The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

No one can ever be the same after they read this book.  Iris Chang wrote this best-selling account of the Nanking massacre in 1997, after doing exhaustive research in Nanjing and the U.S, missionary archives.  The systematic rape of several hundred thousand civilian women by the Japanese occupiers in December 1937 in addition to the torture and other countless atrocities of men and women defies one's belief system.  Sadly, the author ended her own life with a pistol to her head in a car in Los Gatos, CA, in 2004, some saying she could no longer cope with such intimate knowledge of what was perpetrated in China's capital.  This book is of special interest to me as I have a great-uncle, John Henry Reisner (1887-1965), who was a Presbyterian missionary in Nanking and Dean of the College of Agriculture and Forestry of Nanking Univ. from 1914-1931.  He left China 6 years before the Japanese invasion.  His family legacy was ever present in my childhood home, filled with Chinese lamps and rugs as he couldn't bring cash out of China.

John H. Reisner with daughter



reverse inscription, April, 1919

The daughter of two university professors. Iris Chang grew up in Champagne-Urbana, IL, graduating from Univ. Illinois at C-U in 1989.  She became a New York Times stringer and wrote her first book, Thread of the Silkworm (1995), about NASA JPL-founder Tsien Hsue-shen, who was accused of being a spy, left for China, and developed missile systems in China. 

Iris took on a much more incendiary topic when she approached The Rape of Nanking.  Unlike Germany, who made reparations of over $60 billion to individuals, restitution for lost property, and agreements with Israel and other nations (p. 222), Japan never made even a formal apology.  Oddly enough, even present day Chinese leaders are reticent about the topic in fear of upsetting their Japanese trading partner.  Her book was influenced (p. 14) by the classic Kurosawa film Rashomon (1950) (p. 19) about a rape and murder case in 10th century Kyoto.  A bandit waylays a traveling samurai and his wife: rapes the wife and kills the samurai.  Simple enough, yet the story becomes complex when the other characters relate the story, including the wife, the bandit, and a witness.  Of course, the Rape of Nanking is analogous, when told by the Chinese, Japanese, and the West.


A major question remains as to why the Japanese promulgated such aggressive westward expansion.  Chang notes that by the 1920s Japan had 60 million mouths to feed (p. 26) in a limited area of 142,270 square miles.  Moreover, the U.S. had adopted manifest destiny as the excuse for westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese would do the same in the socially fragmented and loosely governed China (p. 27).  Some experts blame the non-Christian nature of Japanese religion, claiming that while Christianity puts forth the idea that all humans are brothers (all things created in God's image), Shintoism purports that only the emperor and his descendants were created in God's image (p. 54).

During the Occupation, a Safety Zone was established run by Westerners.  Many Chinese hid here for long periods.  Heroes included the improbable John Rabe (p. 109), leader of the Nanking Nazi Party, Minnie Vautrin (p. 129), dean of studies at Ginling Women's Arts & Science College, and American surgeon Robert Wilson (p. 122).

Chang details the atrocities as well she should.  Use Google Image to see babies skewered on bayonets like shish kebab, raped women dead on the ground with lances plunged into their vaginas, etc.  The Japanese even had a Nazi-like experimental medical lab à la Josef Mengele, Unit Ei 1644 (p. 164), where guinea pigs they termed zaimoku were subjected to vivisection and were injected with poisons, germs, lethal gases and snake venom, including cobra, habu, and amagasa.

Despite overwhelming evidence, claims are still made that the atrocities never occurred.  Fortunately, the crimes of Nanking were filmed by John Magee (p. 156) of victims at the Univ. of Nanking Hospital.  George Fitch smuggled the 16 mm negative out of China at great risk, on a Japanese military train to Shanghai, sewn into linings of his camel's hair coat. 

The Nanjing Municipal Government built the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in 1985.  This is not unique for Asia, compare with the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) are documented.

