http://www.npr.org/2011/06/21/137296321/the-horror-of-war-in-the-city-of-life-and-death

Lu Chuan’s film City of Life and Death lives up to its title. In documentary-like black and white, the writer/director shows the systematic murder of thousands of Chinese soldiers; some are machine gunned, some marched into the sea, some burned, some buried alive. Then the invaders turn to the civilian population and the process of killing continues.

The movie takes a fictional approach to one of the most horrific events in human history, In late 1937, the Japanese army stormed the Chinese city of Nanking — then the country’s capital and now called Nanjing. More than 200,000 people, many of them civilians, were raped and killed in what’s known as “the Rape of Nanking.” Lu says that in his film, which has raised controversy in both Japan and China, he wanted to show that the Japanese had a program for killing:

“I really wanted to show that a massacre in the battlefield is just like industry. It’s just like a machine, you know? It use a very complicated program to control the whole machine to eliminate the enemies. So it’s [a] human being, you know, [that] can design a complicated program to kill people — it’s a very brutal nature.”

To understand the experience, Lu interviewed some of the Japanese soldiers who occupied Nanking.

“Basically, they don’t want to face their memory. But some of them tell me the truth,” he says. “But I should say, to my surprise, they didn’t show any regret. They just say something about, ‘Yes, I kill people. Yes, I rape some girls. But you know, everybody do that. So I have to do that.’ But they never say ‘Sorry.’ They never feel regret. So for me it’s a very bad experience, you know.”

Nevertheless, one of the central characters in City of Life and Death is a sympathetic Japanese soldier. And this has turned many Chinese against the film. Lu says that even though many people went to see the film in China, he got death threats.

“Lots of audience — Chinese audience — hate this movie because I choose the angle of Japanese soldier, you know,” Lu says. “So they hate this movie because the traditional history education gives most of the Chinese people a feeling that Japanese people are beasts, not human beings, not human beings just like us. So, in my movie, it’s the first time I show the humanity of Japanese soldier. So the Chinese audience cannot accept it.”

Though the film was made in 2009, controversy has stalled its release outside China. Now it’s finally making its way into theaters in the United States; it opened in New York in May and began playing in Los Angeles on June 17. The story of the atrocities depicted in the film has been told in recent years by the late historian Iris Chang, whose book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII was a best-seller. (Iris Chang’s mother, Ying-Ying Chang, recently published a memoir of her daughter’s life called The Woman Who Could Not Forget.)

One of the reasons Lu chose to show the innate decency of the Japanese soldier was to create a portrait of human behavior rather than an indictment of one nation or culture.

Richard Pena, director of the New York Film Festival, says that City of Life and Death really includes three points of view — that of Japanese soldiers, the Chinese in Nanking and the observations of Westerners in the city, chronicles of the invasion displayed on postcards sent home.

“If there’s one concept that I think really unites the aesthetic principle of the film it is that of ‘witnessing,’ ” Pena says. “And you know, for a long time under the People’s Republic [of China], it was practically forbidden to talk about [the massacre] because it was seen really in many ways as a symbol of Chinese weakness. The fact that so few Japanese had been able to terrorize, humiliate and murder so many Chinese was seen in an uncomfortable light. So this film offers, you know, in ways that some people support and some people don’t, a kind of varied position on it. And I think in the end the idea that films like this are made — and made in such a way that really not only, how could you say, excite emotions but incite thought, incite reflection, incite meditation — that’s what’s great. And that gives you hope. That gives you hope that we’re, you know, we’re better than that was.”

Surprises and ambiguities revealed within the film’s shifting points of view are central to the story Lu wants to tell. He’s made a violent war film because he hates violence and war, and he made a film in which one group of people brutalizes another to show that all people are capable of both horror and remorse.

“I think everybody is the Japanese soldier,” he says.

Besides interviewing Japanese soldiers who had been in Nanking, and Chinese survivors of the attack, Lu read journals and diaries and even made a trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., to see how the killing in Europe is remembered. He says that what he saw through the making of City of Life and Death did not comfort him:

“I felt I open many, many doors toward the darkness of the heart, you know? So every [time] I open the door, I go deeper and deeper to the soul, to the soul of humanity. So I feel, sometimes I was scared. I’m really scared.”

What’s most surprising about City of Life and Death is that after all of the horror and fear, some people find the strength to go on.

