'BAckground of the war'China and Japan; two conflicting countries separated only by a narrow stretch of ocean. China, a country rich in its writing systems, architecture, culture, religion, philosophy and law highly influenced Japan. However during the Meiji Restoration, Japan was enforced to modernise into an open trading nation by the Western counties. The Empire of Japan viewed China as an out-dated civilisation, unable to neither compete nor defend itself against Western forces as through the First and Second Opium Wars. Thus through Japan’s continuous chain of invasions and war crimes committed in China from the mid-19th century to this day resulted the current attitude between China and Japan.
The main conflicts occurred through the recent centuries was the Sino-Japanese Wars, the first being the Qing Dynasty against the Empire of Japan primarily over the control of Korea in 1894 to 1895. While the Second Sino-Japanese Wars was during the 1937 to 1945 between the People’s Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. But during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Imperial Japanese Army truly imposed its terror to not only China but the worldwide nation as they committed mass murder and war crimes beyond any war treaty. The Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking was the prominent event during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It is a rare example of simultaneous gendercides against people of all age, class, and race. The Imperial Japanese Army targeted Chinese women, thousands killed after rapes while the others remaining suffered from injuries or aftermath trauma of rape. |
‘Raped, Butchered, Slaughtered’Women were raped, butchered and slaughtered. The large majority
of women died while excoriating the harsh gang-rape and if they survived they were killed immediately through mutilation. They were stripped naked; their breast cut off, bayoneted, stabbed through in the abdomen with the intestines spilling out and shoved with large objects into their vagina. The women were killed in a barbaric manner and the survivors were traumatized from the horror of their parents and siblings murdered in this horrific manner. "Surviving Japanese veterans claim that the army had officially outlawed the rape of enemy women," writes Iris Chang. "the military policy forbidding rape only encouraged soldiers to kill their victims afterwards." From this we can see that even the Japanese veterans knew the horrific actions were barbaric but the Japanese still performed their ats of savagery even when it was forbidden. |
This image depicts the Eight Nation Alliance (consisted of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States) splitting a piece of bread which symbolises China. The Eight Nation Alliance intervened in China over the period of the 19th – 20th century in attempts of taking over China and eliminating The Boxers; a group of Chinese rebellions led by the Qing government.