City of Life and Death (2009) is an extraordinary Chinese film about the Massacre, directed by Lu Chuan and filmed in Tianjin.  Black and white, the cinematography is highly nuanced and sensitive, I cannot recall a more sophisticated Chinese film.  The Chinese Film Bureau delayed release by 1 year.  Some details are well beyond the recounting in Chang's book, especially the sympathetic portrayal of Japanese soldier Kadokawa, who falls for Japanese prostitute Yuriko, and ultimately commits suicide, unable to digest the tragedy (art imitating life).  Rabe's male secretary Tang Tianxiang is also a focal point, who fails to protect his family in the Safety Zone, despite ratting out the location of Chinese soldiers to the Japanese, in exchange for immunity, not granted.

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala

"Uzo" Iweala  (U-zod-din-ma EE-wall-a) hails from a well-heeled Nigerian family, part of the vast diaspora situated in the U.S.  His father is a surgeon, and mother was Nigeria's Minister of Finance.  He wrote this story as a Harvard undergrad.  His grasp of native language is phenomenal.  The concept was born when attending a speaking engagement at Harvard by China Keitetsi, a young woman forced to fight in the Ugandan Civil War.  Most readers will imagine these lives as typical of the boy-soldiers of Sierra Leone.

As I began this magical little book, the lexicon of the 9-year old Agu struck me as a very powerful medium for telling the story of a boy forced to become a soldier, a killing machine.  His voice is "unliterary, yet poetic" (Baker, NYT 12/4/05).  The story is unimaginable without this voice.

It has precedence in Martin Amis' short story "What Happened to Me on My Holiday" in the collection Heavy Water.  Amis' story takes place in "Horzeleej Band" (Horseleech Pond, South of Wellfleet) and is narrated in an argot simulating his actual son, Louis, mourning the death of his step-brother.  The book is replete with onomatopoeia words like "TAKA TAKA TAKA," (p. 79) the sound of machine gun fire.  I am reminded of the Swahili term for motorcycle "piki piki piki," echoing the gentle sounds of a Honda 125 cc bike in the Tanzania bush.

The atrocities these boys are forced to commit are brutal.  "You are not my mother, I am saying to the girl's mother and when I am raising my knife high above my head.  I am liking the sound of knife chopping KPWUDA KPWUDA on her head and how the blood is just splashing on my hand and my face and my feets.  I am chopping and chopping and chopping until I am looking up and it is dark" (p. 51).  His commander is a pederast "Commandant is touching me and bringing my head to where he is standing at attention" (p. 84).  There's more: "he was telling me to kneel and then he was entering inside of me the way the man goat is sometimes mistaking other man goat for woman goat and going inside of them" (p. 85).  The man-boys are starving: "Everyone here is doing zero zero one.  I am not knowing what this is meaning before I am soldier, but now I am knowing that it means no breakfast, no lunch, only dinner" (p. 90).  Agu laments childhood lost: "I am knowing I am no more child so if this war is ending I cannot be going back to doing child thing" (p. 93).

I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

 

This is a page turner of a book and Nwaubani in I Do Not Come to You by Chance (2010) has been able to master a well written novel with great comedic style through caricature, something I have not seen in Nigerian authors.  Not unlike Noo Saro-Wiwa, her father was an activist, although Chukwuma Hope Nwaubani never paid with his life.  She was born in Enugu, grew up in Umuahia and has stayed in Nigeria, graduating from the Univ. of Ibadan, now living in Lagos after time spent in Abuja.  Got that?  The story takes place in Abia State and involves the Igbo tribe ("the niggers of Nigeria," pp. 234, 254) as does much Nigerian fiction. 

 

The title was inspired by Ecclesiastes 9:11.  "I returned, and saw under the sun,that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."  The author found the titular line from a '419' letter (p. 178) to an unsuspecting foreigner or "mugu" (p. 177).