Ying-Ying Chang, the mother of the late Iris Chang, will be in LA to promote her new book “The Woman Who Could Not Forget”. Please stop by to meet her in person and support her new book.

Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena (LA)
Thursday, July 21 at 8 PM

Tai-Ling Wong (contact person)
Authors on Asia Curator/Store Manager
Pacific Asia Museum
46 N. Los Robles Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91101
(626) 449-2742, ext. 1 20
www.pacificasiamuseum.org

http://batangkalimassacre.wordpress.com

Lawyers seek hidden documents linked to British massacre in Malaya
Posted on 2011/04/14 by batangkalimassacre
Ben Macintyre (link from The Times, London)
April 9 2011 12:01AM
Lawyers for relatives of victims of an alleged massacre by British troops in colonial Malaya have demanded immediate release of all relevant documents that may be held in the Government’s secret archive at Hanslope Park.
Last week the Foreign and Commonwealth Office admitted that the Government had routinely removed sensitive files from former colonies before independence, and pledged to release 8,800 files from 37 former colonies and dependent territories, including Malaya.
The killings at Batang Kali took place at the height of the Malayan Emergency in 1948, when Malaya (now Malaysia) was a British protectorate facing a major communist insurgency. British troops were deployed to help the colonial authorities to keep order.
The Malaysians’ complaint, filed this year, alleges that 24 villagers, all of them unarmed, were shot and killed by troops of the Scots Guards between December 11 and 12, 1948. According to some reports, some of the bodies were also mutilated. Those who were not killed, mainly women and children, were then taken away by lorry and the village burnt to the ground.
Lawyers representing the claimants sent a letter to the Treasury Solicitor’s department yesterday asking to be given immediate access to any files in the hitherto secret archive relating to the incident. “Our concerns about the improper withholding of documents have greatly intensified over the last few days with the publication in The Times and other newspapers that an archive exists at Hanslope Park of secret and sensitive material,” Bindmans LLP wrote. “Press reporting states that one of the countries to which the archived documents relate is Malaya.” The letter is the first sign of what may be a wave of legal complaints over the hidden archive.
Bindmans also noted that although it had asked the government to provide all relevant archival material over the last two and half years “these secret and sensitive documents are not mentioned” in any correspondence.
“Judging by the nature of the material that has come to light in relation to Kenya, it seems at least likely that similar material is held in relation to Batang Kali.” The lawyers demanded to know whether and when the archive had been searched and, if any material had been found there, why it had not been disclosed. “If no searches were undertaken, why not?”
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, has promised to release the entire archive, but the letter asks for immediate answers: “We would expect to be given physical access, or copies, early next week.”
Unlike the complainants in the Mau Mau case, the Malaysians are not seeking damages but a judicial review into why the British Government has refused to hold a public inquiry into the incident. The defendants are named as the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and the Secretary of State for Defence.
Among the documents that may be in the Foreign Office archives is a report of an investigation carried out after the incident by the AttorneyGeneral, Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton, which has never been released. It was later alleged that statements made by the soldiers for this inquiry were written for them and they were required to sign them. The official version of events, made public at the time, is that the killings were justified by the character and actions of the villagers. A statement by the Colonial Secretary in 1949 stated that the men had opened fire to prevent suspected Chinese communist guerrillas from escaping.
In a television interview in 1970, however, the Attorney-General said he was “absolutely satisfied that a bona fide mistake was made”. An undated memo written during the Emergency also noted that the Attorney-General held the personal view that “there was something to be said for public executions”.
This Government’s first response to the claim was a letter on March 18 from the Treasury Solicitor stating that the Government would seek legal costs from the Malaysians, amounting to at least £200,000, “if their claim is unsuccessful”.
In 1970 Denis Healey, the Defence Secretary, instructed Scotland Yard to investigate the matter, but the inquiry was later dropped, citing lack of evidence. In 1993 the Foreign Office stated that “no new evidence has been uncovered by the British authorities to warrant the setting up of another official inquiry into the alleged massacre of 24 villagers in Batang Kali”.
Last November the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence decided not to arrange a public inquiry into the Batang Kali incident. On Tuesday night, Lord Howell of Guildford, the Foreign Office minister, acknowledged for the first time that it was “general practice for the colonial administration to transfer to the United Kingdom, shortly before independence, selected documents which were not appropriate to hand on to the successor government”.
Lord Howell said that the release might take “years”. But the Bindmans letter suggests that many litigants will want far swifter answers. “We would like to have sight immediately … of the contents of the archives of secret and sensitive material that has any bearing on the Batang Kali killings.”

