When Bad Things Happen… (1)
Reflections on the 70th Anniversary of the Rape of Nanjing
“The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.”
Steinbeck, in his speech at the 1968 Nobel Banquet that honored him, expressed a belief in the perfectibility of man that he thought could come, in part, through the artist’s inherent mandate to speak honestly. I believe that historians too are charged with the same task; because man has “…taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.”
Several years ago Rabbi Harold Kushner made popular a treatise on the Old Teatament Book of Job. When Good Things Happen to Bad People took on the daunting task of explaining why God, in the allegorcal text, might have subjected his dutiful servant Job to all manner of physical and emotional trauma while expecting him to be obedient and adoring. The book purportedly meant to give us comfort by explaining what laymen already had resigned themselves to knowing about Job: adversity just happens and we need to content ourselves with the knowledge that God has a greater plan to which we are not yet privy.
I never accepted Kushner’s easy out; so when tasked with teaching the Bible as Literature to Chinese students this year, I studied Job knowing the first question my young scholars would ask was identical to my own: why would man’s creator willingly torture a loving being, cast in his own image, for the sake of a cosmic bet with the devil? I found the answer in the actions of Job’s friends, not those of God as he was portrayed by the allegory’s author: Job’s friends willingly abandoned him. It was with that realization that Job became, for me, less of a lesson about obedience and worship and clearly a moral guide to my responsibilities to my fellow man.
When the Japanese invaded China in 1937 the world chose not to respond to reports of atrocities that were themselves biblical in magnitude. In one of the most perfect examples of repeated cosmic irony, John Rabe, a member of Germany’s Nazi party became the “Angel” or “Living Buddha of Nanjing” alongside its “goddess” an American Christian missionary by the name of Minnie Vautrin. After being rebuffed by their respective diplomatic liaisons they established a “safe zone” that saved more than 250,000 people from being tortured, burned alive, buried alive, decapitated, bayoneted raped or shot for sport. They acted for God, or in God’s stead, as a behavioral contagion of evil spread through the occupying Japanese Army.
The irony did not stop there: Vautrin, suffering from exhaustion, returned to America soon after the six-week ordeal and succumbed to the darkness of disillusionment by committing suicide. Rabe was arrested by his own party for his involvement in Nanjing, and then tried after the war for his earlier Nazi affiliation depleting his resources, devastating his health and forcing him to live in poverty.
After learning of Rabe’s plight the survivors of Nanjing took up collections to assist him in holding on to a life Vautrin could not bear to live out. Both Rabe and Vautrin now have monuments erected to their memory in the city of Nanjing where they are rightfully memorialized as icons of goodness and charity.
If it is the duty of the artist to expose the truth to the light, it is the job of the historian to frame and disseminate the events that can re-shape our souls whether we think them to be temporal or divine.
Rabe and Vautrin did not leave the Jobs of Nanjing to suffer the mysteries of fate: They were courageous against uncertainty, raised rational voices amidst the absurdity of war, and thankfully were more committed than the closest of personal friends during a time of horror and anguish.
Just yesterday I read where 46% of people answering a poll on the social networking site Facebook said they had no desire to see the recently released powerful documentary on the massacre at Nanking. It is likely the emotional cost, not the price of a ticket keeping them away from the film. Some, like Job’s fair weather friends, do not feel the need for humanitarian counsel. It seems some things are slow to change, but that should not stop anyone, artist advocate or historian, from authenticating the past by giving voice to those are not heard even in the terrible silence of indifference. Carolyn Forche, in her award winning book, The Country Between Us writes: “There is nothing one man will not do to another.” Steinbeck was right: we have usurped the authority and have supposed ourselves to carry the omniscience once ascribed to God.
while I agree with Steinbeck, Kushner and I diverge: I don’t think God, in any any of the earthly renditions we have supposed for his form or character, plays cosmic dice at our expense. And while I know first-hand the pain man is capable of inflicting, I choose to include charity among the many intentional acts that we might choose to commit.
Post Script:
True friends are hard to come by in any age. I am blessed with the unconditional love of long-time associates. within hours of writing this post one of my long-suffering allies lost his son. Bob, Sharon, Barb: My heartfelt condolences during an ordeal no family should ever have to experience.
–Lonnie
Other Nanjing readings and resources: Peking Duck
Asia Times and The Sunday Independent CND and ESNW
Posted 23 January, 2008 in Charity in China, Human Rights, Heartsongs, American Professor in China, Nanjing, Human Rights China, Violence, 中国, Intercultural Issues, War, Expats, China Editorials, Personal Notes, Japan
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