 

It is interesting that this young woman writes a novel through the eyes of a young man, Kingsley Onyeaghalanwanneya Ibe.  He is an "opara" (pp. 15, 182, 376) the eldest son.  The author's name Adaobi means first daughter.  He loses his idealism and joins his Uncle Boniface aka Cash Daddy in a 419 Nigerian Letter scam.  The mugu is lured into various fees to be paid before he receives the big money, be it hidden money in a Swiss bank account or whatever. 

 

Ikhide Ikheloa (www.thenewblackmagazine.com) opines that the book 'reeks of rampant anti-intellectualism.  Cash Daddy chides Kingsley for his bookish aspirations. 

 

 The book is loaded with hilarity.  We learn that the National Electric Power Authority is best called Never Expect Power Always (p. 64).  "it felt as if 2,2,4-trimethylpentane had been pumped into my heart and set alight with a stick of match" (p.95) refers to the octane isomer used in octane rating.  Ben & Jerry's ice cream seems a staple of the 419ers (p. 145).  Kings' father relates the story of how the tortoise broke his back (p. 158), yet this fable already appeared in Adiche's Purple Hibiscus (2003), oops !  Kings notes that as Cash Daddy emerges from the shower "his five limbs were thick and long" (214).

Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

What was the first book written by an American author to be widely read overseas?  Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840).  There is also little doubt that it served as an inspiration for Melville's Moby-Dick (1851).  The character Sam Sparks (p. 81) had a speech impediment that may have been an inspiration for Billy Budd.  When "California 'broke out'...in 1848, and so large a portion of the Anglo-Saxon race flocked to it, there was no book upon California but mine" (p. 315).  I had been meaning to read this book since 1989, when I moved into a 1916 Colonial Revival house designed by Dana's eponymous great grandson, an Ecole des Beaux Arts architect of the Madison Ave. firm Murphy & Dana.

Dana was a student at Harvard in 1831, but measles left his eyesight weakened.  He joined the crew of the ship Pilgrim for a 2-year trip to California (actually Alto California, Mexico's northernmost state) around Cape Horn and documented the voyage in this seafaring adventure narrative.  Upon his return, he completed Harvard in 1837 and became a lawyer well known for defending the rights of the common man.  His chronicles of sailor life and the brutal floggings meted out by the Captain are the more memorable sections of the book.  He returned to California (now one of the United States) 24 years later in 1859 by steamboat and also chronicled that trip in a coda.  He died in Rome in 1882 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery near the graves of Keats and Shelly.

The sea terminology is unparalleled.  I was well into the book before I realized that there was an illustration (fig. opposite p. 269) of the brig and ship sails with the names of each sail in the Great Illustrated Classics edition of the book.  The book gets it's name from the fact that the crew made their quarters in the forecastle (fig. opposite p. 10), before the mast.  Dana chose to live with the crew despite his elevated social status.  "There is not so hopeless and pitiable an object as a landsman beginning a sailor's life" (p. 2).  Many of the nautical terms are simple, like "hove," (p. 2) the past tense of "heave," to haul with a rope.  To "reef" (p. 5) a topsail is to fold and tie it down.  A "brig" (p. 14) is a two-mast ship with square sails.  A "hermaphrodite brig" (p. 15) is two-mast with only forward sales square.  The word "hazing" (p. 77) seems to be an old sailor term.  I even see the word "Yahoos" (p. 112).  "Doubling" (p. 266) is to sail around a projection of land as in doubling Cape Horn.

The geography from 1834 is fascinating.  The "Pacific well deserves its name, for...it has few storms" (p. 43).  At that time, Hawaii was known as the Sandwich Islands (p. 45).  Much of the book describes the natives - "The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves" (p. 62), yet "the climate as good as any in the world" (p. 68).  Boats from Sitka are coming down from Russian America (p. 188), under Russian control until 1899.  We learn that ships could take an inland route above Tierra del Fuego through the Straits of Magellan (p. 264).  It is interesting to note that the California Gold Rush broke out in 1848 in Alto California, statehood 2 years later (1850) was inevitable.