On Mar 6, 2011, at 4:54 PM, Ignatius Y. Ding wrote:

> Dear Professor Krauss,
>
> In the last few days, I have been following your email exchanges with Dr. Ivy Lee and read all the messages from others to you. I am delighted that the discussions have been civil and educational. As the date of the UCSD public forum on the subject matter rapidly approaches, I would like to add my two cents to the cordial dialogue in the hope that all of our concerns and suggestions would be taken into consideration in your discussion with your university experts and invited guest speakers.
>
> You are correct that numerous Japanese Prime Ministers have offered personal apology to its wartime victims. However, those apologies were invariably followed immediately by one or more flat denial of war responsibility by the same top official or someone in his cabinet, or a landslide vote against the apology by the Diet as in the case of the national apology motioned by the former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama (村山富市) in 1995, or by dozens (up to 150) cabinet members and Diet members to pay homage at Yasukuni Shrine where not only the 14 Class A war criminals were enshrined as living gods, but also more than 14,000 other war criminals, including 1,068 convicted by the WWII war crimes court, who murdered, brutalized, raped and mutilated tens of millions of innocent civilians in invaded or colonized countries. Their claim to merely honor a national tradition fools no one since there was no such an annual ritual prior to 1978. Note that former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s (小泉純一郎) flip-flop was most startling. He visited the notorious shrine “as the Prime Minster of Japan” within 12 hours after he offered his “heartfelt apology” at an APEC Summit in Singapore. By any measure, his apology is questionable at best. Please keep in mind what Dr. Stanek has pointed out what and how the world, or yourself, might react if top German officials openly worship Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cronies at a national monument.
>
> As a California taxpayer, I am thrilled to learn that our UC faculties include many experts on these important subjects. Our money is well spent to educate our youth of the truth and the facts of historical importance, in a balanced way, as you and your distinguished colleagues strives to achieve.
>
> However, our education should not stop at merely learning from the past, but also the material facts of the present days as well. We learn from the remarkable uprising in the Muslim world, the renewed labor movement across the United States, and the recognition of the forgotten contributions in WWII by the segregated African American soldiers and airmen.
>
> Certainly scholars and experts at UCSD are fully aware the continuing struggles of the survivors of Japanese WWII atrocities and the lingering ill-effect of the weapons of mass destruction Japan left in China that is destroying the eco system along the Russo-Chinese borders. To name a few:
>
> · Survivors of Japanese germ warfare in 22 of China’s 25 provinces continue to suffer from the deadly attacks. Many victims of weaponized Anthrax and Glanders have been crippled and bedridden for more than six decades with infected limbs rotted to the bones.
> · Up to two million shells or canisters of poison gas are scattered in Northeastern China, commonly known as Manchuria. Civilians were killed or severely injured in recent years while leaked poison gas from the rusted bomb shells or canisters gets into underground water and contaminates thousands of square miles of farmland and rural areas.
> · A number of rats captured each year in the mountain regions in Southeast provinces, such as Zhejiang, and Southwest provinces, such as Yunnan, continue to test positive with bubonic plague that was spread by Japan’s germ warfare troops, a.k.a. Unit 731, during the war. So far, the Japanese government refuses to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the war crimes.
>
> The list above could be rather lengthy. Let’s leave that for another day.
>
> Having a democratic system in place is a good thing for the Japanese populace (despite that it was imposed on them by the Allies’ occupation forces). We can’t agree more with you that the current and future generations of Japanese should not be burdened by the sins of their forefathers. Having said that, we still have to question their collective wisdom to elect so many war criminals or their direct descendants into high offices in the post-war governments who have been behind its hard-line ultra-nationalistic policies, including
>
> · the flat denial of responsibilities of the war as the aggressor,
> · the distortion of history in school textbooks and popular multi-media publications,
> · the refusal to pay back wages to its military sexual slaves and enslaved labors,
> · a complete cleanup of its biological and chemical weapons left behind in China and elsewhere; and
> · the rewrite its pacific constitution and the rebuild its military (Japan currently has the largest and most powerful naval force in the Pacific, only second to the US Navy).
