Staircase History and the Subprime Morality of the Nanking Massacre

The Great Nanjing Massacre, by Zi Jian Li, 1992
The French have a term for it, L’esprit de l’escalier, or “staircase wit.” It means bright and witty sayings thought of too late as one is exiting a party. But history has its own “staircase” element as well, namely events that receive historical attention much later than they should if, as we are supposed to believe, they were so important to begin with.
A perfect example of this is the “Nanking Massacre” of 1937, now a much-contested historical event in the Sino-Japanese War (1937—45). The Chinese claim that the Japanese went on a brutal rampage resulting in 300,000 deaths. The Japanese claim they were responding to irregular troops in civilian clothing using guerrilla tactics, with a much lower death toll.
Even though this is now presented as a pivotal historical event and something that we are all supposed to know, the surprising thing is that, like the Jewish Holocaust from the same era (which began to be used to advance Jewish ethnic interests after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and really only gained traction in the 1970s [here, p. 42ff]), it got off to a rather late start, becoming suddenly very, very important decades after it actually happened.
Not only had Clio the Muse of History descended the staircase before anything of importance had been written about this supposedly groundbreaking event, but she had climbed into her carriage, arrived home, and kicked off her shoes as well. If Nanking was so important surely it should have been broached at the first practical opportunity, say in the immediate post-war period. Of course it wasn’t, not by the Chinese nor by anyone else. As it was, the event had to wait until the publication of Iris Chang’s best seller The Rape of Nanking in 1997 to really get its historical marching boots on — a full 60 years after the event! Some staircase! Read more









