Sirens wailed in China's city of Nanjing Thursday, 75 years after Japanese troops embarked on mass killing and rape, as a modern-day territorial row between the pair saw Tokyo scrambling fighter jets. The two countries - the world's second- and third-largest economies - have extensive trade and business links, but the weight of Japan's wartime atrocities still bears heavily on their relationship.
Nearly 10,000 people sang the Chinese national anthem at a commemoration at the Nanjing Massacre Museum, as soldiers in dress uniforms carried memorial wreaths across a stage and officials urged remembrance of the past. Beforehand an elderly woman cried as she placed flowers by the names of family members listed among the victims on a grey stone wall, and a group of Chinese and Japanese Buddhist monks chanted sutras to pray for world peace.
"We are here to recall history, grieve for compatriots who suffered and died, and educate the people about the lessons of history," said Nanjing Communist Party chief Yang Weize, the only government official who spoke. China says 300,000 civilians and soldiers died in a spree of killing, rape and destruction in the six weeks after the Japanese military entered its then capital on December 13, 1937.
Some foreign academics put the number of deaths lower, including China historian Jonathan Spence who estimates that 42,000 soldiers and citizens were killed and 20,000 women raped, many of whom later died. On its website, the Japanese foreign ministry concedes only that "the killing of a large number of non-combatants occurred" and says that "it is difficult to determine which the correct number is".
Some ultra-conservative Japanese politicians dispute that atrocities ever took place in Nanjing. Fewer than 200 survivors remain, according to Chinese estimates. One of them, Li Zhong, 87, said he can never forgive, recalling how people had to restrain a man who grabbed a knife to kill Japanese soldiers after his wife was raped. "There are fewer and fewer of us survivors every year," he said. "We must never forget history." Kai Satoru, the son of a Japanese soldier who served in China, was among the hand-picked audience, which included Chinese students, soldiers and government officials, as well as Japanese NGO representatives.
"I am here to admit the crimes. They (Japanese soldiers) competed to kill people," he said. The 75th anniversary has taken on added meaning given the poor state of bilateral ties. Japan on Thursday scrambled F-15 fighters after a Chinese state-owned plane entered airspace over disputed islands in the South China Sea. Chinese government ships have moved in and out of waters around the islands - known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan and the Diaoyu Islands by China - for more than two months.
However, this was the first time that Chinese planes have ever intruded into Japanese airspace, according to the defence ministry in Tokyo, while China defended its right to overfly what it says is its own territory. Wu Jinan of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies called for vigilance, given the current state of ties. "We need to remain on serious alert about the tendency in Japan to deny the fact of Japan's wartime aggression," he said.
"The anniversary may only cool relations further to reach a freezing point. Currently, it's hard to see any signs of improvement." Protests against Japan erupted in Chinese cities earlier this year, causing an estimated $100 million in damages and losses to Japanese firms, after Tokyo bought the disputed East China Sea islands out of private ownership.
Chinese dissidents say the Communist Party nurtures anti-Japanese sentiment as part of its claim to a right to rule. Beijing typically cracks down on public protests but the anti-Japan demonstrations were allowed to take place. A Japanese diplomat, who declined to be named, said Tokyo hoped for an improvement in relations after his country holds general elections on Sunday and China's own leadership transition completes next year.
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