>
> Only in the post-war Japan, a country would have elected Class A war criminal like Nobusuke Kishi (aka 岸信介), the slave master and wartime Minister of Commerce and Industry to the Office of Prime Minister multiple times, and placed those who were directly benefitted from the war machine in charge of the nation, such as Junichiro Koizumi (the grandson of the yakuza crime boss, or oya-bun, in Manchuria, the “Tattoo Minister,” and Class C war criminal Matajirō Koizumi, aka 小泉又次郎), Taro Aso, aka 麻生太郎, (the current chairman and president of the Aso Mining family enterprise that was proven enriched by the enslavement of Allied prisoners of war), Shinzo Abe, aka 安倍晋三,(the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi), and the former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama (鳩山由紀夫) and his brother and LDP top brass Kunio Hatoyama (鳩山邦夫) who are bankrolled into high offices by their mother Yasuko Ishibashi (石橋安子) , the heir of the Ishibashi family enterprise (aka Bridgestone) that enslaved tens of thousands of Koreans and Chinese in Hainan, China and Southeast Asia under its wartime name Nippon Tires. Ishibashi Corporation’s war crimes uniquely included the coercion and trafficking of sexual slaves (aka “Comfort Women”) in war zones. I am certain that the UCSD experts are intimately familiar with these matters of record at the US National Archives and Records Administration in Rockville, MD. This brief and partial list only serves as a reminder to you panelists at the forum.
>
> It is understandable that you would consider Dr. Lee’s suggestion to invite Chinese and Chinese American scholars to future UCSD seminars as “out of line” [intrusion to your academic freedom] – to keep outsiders and especially politics away. However, it is ironic and curious to find your hosting committee of the March 8th event cheerful enlisting the Japanese Consulate General of Los Angeles, an official representative of a foreign government, as your co-sponsor and the flier supplied by its office as the official invitation to the public at large (see below). Does anyone at UCSD get concerned this appearance of collusion to affect your academic integrity and independence? I apologize that I really don’t know how else I might more politely or less directly put this question to you.
>
> —– Forwarded Message —-
> From: “Bibb, Portia” > To: “linhpdu@gmail.com” ; . . . .
> Cc: “Krauss, Ellis” ; Kanako Kozasa ; “Hoshi, Takeo” > Sent: Tue, March 1, 2011 5:00:13 PM
> Subject: China and the Asia-Pacific: The way forward for Japan-U.S. and the region
>
> Dear China Focused Community Friends,
>
> On behalf of Dean Peter Cowhey at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (http://irps.ucsd.edu/), at UC San Diego, we are excited to share a special event starting at 2:30 pm on Tuesday, March 8th, entitled $B!H(BChina and the Asia-Pacific: The way forward for Japan-U.S. and the region.$B!I(B This will be held on the campus at UCSD-please find driving and parking directions below to IR/PS.
>
> http://irps.ucsd.edu/experience/our-campus/driving-directions.htm
>
> Event Overview: What are the opportunities and challenges presented by the rise of China, and what should be Japan-U.S. response for the region? Japanese and American experts will discuss the diplomatic, security, economic, energy policy implications for Japan, the U.S., and other players in the region. Please see the distinguished panelists, in the attached flyer cosponsored by the Japan Consulate in Los Angeles.
>
> March 8, 2011
> 2:30 pm China and the Asia-Pacific: The way forward for Japan-U.S. and the region panel presentation
> 4:00 pm Reception
> School of International Relations and Pacific Studies
>
> We hope that you may have time to send a special invitation to your community friends. We hope to see many of you next Tuesday if possible. Please let us know your questions.
>
> Thank you sincerely,
> Portia and team
>
> —— Forwarded Message
> From: Kanako Kozasa
> Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 13:04:17 -0800
> To: “Bibb, Portia” > Cc: “Keckin, Amanda”
> Subject: RE: IR/PS March 8 Event
>
> Dear Portia
>
> Good afternoon. I hope you had a wonderful weekend.
>
> Please find the attached flier.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Kanako Kozasa
> $B>.:{AU;R(B
> Advisor
> Consulate General of Japan, Los Angeles
> Tel: (213) 617-6700 ext. 309
> Fax: (213) 617-6728
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> There is absolutely no intention on my part to offend you or anyone at UCSD. It is only meant to engage in a frank and honest dialogue in the hope to start productive exchange in the future. Again, I sincerely offer again our unqualified support to UCSD in developing educational materials and conduct balanced review of history and regional strategic relations. Please call on us if we can help identifying guest speakers for your seminars or candidates for your research programs. Thanks you.
>
> Ignatius Y. Ding
>
> Executive Vice President
>
> Global Alliance for Preserving the Truth of WWII in Asia
>
> www.global-alliance.net
>

