Therefore, reflecting on history, condemning war and calling for peace should be the proper meaning of the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre.
But the perspective of reflection seems to focus on a single nationalist perspective, and among the voices of reflection, the voice of nationalism is also the strongest.
"Don't forget the national humiliation and revitalize China" has always been our most standard attitude and slogan towards the humiliating history in modern times.
But to some extent, this is not conducive to our real understanding and reflection on history, nor to the reconciliation between the Chinese and Japanese people today.
It seems that we should rethink the past history and massacres.
First of all, from the national level or from the political level, why did the Nanjing Massacre happen? Why didn't * * at that time effectively resist the Japanese invasion and protect its own citizens? It should be said that this level of reflection is what we do the most, but it may not be done well.
"If you fall behind, you will be beaten" is the most orthodox answer, but the question is why you fall behind. Is this just a matter of military backwardness? To what extent does political autocracy hinder the development and rise of the country? To what extent have domestic divisions and factional struggles hindered China's war of resistance and the unity of national forces? This is the most fundamental reflection at the political level.
Otherwise, another war will still defeat us.
Second, the level of nationality.
In this respect, I don't want to emphasize that it is often suspected of condescending moral advice. Moreover, when we are in a similar situation with them, we may not be able to do better ourselves, not to mention that atomized individuals can't resist the army equipped with modern weapons, but history forces us to face it, that is, in the face of the Japanese massacre, why don't we resist? The third and most important thing is the reflection on human nature.
Why is human nature twisted and cruel to such an extent? Why do unarmed women, the elderly and children kill each other? What caused this distortion, inspired this madness, and released the human side without reservation? War? System? Or brainwashing? How can we prevent this from happening again? If we are faced with the situation that conscience and command can only choose one, how will we choose? Still have a clear conscience? The brutal massacre by the Japanese army is not only a shame for us as a member of the Chinese nation, but also a shame for us as a member of mankind.
What needs reflection is our "reflection" itself.
For a long time, the world outside China knew little about the history of the Nanjing Massacre, far from forming a Nazi-style global review and reflection.
After World War II, Israeli and Jewish NGOs and scholars worked closely together to expose and accuse Nazi crimes from a humanitarian perspective, and tried their best to hunt down fugitive Nazi criminals with a view to bringing them to justice.
However, the regimes on both sides of the strait gave up their claims against Japan one after another, and the study of Japanese war history even once became an academic forbidden zone. Even if there are studies, most of them emphasize national feelings and ideology without paying attention to unfortunate living individuals, which also leads the western world to generally believe that the debate about the "Nanjing Massacre" is only the need of political confrontation between China and Japan.
In the end, it turns out that it was a weak and tenacious woman who wrote the Nanjing Massacre at the cost of her life-the forgotten massacre, which attracted the world's universal attention and recognition of this dark history.
Isn't this itself worth reflecting on? Seventy years later, when we pay homage to hundreds of thousands of innocent souls again, we should not remember hatred, but learn from it.
During the Japanese Holocaust, john rabe, a German righteous man who helped China civilians selflessly, once said, "We can forgive, but we can't forget." Yes, we forgive giving up hatred, and we remember to prevent the tragedy from happening again.