[1] It is striking that on July 7, 2004, Denton writes, “… special ceremonies were held, including personal oral narrations by living witnesses.” This of course occurred during Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's term in office (2001-2005) when he heated up the bilateral history war and froze diplomatic exchanges by repeatedly visiting Yasukuni Shrine, six times in total. Four years and two Japanese prime ministers later, the frenzied Chinese response to Koizumi's provocations has abated, and key dates in the two nations' shared history are no longer natural opportunities to poke the wounds of history and engage in recrimination. See Kirk Denton, “Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Chinese Museums”, Japan Focus, Oct. 17, 2007.

[2] On national humiliation as identity and nationalist contestations see Peter Gries, China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2004.

[3] The documentary by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, Nanking, (Thinkfilm, 2007) evokes the horrors and devastation of the Japanese invasion and ensuing onslaught. This documentary focuses on the role of western residents of Nanjing in establishing an International Safety Zone for noncombatants with readings from their letters and diaries spliced with archival footage and interviews with survivors.

[4] Phil Deans, “Diminishing Returns”: Prime Minister Koizumi's Visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in the Context of East Asian Nationalisms“, East Asia (2007) 24, pp. 269-294 (287)

[5] For a discussion of the politics of war memory in Japan see, Jeff Kingston, “Awkward Talisman: War memory, Reconciliation and Yasukuni”, East Asia, 24 (2007), pp. 295-318. For the politics of war memory in China, see Mark Eykholt, “Aggression, Victimization, and Chinese Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre”, in Joshua Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000, pp. 11-69.

[6] Denton, op.cit., elucidates the evolution of war memory in China from heroic resistance to victims of atrocity. In Nanjing, for obvious reasons, it could only be about victimization. In interviews with six Chinese scholars specializing in the Nanjing massacres, there was no support for this analysis of evolving war memory. They see no clear dichotomy between narratives of heroic resistance and victimization in public history as described by Denton, arguing instead that both perspectives are inextricably intertwined, along the lines that Gries argues.

[7] Zhu Jianrong confirms this perception, arguing that a content analysis of Chinese textbooks indicates that there has not been any increase of anti-Japanese content in the 1990s contrary to prevailing misperceptions. Zhu Jianrong, “Japan's Role in the Rise of Chinese Nationalism: History and Prospects”, in Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and Kazuhiko Togo, ed., East Asia's Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism. NY: Praeger Security International, 2008, pp. 180-189. Zhu draws on an unpublished study of Chinese textbooks cited on p. 183.

[8] The old museum also displayed excavated skeletons, but they had been laid out to make them more easily recognizable. The new excavations left the skeletons undisturbed to better convey the chaos of the mass burials and make the evidence more compelling precisely because it does not appear “constructed”. This “hot” evidence also is aimed at creating a sense of immediacy to convince skeptics that the museum site is indeed a mass graveyard where Japanese hoped to bury their crimes. Interview, Yang Xiamen, July 7, 2008.

[9] For an assessment of the numbers debate see Fujiwara Akira, “The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview,” Japan Focus, Oct. 23, 2007.

For an intriguing discussion of atrocities and how they are remembered (or not) see Mark Selden, “Japanese and American War Atrocities, Historical Memory and Reconcilation: WWII to Today,” Japan Focus, Apr. 15, 2008.

[10] On the idea of the museum arising from the 1982 textbook controversy see Daqing Yang, “Mirror for the Future or the History Card? Understanding the ‘History Problem’” in Marie Soderberg (ed.), Chinese-Japanese Relations in the Twenty-First Century: Complementarity and Conflict. (London: Routledge, 2002). The misreporting of the revision by Nippon Television and subsequently the Asahi Shimbun is extensively analyzed by Caroline Rose, Interpreting History in Sino-Japanese Relations, Routledge Curzon: London, 1998. For an overview of the textbook controversy see Claudia Schneider, “The Japanese History Textbook Controversy in East Asian Perspective”, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (May 2008), 617, pp.107-122. Also Daiki Shibuchi, Japan's History Textbook Controversy: Social Movements and Governments in East Asia, 1982-2006. Discussion Paper #4 (March 2008), Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies.

For details and analysis of Ienaga Saburo's pioneering lawsuits challenging state censorship of textbooks, see Yoshiko Nozaki and Hiromitsu Inokuchi, “Japanese Education, Nationalism, and Ienaga Saburo's Textbook Lawsuits”, in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, ed., Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, pp. 96-126.

[11] The textbook controversy was invoked at a luncheon roundtable with six Chinese scholars July 7, 2008.