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: Ellis Krauss
To: Ignatius Y. Ding
Sent: Sun, March 6, 2011 7:48:41 PM
Subject: Re: China and the Asia-Pacific: The way forward for Japan-U.S. and the region (Follow Up)

Dear Ignatius, Thank you for your opinions. I am quite busy this week and have already responded as to my opinions on these issues multiple times so won’t bore you with further extensive ones. Here, however are some brief responses of the points in your message:

1)I am quite aware of what the Japanese army did during the Pacific War and the historical memories issue is discussed (objectively) in my classes where students of all nationalities have the opportunity to express their views.
2) I agree with you that good percentage of Japan’s problem is that the sincere apologies of government leaders is undercut by the actions and statements of others and right-wing groups. I abhor that too. But Japan is a democracy where you cannot force people to believe what they don’t want to believe. May I ask if the Tibet issue and what China has and is doing there been an issue widely discussed by the Chinese government publicly? By commentators freely in China? Should that topic be on every list of every event held on China and experts on it be invited? I think you see my point. As abhorrent as the actions of those politicians and individuals are, if the question is whether Japan has apologized or not, the answer is yes there have been many.

I applaud your and others’ efforts to spread the truth about those years to Japanese and Americans. But other than a more formal apology, what would you have the Japanese government do? Would such a formal apology satisfy you?

3)Yes, that is correct: the CG of LA is sponsoring the event. The answer is that I feel no problem with that because I was involved in the issue of whom to invite. The event is actually a follow-up event to one held at Columbia U. in NYC sponsored by the CG there. We were asked if we would like to host a follow-up event at which two of the scholars at that meeting would report on the discussions there to a West coast audience. I agreed and we tried to get several faculty at my School to attend. As it turned out I and Barry Naughton were the only ones who could make it. As the two scholars coming to this event who were at the NY meeting are both highly respected and legitimate experts on China and Japan-China whom me and my colleague knows, I did not see a single thing wrong with that. We cosponsor events with local groups and community people and governments and groups all the time. As long as it is a legitimate academic event, at which we have input and final say over the individuals invited I don’t see a problem. I myself don’t even know what the report is going to say and may well talk about the historical memories issue. But I’m sure it will all be done in an objective and responsible manner.
Best regards,
Ellis

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110128a6.html

Friday, Jan. 28, 2011

China patrol ship near Senkakus

NAHA, Okinawa Pref. (Kyodo) A Chinese patrol boat was spotted Thursday morning near the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, the Japan Coast Guard said.

Identified as the Yuzheng 201, the vessel was seen around 7:50 a.m. just outside Japan’s territorial waters, about 29 km northwest from Kuba Island, one of the islets of the Japan-administered Senkaku group.

The coast guard warned the vessel by radio not to enter Japanese territorial waters, officials said.

The Chinese vessel responded by saying “the Senkaku Islands are an integral part of Chinese territory. We are conducting legitimate operations,” according to the officials.

The same ship was spotted navigating near the islet group in late November.

Five Chinese patrol vessels, including the Yuzheng 201, have been spotted in the area since the September clash between a Chinese fishing boat and the Japan Coast Guard.
‘Takeshima Day’

MATSUE , Shimane Pref. (Kyodo) Shu Watanabe of the Democratic Party of Japan will become the ruling party’s first lawmaker to attend an annual ceremony commemorating “Takeshima Day” in Shimane Prefecture on Feb. 22, prefectural officials and local DPJ members said Wednesday.

The plan is part of the DPJ’s efforts to fend off domestic criticism that it has been too soft on the sovereignty of the South Korean-controlled islets in the Sea of Japan. However, the move could provoke a backlash from Seoul.

