The Politics Of Memory

In contemporary China,the Nanjing Atrocity is remembered both as a concrete historical event and the symbol of violence by the Japanese Army in China,thus any speech or action refuting the Nanjing Atrocity would trigger emotional responses in China and overseas.In 1980 s and 1990 s,controversies over the recognition of the Nanjing Atrocity in Japan spread to China and the Nanjing Atrocity became an international topic.Later on,the academic circles gradually reached consensus based on the discovery of historical materials and the quantitative research results.However,to this day,various memorial controversies around the Nanjing Atrocity still exist.In other words,the Nanjing Atrocity not only exists in the past but also existence in the present.We should think deeply of how to remember it or reactive our memories about it.As a result,this study takes the question consciousness "How to remember the Nanjing Atrocity " as the starting point and tries to discuss what questions exist or can be raised in the memory presentations of the Nanjing Atrocity in China and Japan after the war.During the course of this discussion the author 1)recognizes the gap between the historical world(which focuses on the materials)and the oral account world and studies the problem between written history and people’s memories;2)tries to analyze China’s war memories compared to the arguments of the Nanjing Atrocity within Japan.This analysis gives new interpretations to a lot of materials as well as facilitates the theoretical studies of presentationism,which gives meanings to these materials.On that basis,this study goes beyond the angles of politics,ideologies or the historical problems between China and Japan and exists as an unique study of a number of mass mortality and massacres in the world.