December 13, 2021, is the 8th National Day of Commemoration for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre. Remembering history is not to perpetuate hatred, but to hope that peace-loving people will learn from history and face the future.
In one such book, the author chooses the events of the "Nanjing Massacre" as the object, flips through the media commemorative text from 1937 to 2014, combs through the media coverage changes, and asks the extremely challenging question: "Do we really remember the 'Nanjing Massacre'?" ”
The book, The Texture of Memory: Media, Trauma and the Nanjing Massacre, allows people to "rediscover" the historical memory of the Nanjing Massacre little by little in the process of official presentation and grassroots interaction. This process of gradual discovery and construction is like the "texture of memory" emerging little by little.
This article is a book review of the book, the original title of "How Should History Be Remembered?" , published in Guangming Daily.
Mencius said that Confucius's "Spring and Autumn" was afraid of thieves, which emphasized the significance of historical narratives for political order. However, Confucius himself wrote the Spring and Autumn Period with pen and sharpening, but he praised Dong Hu, who was straight and straight, as a "good history". Obviously, there have always been different understandings of how important historical events should be recorded in the Chinese cultural tradition.
Once practice is recorded "historically", it becomes the collective memory of a nation and shapes a continuous and stable value. However, it is relatively easy to summarize the "narrative" of ancient history, because since the narrative of history is closely related to the political environment, how to deal with the narrative strategy of recent historical events in order to understand the "collective memory" constructed therein does require a certain amount of theoretical courage.
The book "The Texture of Memory: Media, Trauma and the Nanjing Massacre" by Li Hongtao and Huang Shunming selects the most traumatic "Nanjing Massacre" events in modern times, combs through the changes in media reports during the 1940s to the establishment of the National Day of Public Worship, and raises the extremely challenging question: "Do we really remember the 'Nanjing Massacre'?" Thus, the book can be seen both as a reflection on the media narrative of the Nanjing Massacre and as an exploration of the possibility of constructing values from history.
Trauma: Why We Treat Japan
The event of revising textbooks is so sensitive
Trauma and resistance are the main themes of the current narrative of China's modern and contemporary history, which is an objective description of China's imperialist aggression in modern times. From the Opium War, the Sino-Japanese War to the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Western powers and Japan used the war to carry out a crazy plunder of China's territory and resources, from the Yuanmingyuan to extraterritorial jurisdiction, Chinese suffered humiliation and rose up to fight, so after the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, the focus of media reports was on "single-minded resistance to Japan". After 1949, the narrative of the Nanjing Massacre underwent some changes.
Through an analysis of the distribution of People's Daily articles about the Nanjing Massacre from 1949 to 2012, the book found that by 1976, there were not many articles about the Nanjing Massacre. It wasn't until 1982, after the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology tried to revise textbooks to deny the history of aggression against China that the People's Daily rediscovered the Nanjing Massacre, so the book reflected this change with the "rediscovered" Nanjing Massacre.
It can be seen from this that the crazy move of the Japanese right-wing forces to tamper with history has promoted the "traumatic" memory of the Chinese. In fact, since 1940, Japan's aggression against China and even East Asia has been the most severe, and although it has been tried by the Far East War Criminals Trial Institute, Japanese political circles have always had insufficient understanding of the harm caused by Japanese militarism to East Asian and even world civilization, and lacked sincere apologies. As a result, the Japanese textbook incident in particular became a factor that stimulated the "traumatic" nerves of Chinese. In 1982, we began the activity of "building a museum and compiling a history of monuments", and on August 15, 1985, the memorial hall of the compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese army invading China was officially completed and opened to the public. Inspired by the Hiroshima Peace Rally in Japan, on December 13, 1994, the memorial hall held for the first time the "Ceremony for People from All Walks of Life in Nanjing to Mourn the Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Army Invading China", and the commemoration activities have continued since then.
In 1982, Japan's "history textbook incident" also directly promoted the development of domestic research on the history of the Nanjing Massacre, and published a large number of academic works and historical materials, of which the "Nanjing Massacre Historical Materials" has been published in 72 volumes, including about 30 million words of information on the perpetrator, the injured party and the third party.
Memory of the World Heritage Site and National Day of Remembrance
Historical memory requires many ways to construct. In terms of the book's methodology, the authors clearly state the positive and negative roles of the media they study in constructing traumatic memories: one is that the media can present trauma in a highly dramatic way, and the other is that the media is also limited by media rules and other conditions. It is in this contradiction that "cultural trauma" is historically stereotyped. To some extent, cultural trauma evokes feelings of shock and fear, but these feelings do not come from the event itself, but from the "meaning" that people give it. In this process, the author summarizes four themes of media articles since 1982: as a commemoration of historical events, a refutation of Japan's words and deeds in denial of the Nanjing Massacre, reflection and repentance from all walks of life in Japan, and evidence of the Nanjing Massacre. The theme of such an article highlights two problems: one is to prompt Japan to abandon its attempts to falsify history by providing evidence of various atrocities committed by the Japanese army at that time, and the other is to emphasize that the intrinsic motivation of China to commemorate the victims of the Nanjing Massacre lies in creating a peaceful future.
More critical, however, is the establishment of a "place of tangible memory," as the lack of institutional memory sites is an important reason for the dilemma of constructing collective memory. China began to reconstruct the memory of the Nanjing Massacre from the level of recognition of international organizations and the construction of state rituals. First, on February 27, 2014, the Seventh Session of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People's Congress passed a decision to designate December 13 as the National Day of Commemoration for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre. Every year on December 13, the state holds a public memorial service to mourn the victims of the Nanjing Massacre and all those who were killed by the Japanese invaders during the Japanese imperialist war of aggression against China.
