gold Warrior: Yamashita’s Gold by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave. The latter has just been translated into Chinese and published last year.
Dear Ted, I am very grateful to you for making the Nanking film. Although the Chinese and Japanese governments have recently reached an agreement to a joint study of the history of the relationship between the two countries, in hopes to ease the tension between them, I am not, however, surprised that some Japanese peoples like Mr. Shoushimin, continue to deny what the Japanese military did in China. I have been to Japan a number of times in recent years, where my son has been teaching English for three years, and have found that it has been the inferiority-superiority complex of the Japanese people that have led them to invading China in the past and hating China today. In fact, the Chinese in Japan today have been frequently taken as the scapegoat by the Japanese for many of their own social problems. It is exactly because of such complex of theirs that has made more difficult for them to accept their historical and moral responsibility to admit their wrong doing. Like many arrogant Americans, they too think that they can do no wrong, always blaming others for their moral failure. It is time for Japan as a nation and people to reflect upon themselves and to become more realistic in their dealing with China, Korea and other Asian countries, who are no longer tolerating an arrogant Japan. If they don’t, people like Mr. Shoushimin and their children will feel regret.Again, hearty thanks for your efforts.
Dear Mr. Ted Leonsis, I would like to applaud you for the courage and effort of making a film like “Nanking.” It’s not an easy documentary to make not only because of subject matter but also because of the fact that the Japanese government has concealed and denied this part of the history for so long that may present challenges for socially responsible documentary filmmakers such as yourself.I am a Chinese American born in Taiwan after WW II and volunteer at the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WW II in Asia. I believe I speak for many Chinese people when I say Chinese people do not hate the Japanese people. War is cruel and dehumanizing. It is unfortunate that events such as Nanking Massacre took place. However, there is no reason for the generation with Chinese ethnic background living around the globe today to hate the Japanese people for something that took place in time of a war during the last century. Chinese people have always celebrated peace and harmony. Hatred is just not in our nature or culture. What many Chinese are experiencing is the frustration that the Japanese government would not acknowledge what happened and the lives lost therefore remained unjustified til this day. We also feel sorry for the Japanese public as the Japanese government had made its people ignorant about the past of their own country as well as the world history.”Nanking” is an significant contribution to the restoration of Chinese, Japanese, and world history. Again I thank you for your courage and effort.Betty Yuan12/1/2006
Mr. Shoushimin can argue all he wants about what he refers to as the so-called “Nanking Massacre” — a controversy to him. He himself nevertheless knows well how Japan is “hated” by Chinese (and most Asians).The simple question for him is why no one in the West or elsewhere feels the same towards Germany (its WWII partner-in-crime) — even some Japanese condemn Nazis as evils.”What is wrong with this picture?” he should have asked himself!!Mr. Shoushimin and his fellow ringwingers can continue living in denial, but that does not change the fact that Japan did the horrible and inhumane things and, to this date, comes up short in offering a formal acknowledgement of wrongdoing and an official apology and acceptance of responsibility of war crimes through parliamentary legislation as German, Austria and its other Axis allies did.On the contrary, Japanese revisionists, like the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Foreign Minister Taro Aso and their colleagues, continue to publicly reject the verdicts of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, shamelessly distort history and justify Japan’s blatant and bloody aggression.The victimized nations and peoples want peace and reconciliation. But that would only come after Japan demonstrates true repentance of its past sins.We all can forgive, but not to forget.Please join us to mourn the faceless and voiceless victims of Japanese war crimes at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center in San Francisco at 10am on December 9, 2006. The public is invited to attend the memorial service to honor the victims of the “Rape of Nanking” on the 69th anniversary of the tragic event.In December 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army swept into Nanjing, China’s ancient capital. Within six weeks, more than 300,000 unarmed Chinese civilians were systematically tortured and murdered. Many became live victims of the Japanese soldiers’ samurai sword practice. Still more were machine-gunned to death–their remains doused with gasoline and burned. Some 80,000 women were raped. The world has waited too long for Japan to admit to its World War II war crimes. To the aged victims of these atrocities: justice delayed is justice denied.As Auschwitz has become a symbol of the Jewish Holocaust and Nazi atrocities in World War II, the Nanjing massacre has become a symbol of the Japanese Imperial Army’s monstrous brutality and savage cruelty in World War II. Please join us in remembrance of the Rape of Nanjing, meet genocide victims, and hear the continuing struggle for peace, justice and human rights. Winners of the first Iris Chang Memorial Essay Contest will be honored at this event.
Dear Ted,It is most unfortunate that in the face of overwhelming evidence, there will always be some who cannot face the facts of history. There will always to Holocaust deniers and deniers of the Nanjing Massacre. It is not just the Chinese who have witnessed the massacres, but Western observers, and Japanese reporters and soldiers themselves who have also recorded and captured on film the various atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. Tense relations between the Chinese and Japanese need not be perpetuated. We long for peaceful relations between the two nations. But historical injustice needs to be addressed first. We hope your film will help people to better understand circumstances that created the animosity between the two nations of Japan and China in order for the tension to be resolved. Your film should be celebrated as evidence of human goodness and bravery in the face of overwhelming cruelty and darkness. Thank you. Peter Li, PresidentGlobal Alliance for Preseving the History of WWII in Asia
Ted, as you can see how people are in denial of the historical facts; that’s why we still have genocide everywhere in the world in 21st century. What a shame for our human beings. As long as Japan refuse to fact the history and what they did to Chinese people and people in Asia during World war II, they are tend to repeat their mistakes with United State’s help. Imperialism has to be stopped, especially for a country like Japan. They have not learned anything from the past.
Hi Ted, Its people like Shoushimin whythe Chinese have such hatred for the Japanese. Who can forgive people withno remorse or guilt. Thanks for bringing this brutal inhuman eventback in the spotlight and history book.thanks
I like to see the film.
History is to tell all the truth, and it can’t be amend by anyone,especiallythe Japanese.thank you for telling the west what the real history is.
Do you wish your seet children to be educated in the greatest firewall?”Ikaru Shoushimin” that name means “an angry citizen”, just only suggests what type of fact should have been the fact, how we should be able to reach the fact, like a normal scientist, as a voter of the democratic society in freedom of study.I always wish all Chinese could get the opened web in the world. Some of my Chinese friends ask me to transfer the information to them, who cannot directly see most websites about the other massacres by China. They also want to receive specific radios through the jamming by China.China is the nation based on the greatest censorship that cannot present facts. CCP always control their historians, but Japan does as little as a standard democratic government. That’s why Japan and the US have offered China to collaborate the history, for our peaceful relationship.Japan’s prime minister Abe repeatedly says “the fact of history should be academics’ territory, but not politicians.” I believe he allows every historian to freely study the fact because as a democrat. It can never be propaganda China likes.Ted’s films to come after “Nanking” can be about the other tragedies hidden by CCP, for the facts not in past but in progress.
Thank you very much for making the Nanking documentary film. Mr.Ikaru Shoushimin’s blatant and shameless denial of the Nanking Massacre is the reason why we need your film to tell the world about what happened 69 years ago. The Chinese people will never forget the war crimes committed by the Japanese army, just as the American people will never forget the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese navy.I look forward to seeing your film.