Oil on Water by Helon Habila

Helon Habila is a new wave Nigerian author, presently a professor at George Mason Univ.  The novel Oil on Water (2010) follows two Port Harcourt journalists, Rufus and his mentor Zaq (dying of dengue fever, p. 150), into the Niger Delta in search of a kidnapped oil executive (p. 72) James Floode's wife, Isabel Floode (p. 191).  Of course, the kidnap assist is provided by her driver Salomon, and let's be clear that the executive has impregnated (p. 218) his girlfriend Koko (p. 202).  Naive he is too as he laments on the rebel attacks on the oil infrastructure "The people don't understand what they do to themselves..." (p. 103).

The story line aside, the style of writing is based on interwoven flashbacks, while our journalists are seeking the wife on Irikefe Island (imaginary, p. 225).  The book opens on "our ninth day on her trail" (p. 5).  Their odyssey is Conradian, and the flashback hazy style is reminiscent of Heart of Darkness.  Nigeria's dictator Sani Abacha (p. 236) died in 1998 - he was famous for colluding with Big Oil, this story unfolds ten years later.  Yet the triangular entanglements between rebels, the oil companies, and the Nigerian military are ever present.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Biafran flag (sunrise)

Ogbunigwe land mine

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's sophomore effort Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) is an oeuvre of great gravitas, more so than any other African author I have read.  Achebe's simple yet powerful Things Fall Apart (the first sentence of the novel alludes to that work) and Okri's The Famished Road, a classic of magic realism, have been the gold standard for Nigerian literature.  With the Nigerian-Biafran War as a backdrop (1967-1970), the author has put a face to the conflict in a scholarly fashion.  In fact two of her grandfathers died in the war (frontispiece).  This was the war that made "Harold Wilson syndrome" (p. 338) or kwashiorkor the poster child of suffering.

The novel is narrated entirely from the point of view ("POV") of three of the leading characters: Ugwu, a 13 year old houseboy (p. 5), Olanna, his Master's (Odenigbo) wife, and Richard, lover to Kainene, Olanna's twin sister.  The reader only knows what they know, albeit sometimes limited.  The British Army has arrived "to finish us off" (p. 274) and "Lagos says Chinese soldiers are fighting for us" (p. 346).  The facts are never "authorially" approved.  We never hear from Odenigbo or Kainene. They are only observed from the outside.  For example, Olanna is brought news that Ugwu, press ganged into the Biafran army, has been killed.  We later learn he has survived.  Each chapter is told from a single POV, the leading word in each chapter is a character's name, the POV key.  Adichie crafts the POV very carefully.  just when you think she has slipped in chap. 26, Ugwu reveals that he "pretended not to have heard" (p. 293) Olanna and Muokelu talking in private !

Olanna Ozobia (p. 27) and Kainene are London School of Economics (pp. 40 and 57) graduates, the Igbo elite, Olanna beautiful, Kainene brilliant.  Kainene is lover with Richard, despite his repeated impotence (p. 63).

The book jumps around between events that took place during the early 1960s and the late 1960s in 4 sections.   This structure is used for dramatic effect, as two distinct acts of infidelity are revealed (pp. 231 and 234) to the reader well after the war is underway.  The war parties are tribal (p. 20), mainly the Hausa and the Igbo (referred to as the Jews (Holocaust reference, p. 50) of Nigeria due to racist attitudes).  The "Igbo were surly and money-loving" (p. 55).  The Igbo, under Colonel Ojukwu (p. 158), secede from Nigeria on July 6, 1967 (p. 161) to form the Republic of Biafra (named after the Bight of Biafra, p. 158).

There are 8 references to a book entitled The World was Silent When we Died, a work in progress (p. 374).  At first we ascribe it to Richard, yet he is not a finisher and we ultimately learn that Ugwu is the author (pp. 396, 433).