The move comes at a time when territorial disputes have been under the spotlight following the Sept. 7 run-in between a Chinese trawler and Japan Coast Guard cutters near the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands, which are claimed by China and Taiwan.

Watanabe, 49, plans to join the Shimane event to promote Japan’s claim to the islets, called Dokdo in South Korea.

Watanabe is considering taking part in a panel discussion on the territorial issue at the event, the officials said, adding the local government will also call on certain Cabinet members, including the foreign and education ministers, to attend.

Watanabe, who heads the DPJ’s National Rallying and Canvassing Committee, belongs to a bipartisan group of lawmakers working on protecting Japanese territory.

Hisaaki Komuro, the lawmaker who heads the party’s prefectural chapter and who was opposed to designating “Takeshima Day,” is also scheduled to attend the ceremony, party members said.

note: please refer our 09/24/2010 posting by Nicholes Kristof of NY times

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/3572156/1776189067/name/GLOBAL%20ALLIANCE%20NEWS–JAN%202011.pdf

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christian-bale-star-zhang-yimou-64417

Christian Bale to Star in Zhang Yimou Film
3:03 AM 12/22/2010 by Jonathan Landreth

Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic/Getty Images
The director of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies takes on his biggest production yet.

BEIJING — Christian Bale will star in Zhang Yimou’s upcoming 600 million yuan ($90.2 million) Nanjing Heroes about the Nanjing Massacre, China’s most famous director said at a press conference Wednesday.

The budget is roughly equal to the budget of John Woo’s Red Cliff, and approaches the total box office take of Aftershock, now China’s most successful domestically-produced film.

Zhang’s film will pull in the Hollywood effects team behind Saving Private Ryan and The Dark Night. Zhang and his longtime producer Zhang Weiping (no relation) of the New Picture Film Company announced Bale’s casting and the hiring of Joss Williams and Martin Asbury’s Dark Side FX to a roomful of hundreds of Chinese reporters.

The Nanjing Massacre, when Japanese troops killed thousands of Chinese citizens in what was then the nation’s capital in 1937, has been the subject of several recent Chinese and co-produced films, each of which has included the character of John Rabe, a German businessman who helped save hundreds of Chinese refugees.

Bale will not play Rabe but instead play an American priest called John who helps a great number of Chinese escape certain death.

The script was written by Yan and Liu Heng, who wrote the novel upon which director Zhang’s early hit Ju Dou was based.

“I met Christian in America and was impressed with his serious book research for the role,” director Zhang said after playing a five-minute video mash up of clips from Bale’s Hollywood films, few of which have ever played theatrically in China.

The film will be shot about 40% in English and the rest in Mandarin Chinese, sources close to the project told The Hollywood Reporter. Zhang made no other cast or crew announcements.

“There are no foreign investors,” Zhang said, noting that it was too early to confirm what company might sell the film’s international rights.

Previously, Sony Pictures Classics distributed Zhang’s films in the U.S. market, but Sony does not appear to be involved at this time. Bill Kong, head of Hong Kong-based EDKO Films, emailed The Hollywood Reporter to say: “Edko will be involved with dealing with the foreign territory” rights for the film Kong referred to by an alternate working title, 13 Flowers of Nanjing.

Director Zhang’s highest-grossing film ever was 2002 period war film Hero starring Jet Li, which took in almost $54 million in the U.S. His new film comes at a time when China’s movie business is booming at home and dominant in parts of Asia, but receives little attention elsewhere

Zhang, whose last film, Under The Hawthorn Tree, it was announced last week, will have its European premiere in February in the Generation sidebar at the Berlin Film Festival. Zhang competed at Berlin this year with A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop and won the Golden Bear there in 1987 for Red Sorghum and the Alfred Bauer prize in 2002 for Hero.

Zhang was twice nominated for an Oscar. No Chinese film or director has ever won a major category Academy Award.

Asked if casting Bale was a move to raise Chinese cinema’s profile in the U.S. market — still 10 times bigger than China’s box office — director Zhang said “It’s the overall strategy for Chinese cinema to approach the world and broaden its influence but casting Bale was a coincidence because the script happened to have an English-speaking part in the lead.”

Zhang will begin shooting the film on January 10 in a Republican Era (1911-1949) replica church built near Nanjing.