[12] There was a trend in the mid-1990s towards a more forthright reckoning in Japanese secondary school textbooks, but this provoked a backlash among the “Dr. Feelgoods” of Japanese history and the establishment of the Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashi Rekishi Kyokasho o Tsukurukai, hereafter referred to as Tsukurukai). This group favors an exculpatory and valorous historical narrative. As part of Tsukurukai's efforts to shape public history and war memory, it published a textbook in 2001 (revised in 2005) for junior high schools. Extensive media coverage both in Japan and internationally conveys an impression that this textbook reflects the public mood and that Japanese are seeking an identity grounded in a more assertive nationalism based on an unapologetic view of Japan's shared history with Asia. Moreover, as Sven Saaler concludes, the Tsukurukai text has significantly shaped public discourse over this past to the extent that other publishers have revised their textbooks by retreating from the somewhat more critical mid-1990s narratives and have moved closer towards the Tsukurukai narrative. The media hype translated into unusually high sales of the textbook, including large volume sales to conservative organizations, reinforcing and amplifying its influence over public discourse. Bestowing best-seller status on this text then feeds the media frenzy and stimulates more curiosity. Sven Saaler, Politics Memory and Public Opinion: The History Textbook Controversy and Japanese Society. Deutsches Institut fur Japanstudien: Munich, 2005. Also see David McNeill and Mark Selden, “Asia battles over war history: The legacy of the Pacific War looms over Tokyo's plans for the future,” Japan Focus, April 12, 2005. and Yoshiko Nozaki “The Comfort Women Controversy: History and Testimony,” Japan Focus, July 29, 2005.

[13] See Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics, 1945-2005. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2006.

[14] For analysis of this perspective and the rise of history activism see James Reilly, “China's History Activism and Sino-Japanese Relations”, China: An International Journal 4.2(2006), pp. 189-216. On Deng's desire to embarrass the Japanese and protect his back from domestic opponents see Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt : Memories of War in Germany and Japan, NY: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1994, p. 126. This interpretation is rejected by Zhu Jianrong, op.cit., who holds that Deng sought good relations with advanced industrialized nations including Japan and avoided making an issue of the past because he knew China needed Japan's assistance to modernize. He argues that Jiang Zemin played a key role in whipping up anti-Japanese nationalism in the 1990s.

[15] Reilly, Seraphim and Deans, op.cit., all argue that China has played the history card to extract quasi-reparations.

[16] According to Reilly, the genie of history activism unleashed by the state morphed into an autonomous grassroots movement the state could no longer control and more recently into what he terms oppositional activism. op.cit.

[17] The Treaty of Peace and Friendship with China was ratified in Japan on October 18, 1978, a day after the 14 Class-A war criminals were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine. Conservatives opposed to normalization of relations with China were also mollified by the passage of the Gengo Law in 1978 that gave legal status to the practice of linking official dates to the year of an Emperor's reign, i.e. 2008 is Heisei 20. Deans, op.cit., 282.

[18] Zhu, argues that successful modernization has created a large middle class that demands, “…respect from other nations. Nationalism thus acquired a social basis.” Zhu, op.cit., p.184.

[19] Ian Buruma, “The Nanjing Massacre as a Historical Symbol,” in Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing, ed. Feifei Li, Robert Sabella and David Liu (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), pp. 1-9.

[20] Ian Buruma (1994), op.cit., p. 185

[21] Schneider, op.cit., p. 116.

[22] I am indebted to Sven Saaler regarding this point. Personal communication, 8/15/2008).

[23] Deans, op.cit. p. 288.

[24] See Daqing Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre: Reflections on Historical Inquiry”, in Joshua Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000, pp. 133-179.

[25] See Takeshi Yoshida. “The Nanjing Massacre” Changing Contours of History and Memory in Japan, China and the US“, Japan Focus, December 19, 2006. Also see Yoshida's, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking“: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States. Oxford University Press: New York, 2006.

[26] For analysis of the alleged contest see Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, “The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971-75”, Journal of Japanese Studies 26-2, Summer 2000, 307-340.

[27] For related discussion see Selden, op.cit.

[28] For a more accurate and nuanced assessment of Japanese attitudes and public opinion regarding history see Philip Seaton, Japan's Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ in Historical Consciousness of WWII. Routledge: London, 2007.

[29] Seraphim, op.cit.

[30] For example see Bob Wakabayashi, ed., The Nanking Atrocity 1937-38: Complicating the Picture. Bergahn Books, NY, 2007.