The movie does not have a central storyline, though it follows individual members of a Chinese family during the Nanjing Massacre. The movie begins after the Japanese have captured the city and begin a "cleanup" phase. Homes are broken into and burned, the residents killed and raped. Bowing to international pressure, the Japanese government has agreed to establish refugee safety zones, only to violate the agreement at their whim, knowing that there is no force that can really prevent them from doing so. As a result, they regularly enter the refugee camps, kidnapping women and executing Chinese policemen and suspected soldiers. Several foreign residents try to defend the refugees, and while they carry weight due to their political ties, they ultimately cannot stand against the armed troops. Some of the foreigners depicted in the film include the German businessman John Rabe and U.S. missionary Minnie Vautrin.
A local man who speaks Japanese interprets the soldiers' orders to the Chinese civilians. In reality, the speeches are meant simply to lure the Chinese onto the streets, where they are shot and killed wholesale with machine guns. A handful of resistance remains, however, and one Chinese man feigns death, and then pulls a grenade from a passing soldier, blowing them both up. Having now been unofficially employed by the Japanese, the interpreter assists them in distributing propaganda and is accosted by his fellow Chinese as being a traitor and collaborator. He dismisses their indignation, taunting them with their own lack of will to fight the Japanese. He follows a high-ranking Japanese officer around the country. One day a couple of Japanese reporters show up to interview the officer and take pictures of him. They request to have the officer pose with his sword, ready to strike a Chinese man. Having no other Chinese around, they suggest he use the interpreter, who has little choice but to go along with it. Unsurprisingly, as the Japanese officer poses for the camera, he actually goes through and kills his lackey, to the horror of the cameramen.
A group of Muslim carrying corpses of their own stumbled upon Japanese troops, which proceed to harass them before continuing their journey to burial site.
Members of the family remain hiding in their house, believing the end of military engagement to signify safety. Soon, however, some Japanese troops break down the door. The eldest son, along with two small children, John and Jean, are told to flee the house. In the meantime, the parents and an elderly grandmother try to distract the guards. The kids run off and, over the course of the film, are made to survive on the streets. However, the small children become isolated when the elder son is rounded up with a group of other men. The elder son, having been given official papers by the Japanese, eventually returns home to find that the parents are dead, the mother's body having been stripped naked and apparently raped. Their grandmother, alive but also apparently having been raped, is obviously distraught, lying on the floor still half-naked. The troops, still inside the house, immediately accost the son and kill him. Later, the two small children also make their way back to the house, only to find their relatives dead and the grandmother about to burn the bodies inside the house, along with herself. At that moment, a patrol discovers the two kids standing in the doorway, and they immediately proceed to assault Jean, the little girl. Having no other recourse, the grandmother pushes John, the last of her family, out the door and locks it. While the soldiers are distracted in their attempt to rape the girl, the melancholy grandmother sets the house on fire, trapping everyone inside to a fiery death.
The Japanese troops surround a Buddhist temple. Inside, the pacifist monks are praying. The troops bring them out one at a time, killing them outside. The Japanese, claiming to be Buddhists also, presumably want to keep the temple itself clean. The bodies of the monks are stacked in a grisly pile, and each monk that is brought out is an unfortunate witness to the scene. Eventually, the troops work their way to the last man, the elder priest, who resigns himself to his fate with a look of disgust towards the Japanese. Another monk, who manages not to be killed so far, is standing in line for food, when a scuffle breaks out due to women who have disguised themselves as men, trying to avoid rape. The monk attempts to stop the violence, and becomes entangled in it when they strip him down and try to force him to have sex with one of the women. He refuses, and the troops slash him in the groin.
In the epilogue, it is stated that most of the Japanese officers depicted in the film were tried for war crimes and executed.
The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, and arson. The massacre is considered to be one of the worst wartime atrocities.
The Battle of Nanking was fought in early December 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of Nanjing (Nanking), the capital of the Republic of China.
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is a bestselling 1997 non-fiction book written by Iris Chang about the 1937–1938 Nanjing Massacre — the mass murder and mass rape of Chinese civilians committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It describes the events leading up to the Nanjing Massacre, provides a graphic detail of the war crimes and atrocities committed by Japanese troops, and lambastes the Japanese government for its refusal to rectify the atrocities. It also criticizes the Japanese people for their ignorance about the massacre. It is one of the first major English-language books to introduce the Nanjing Massacre to Western and Eastern readers alike, and has been translated into several languages. The book significantly renewed public interest in Japanese wartime conduct in China, Korea, Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
John Heinrich Detlef Rabe was a German businessman and Nazi Party member best known for his efforts to stop war crimes during the Japanese Nanjing Massacre and his work to protect and help Chinese civilians during the massacre that ensued. The Nanking Safety Zone, which he helped to establish, sheltered approximately 250,000 Chinese people from being killed. He officially represented Germany and acted as senior chief of the European-U.S. establishment that remained in Nanjing, the Chinese capital at the time, when the city fell to the Japanese troops.
Men Behind the Sun is a 1988 Hong Kong historical exploitation horror film directed by T. F. Mou, and written by Mei Liu, Wen Yuan Mou and Dun Jing Teng. The film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 conducted on Chinese and Siberian prisoners towards the end of the war.
Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin was an American missionary, diarist, educator and president of Ginling College. A Christian missionary in China for 28 years, she became known for caring and protecting at least 10,000 Chinese refugees during the Nanjing Massacre in China, during which she kept a now-published diary, at times even challenging the Japanese authorities for documents in an attempt to protect the civilians staying at her college.
The Nanking Safety Zone was a demilitarized zone for Chinese civilians set up on the eve of the Japanese breakthrough in the Battle of Nanking. Following the example of Jesuit Father Robert Jacquinot de Besange in Shanghai, the foreigners in Nanjing created the Nanking Safety Zone, managed by the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone led by German businessman and Nazi party member John Rabe. The zone and the activities of the International Committee were responsible for safely harboring 250,000 Chinese civilians from death and violence during the Nanjing Massacre.
The hundred man killing contest was a newspaper account of a contest between Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, two Japanese Army officers, during the Japanese invasion of China, over who could kill 100 people the fastest while using a sword. The two officers were later executed on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their involvement.
The International Committee was established in 1937 to establish and manage the Nanking Safety Zone.
Nanking is a 2007 documentary film about the Nanjing Massacre, committed in 1937 by the Japanese army in the former capital city Nanjing, China. It was inspired by Iris Chang's book The Rape of Nanking (1997), which discussed the persecution and murder of the Chinese by the Imperial Japanese Army in the then-capital of Nanjing at the outset of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). The film draws on letters and diaries from the era as well as archive footage and interviews with surviving victims and perpetrators of the massacre. Contemporary actors play the roles of the Western missionaries, professors, and businessmen who formed the Nanking Safety Zone to protect the city's civilians from Japanese forces. Particular attention is paid to Nazi Party member John Rabe, a German businessman who organized the Nanking Safety Zone, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon who remained in Nanjing to care for legions of victims, and Minnie Vautrin, a missionary educator who rendered aid to thousands of Nanjing's women.
The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe is a collection of the personal journals of John Rabe, a German businessman who lived in Nanjing at the time of the Nanjing Massacre in 1937–1938. The book contains the diaries that Rabe kept during the Nanjing Massacre, writing from his personal experience and observation of the events that took place. It also excerpts Rabe's experience in immediate post-war Berlin, then occupied by Soviet troops. Rabe's diaries were made known and quoted by author Iris Chang during the research for her book, The Rape of Nanking; they were subsequently translated from German to English by John E. Woods and published in the United States in 1998. The diaries of Rabe could only provide witnesses of a small corner of the Nanjing Massacre, because of the limitation of his activity in the safe zone.
City of Life and Death is a 2009 Chinese drama film written and directed by Lu Chuan, marking his third feature film. The film deals with the Battle of Nanjing and the following massacre committed by the Japanese army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The film is also known as Nanking! Nanking! or Nanjing! Nanjing!. The film was released in China on April 22, 2009, and became a major box office success in the country, earning CN¥150 million in its first two and a half weeks alone.
John Rabe is a 2009 biographical film directed by Florian Gallenberger, based upon John Rabe's published wartime diaries.
Don't Cry, Nanking, also known as Nanjing 1937, is a 1995 Chinese film about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in the former capital city Nanjing, China.
Nanjing Massacre denial is the pseudohistorical claim denying that Imperial Japanese forces murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians in the city of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. This is relevant today in Sino-Japanese relations. Most historians accept the findings of the Tokyo tribunal with respect to the scope and nature of the atrocities which were committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after the Battle of Nanjing. In Japan, however, there has been a debate over the extent and nature of the massacre with some historians attempting to downplay or outright deny that the massacre took place.
The Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre is the representation of the events of the Nanjing Massacre as history, in various languages and cultural contexts, in the years since these events took place. This historiography is disparate and sometimes contested, owing to conflicting currents of Chinese and Japanese nationalist sentiment and national interest, as well as the fog of war.
Bernhard Arp Sindberg, also known as "Mr. Xin" or "Xinbo", "The Greatest Dane", or the "Shining Buddha" was born in Aarhus, Denmark. His travels in his youth brought him to China, where he was one of few foreigners who witnessed the Nanjing Massacre. Sindberg tried to help Chinese refugees by allowing them to stay in the concrete factory where he worked as a security guard; his photos, letters and experiences later played a role in the understanding of the massacre. His efforts saved from 6,000 to 20,000 Chinese from a cruel fate, and he has been honoured on several occasions, including the title "A friend of China".
Nanking (南京) is a Japanese documentary film released in the year 1938. It was composed of footage shot inside and outside the walls of the city of Nanking just after the end of the Battle of Nanking during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Hubert Lafayette Sone, (1892–1970), also known as SoongHsu-Peh in Chinese, was an American Methodist missionary in China. He was a professor of Old Testament at Nanjing Theological Seminary during the Japanese invasion in 1937. Sone was among the small group of foreigners who remained in the city and provided aid to the Chinese victims of the Japanese atrocities. He served with John Rabe on the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone and was Associate Food Commissioner. On 18 February 1938 the name of the committee was changed to the "Nanjing International Relief Committee." After the departure of George Fitch, Sone was elected Director of the Nanjing International Relief Committee. For their actions in support of the Chinese people, Sone and thirteen other Americans were awarded "The Order of the Blue Jade" by the Chinese government.
Estimates of the population of Nanjing in December 1937 vary widely from source to source. Scholars have been heavily engaged in attempting to calculate Nanjing 's population at this time because of its relevance to estimating the death toll of the Nanjing Massacre.
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