On December 13, 2014, President Xi Jinping pointed out in his "Speech at the National Memorial Ceremony for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre", "History will not change with the changes of the times, and facts will not disappear with clever words." At the same time, he also pointed out that the commemoration of the Nanjing Massacre was not to reinforce hatred, but to call for justice and peace. This can be seen as transcending the memory of "trauma" based on four self-confidences.
As a tragedy in the history of human civilization, the Nanjing Massacre is not only a trauma for China, but also a tragedy for the world. The 47 new items in the 2015 Memory of the World Heritage List reviewed by unesco's Memory of the World Project include the Nanjing Massacre Archives declared by China, which has promoted the international awareness of the historical facts of the Nanjing Massacre.
In addition to these institutional "memory projects", other literary and artistic works, especially documentary literary works and film works, have also largely made everyone begin to understand the tragedy of the Nanjing Massacre.
Explore the theme of human social progress
As a work on the theory of "memory", the book is impressive not only in discussing the media coverage strategies of the "Nanjing Massacre", but also raises a more profound question, that is, as a traumatic memory, the current construction method "lacks the most central part, that is, the presentation of the victim, especially the victim's self-talk." The author believes that in the face of such a huge task as "testifying to history", the proportion of witnesses and perpetrators seems to be more prominent. As a victim, the "collective" appeal of "Chinese people" as a spokesperson has led to "the narrative of the victim and its subjectivity have been suppressed and weakened." In this way, the powerful symbolic power that the victim may bring with it as the core of the narrative will also be suppressed. Therefore, while embodying the will of the state, exploring the essence of Japan's aggression from the perspective of "the evil of human nature" and understanding the dilemma of human existence from the suffering of individuals may have more effective transmission effect.
In this way, we can see the basis for the more general construction of the memory of the Nanjing Massacre in the 1980s. At the 2014 National Memorial Ceremony for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, Xi Jinping proposed: "In the more than 100 years since modern times, the people of Chinese have experienced the hardships of war countless times and have better understood the preciousness of peace. The predation of the weak is not the way for human beings to coexist, and the use of force is not a peaceful solution for mankind. Peace rather than war, cooperation rather than confrontation, is the eternal theme of human social progress. "It's a very insightful insight. Indeed, through the tragedy of the Nanjing Massacre, we can analyze Japanese militarism in modern times, and we can rise to the level of reflection on the nation-state system, Asia and the West, and even modernity. In this way, the Nanjing Massacre will not only be regarded as the peak of China's humiliation in modern times, but as a driving force for national rejuvenation, and at the same time provide a reference for the survival and development of mankind. Because cooperation, not war, is the theme of human social progress.
By extension, this book is also of reference significance for us to reflect on how to construct the narrative model of modern China. For example, how should we discern the memory of the media strategy in modern times for us to form the historical process of modern China, so as to explore the possibilities of various historical writing.
(Author: Pan Yu, Editor, Department of Chinese Min University Press)
The Texture of Memory: Medium, Trauma and the Nanjing Massacre
By Li Hongtao and Huang Shunming
Synopsis
Taking history as the scripture and different media scenes as the weft, "The Texture of Memory" deeply explores the process of the construction of the trauma and memory shaping of the Nanjing Massacre, revealing how state power, local memory communities, and mass media have combined to shape the memory politics and memory culture of the Nanjing Massacre in contemporary China.
With the cultural trauma theory as the core of the analytical framework, the book traces the construction process of the Nanjing Massacre trauma narrative in the mainstream media, the diffusion and reproduction in memorial halls and online public worship activities, and the narrative challenges faced in cyberspace. Although the "medium" is the core, this book does not focus on the investigation of static "text" and "symbols", but strives to reveal the production and reproduction of trauma narratives, the generation of media memorial spaces, and the practice of memory on the media stage and in memory places.
About the Author
Li Hongtao, a native of Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang. Ph.D. in Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Associate Professor, Institute of International Culture and Social Thought, School of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University, And Fellow, Nanjing Institute for the History of the Holocaust and International Peace. His research interests include media and collective memory, media sociology, and international communication. He has published two translations and more than 20 academic papers in journals such as THE China Quarterly, Media, Culture & Society, International Journal of Press/Politics, Asian Journal of Communication and Journalism and Communication Studies.
Huang Shunming, a native of Chongqing. Ph.D. in Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Associate Researcher, School of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Director of the Institute of Media and Memory, And Researcher of the Nanjing Institute of The History of the Massacre and International Peace. His main research interests include media and collective memory, sociology of honors, and sociology of journalism. He has published a monograph entitled "Coronation: The System and Practice of Journalism Awards" and published more than 80 academic papers.
Brief table of contents
Chapter 1 Introduction: For the Remembrance of Never Forget
From Atrocities to the Holocaust 1937-1948
Chapter Three: Narrative of Shame and The Construction of Trauma 1949-2012
Chapter Four: Identifying the "Place of Memory" with Numbers
Chapter 5 The Generation of Online Sacrifice Space
Chapter Six: The Collaboration and Contention of Cyber memory
Chapter 7 Conclusion: Mediating and the Traumatic Process
exegesis
bibliography
postscript