In 2008, a slew of Nanjing-themed films came out in China, including Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death, from the China Film Group, and German director Florian Gallenberger’s John Rabe, a co-production with Huayi Brothers Media.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2010/12/22/bale-zhang-nanking.html

Bale to star in Zhang’s film about Nanjing
Last Updated: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 | 11:58 AM ET Comments2Recommend12
CBC News
Zhang Yimou, shown Wednesday in Beijing, has announced his latest film will star Christian Bale. Zhang Yimou, shown Wednesday in Beijing, has announced his latest film will star Christian Bale. (Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press)

British actor Christian Bale has signed on to Zhang Yimou’s film about Japanese atrocities in Nanjing during the Second World War.

Bale is to play an American priest who shelters a group of prostitutes and some young female students in the Chinese city in 1937 in Nanjing Heroes.

The takeover of the city by the Japanese, referred to as The Rape of Nanking, resulted in an estimated 150,000 deaths and countless rapes. It is considered one of the most savage war crimes in history.

The city, called Nanking meaning “southern capital” in the Second World War-era English rendering of the Chinese name, now is referred to as Nanjing.

Zhang, the director of Raise the Red Lantern and Hero, had long promised to cast an A-list Hollywood actor in the role and there had been speculation about Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt as the priest.
British actor Christian Bale, shown July 23, 2008, will play the American priest who shelters a group of vulnerable women during the Rape of Nanking. British actor Christian Bale, shown July 23, 2008, will play the American priest who shelters a group of vulnerable women during the Rape of Nanking. (Manu Fernandez/Associated Press)

He said he chose Bale because of his versatility as an actor, adding that he was impressed that the actor had researched the incident.

“I gave him the names of some books that he should read about the Nanjing massacre,” the director said. “When I went to see him, I saw those books were lying open on his table, and I was very touched.”

Bale, currently winning accolades for his role as the junkie boxer in The Fighter, also is known for his portrayal of Batman in The Dark Knight.

Zhang said he hopes casting Bale will bring a Western audience to the picture, due for release next December.

“We’ve made many, many Nanjing movies … but they are mostly like we’re talking to ourselves. A lot of young people in Western countries might not know about it,” Zhang said.

The 2007 documentary Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking centred on the author of a book on the 1937 massacre. But in China, there have recently been several features on the subject, including the blockbuster Nanking, which had little following outside of China.

The $90-million US production is based on the novel The 13 Noble Ladies of Nanjing by contemporary writer Yan Geling. It is about a group of sex workers in Nanjing who agree to go with the Japanese soldiers to protect their compatriots.
With files from The Associated Press

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2010/12/22/bale-zhang-nanking.html#ixzz18v9vWCT4

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010

China holds memorial ceremony, Buddhist assembly to commemorate Nanjing Massacre victims

English.news.cn 2010-12-13 22:49:26
NANJING, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) — About 5,000 Chinese and foreigners gathered Monday in Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province, to mourn hundreds of thousands of people who were killed by invading Japanese troops 73 years ago.
Participants in the ceremony stood in silent tribute, offered wreaths and bowed in front of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre, with sirens wailing in the drizzling morning on Monday, the 73rd anniversary of the massive slaughter.
“The Japanese soldiers invaded Nanjing when I was four, and they killed some of my family members. On the anniversary of the massacre every year I would come here to express my grief,” said Sun Xuelan, a 77-year-old survivor, who is confined to a wheelchair.
Japanese troops occupied Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937 and began a six-week massacre. Records show more than 300,000 people — not only disarmed soldiers , but also civilians — were killed.
Mikhalchev Mikhail, deputy director of the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Russia, said, “In the history of human civilization, some facts shouldn’t be forgotten, and the Nanjing Massacre was one of them.”
He noted that the tragedy had become a symbol of the Chinese people’s bitter suffering and prompted all people to learn the preciousness of peace.”
“We should remember the history, but not hatred. Peace is a common desire of all human beings,” said Nanjing citizen Yu Hong , who attended the ceremony.
Besides the memorial ceremony, Buddhist monks from China and Japan held a religious service Monday at the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
The assembly was attended by 15 monks from six Buddhist temples in Japan, more than 50 monks and Buddhist believers from China and thirty Massacre survivors and relatives of victims.
The monks chanted Buddhist prayers of mourning and prayed for peace.
Aori Take Shuna, abbot of Japan’s Reiunti Temple, read a poem he wrote to honor the dead and prayed for long-term friendship between the peoples of China and Japan.
Yamauchi Sayoko, who was a representative of a sect of Japanese Buddhism, said that the people of Japan, which invaded and occupied China in the 1930s and 1940s, were deeply regretful for the victims of the war and sincerely hoped such a tragedy would never be repeated.
Built in 1985, the memorial hall annually records five million visitors since it was expanded and renovated in 2007.
Zhu Chengshan, curator of the hall, said that every year when the anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre occurs , nearly 10,000 Nanjing citizens would swarm the hall and spontaneously mourn the victims.
On Sunday, workers began to extend a memorial wall at the memorial hall on which names of those killed are engraved.
After the extension, the wall would have 10,324 names, 1,724 more than three years ago, Zhu said.
Collecting the names of the victims was an important job in researching the Massacre, but it was difficult to find witnesses and documents decades later, he said.
Moreover, a group of historians from China, Japan and the United States has begun compiling an encyclopedia on the Nanjing Massacre, which was expected to embody a wide range of historical documents and pictures. “The dictionary may serve as a consolation to the deceased,” Zhu said.
Editor: yan