There is a healthy usage of the Igbo language.  Nkem means "my own" (p. 24).  "Speak with water in my mouth" (p. 226) means unheard.  An afia attack is to go behind enemy lines to buy food (p. 293).  An ogbunigwe is a Biafran land mine (pp. 317, 359).

Many English words are italicized, implying euphemisms, e.g., when Odenigbo uses the word experience (p. 186) and brief rash lust (p. 225). 

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

Purple Hibiscus (2003) is the debut novel from Nigeria's current leading author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  Diction is very simple, reminiscent of Chinhua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.  Indeed, the book's first sentence alludes "Things started to fall apart at home..." (p. 1).  The author writes about what she knows, as she grew up in Nsukka, SE Nigeria, near Enuga, as does her lead character, Kambili Achike.  The author went to Univ. Nigeria (Nsukka) - Aunty Ifeoma teaches there.  In brief this is a story about an upper middle class family struggling to live under the abusive control of a very religious father, Eugene.  The author imbues great sensitivity to the 15-year old daughter and her coming of age, as well as brother Jaja (allusion to Jaja Opobo, King of Defiance).  Ultimately, spoiler alert, Beatrice, the mother, poisons Eugene. 

 

Aunty Ifeoma cultivates purple hibiscus "rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom" (p. 16).  The book’s namesake flower is a representation of freedom and hope. Jaja is drawn to the unusual purple hibiscus, bred by a botanist friend of Aunty Ifeoma. Aunty Ifeoma has created something new by bringing the natural world together with intelligence. For Jaja, the flower is hope that something new can be created. He longs to break free of his Papa’s rule. He takes a stalk of the purple hibiscus home with him, and plants it in their garden. He also takes home the insight he learns from Nsukka. As both blossom, so too do Jaja and his rebellion.

 

Aunty takes Kambili and her brother to a masquerade festival (p. 73), the Abagane mmuo, in which they are subject to idolatry, much to the chagrin of Eugene, who despises "pagan rituals" (p. 106). 

 

Papa-Nnukwu, Kambili's grandfather, tells his family how the tortoise cracked his shell (p. 157). During a famine, the animals gather. They are weakened by hunger. Lion’s roar is but a thin whine and Tortoise can barely carry his shell. Only Dog looks well. He insists because his family eats feces, they are still healthy. Since the rest of the animals won’t do what Dog does, they decide they must sacrifice their mothers to be eaten. Each week, a different mother gives up their life to feed the village. A few days before Dog’s mother is to be killed, the village hears him wailing. He tells them his mother has died of disease. They cannot eat her. A few days later, Tortoise hears Dog calling his mother. A rope descends from the sky. Tortoise learns that Dog’s mother is still alive, living in the sky with wealthy friends. Dog’s health has not suffered because he has been eating all along. Tortoise schemes, telling Dog he must take him up to the sky or else he will tell the village the truth. Dog agrees. Soon after, Tortoise becomes greedy, wanting not only his portion but Dog’s as well. Mimicking Dog, Tortoise asks for the rope to be lowered one day. Dog finds him and is furious. He calls to his mother and she cuts the rope. Tortoise lands on a pile of rocks and his shell is cracked to this day.

 

In Igbo legend, the tortoise is a trickster figure that deceives the other animals in the world. In this parable, the tortoise is punished for his greed. There is a parallel in this story to what is happening in Nigeria. Dog, or the government, is hoarding food during a famine. Dog lies about how he stays healthy, as the government misdirects funds into their own pockets. The greedy Tortoise aligns himself with Dog rather than telling the rest of the animals. If you are friends with those in power, no harm will come to you. 

 

The novel makes thinly veiled references to freedom fighters Del Giwa (as Ade Coker) and Ken Saro-Wiwa (Nwankiti Ogechi, p. 201), who was hanged Nov, 1995.