http://english.sina.com/china/p/2010/1212/351725.html

China extends “wailing wall” to engrave more names of Nanjing Massacre victims
2010-12-13 02:22:38 GMT2010-12-13 10:22:38 (Beijing Time) Xinhua English

A man takes photos at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Dec. 12, 2010.A series of activities were held in Nanjing to mourn for more than 300,000 citizens of Nanjing massacred by Japanese invaders in 1937, marking the 73rd anniversary of the tragedy which falls on Dec. 13. (Xinhua/Wang Xin)

Visitors take a tour to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Dec. 12, 2010. A series of activities were held in Nanjing to mourn for more than 300,000 citizens of Nanjing massacred by Japanese invaders in 1937, marking the 73rd anniversary of the tragedy which falls on Dec. 13. (Xinhua/Wang Xin)

Visitors take a tour to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Dec. 12, 2010. A series of activities were held in Nanjing to mourn for more than 300,000 citizens of Nanjing massacred by Japanese invaders in 1937, marking the 73rd anniversary of the tragedy which falls on Dec. 13. (Xinhua/Wang Xin)

Mourners pay condolences at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Dec. 12, 2010. A series of activities were held in Nanjing to mourn for more than 300,000 citizens massacred by Japanese invaders in 1937, marking the 73rd anniversary of the tragedy falls on Dec. 13. (Xinhua/Li Wenbao)

Mourners pay condolences at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Dec. 12, 2010. A series of activities were held in Nanjing to mourn for more than 300,000 citizens massacred by Japanese invaders in 1937, marking the 73rd anniversary of the tragedy falls on Dec. 13. (Xinhua/Li Wenbao)

Mourners pay condolences at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Dec. 12, 2010. A series of activities were held in Nanjing to mourn for more than 300,000 citizens massacred by Japanese invaders in 1937, marking the 73rd anniversary of the tragedy falls on Dec. 13. (Xinhua/Li Wenbao)

A mourners pays condolences at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Dec. 12, 2010. A series of activities were held in Nanjing to mourn for more than 300,000 citizens massacred by Japanese invaders in 1937, marking the 73rd anniversary of the tragedy falls on Dec. 13. (Xinhua/Li Wenbao)
NANJING, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) — China on Sunday started to extend a memorial wall to engrave more names of those massacred by Japanese aggressors more than 70 years ago in Nanjing.
After extension, the “wailing wall”, a part of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, will have 10,324 names on it, curator Zhu Chengshan said.
The wall was engraved with 3,000 names when it was first built in 1995, and the list was expanded to more than 8,600 names in 2007 when the memorial reopened after a major repair and extension to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre.
The original wall was 43 meters long and 3.5 meters high. The extension will lengthen the wall by 26.5 meters, with 1,655 more names added to it, according to Zhu.
Nanjing Massacre happened during World War II after Japanese troops occupied Nanjing, then capital of China, on Dec. 13, 1937. More than 300,000 Chinese were killed in the month-long atrocity.
To collect the names of the victims is an important but tough job in the research of the massacre, as it is hard to seek witnesses and related documents decades after the holocaust, said Zhu.