Abstract
What might be gained from a reading of crucifixion in light of an atrocity like the Nanjing massacre? This chapter suggests that an acknowledgment of the ‘unspeakable things’ of the 1937 Nanjing massacre offers important insights into Roman crucifixions. Drawing on Iris Chang’s influential book, The Rape of Nanking (1997), it suggests a number of features in the violence at Nanjing that might help towards a more informed reading of the biblical accounts of crucifixion as assaults on human dignity.
A version of this chapter was presented under the title “The Massacre at Nanking, Crucifixion, and Public Theology” at Religion and Social Justice Symposium, Tongji University, Shanghai, 30 October 2015. I am grateful to Prof. Monhong Lin (Nanjing Union Theological Seminary) and other participants at the symposium for their discussion of the paper. The term ‘unspeakable things’ in the chapter title is taken from the writing of the missionary and Nanjing eye-witness John Magee.
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Notes
- 1.
The name Nanjing is used throughout this chapter, expect in citations of other works (including Chang’s book) that use the term Nanking.
- 2.
- 3.
This was the same day that the Japanese airplanes first attacked the city, shortly before the ground assault began on 1 December; for a chronology, see Zhang [52, p. 411]. On the Westerners who stayed and their work for the International Committee and documenting the massacre, see Lu [26], Brook [3], Hu [16], Vautrin and Tsen [44].
- 4.
- 5.
Gin Ling college was intended to serve 2700 women, but filled to 10,000 women; see Vautrin and Tsen [44].
- 6.
On p. 1014 the Tribunal report appears to endorse an estimate of 200,000: ‘Estimates made at a later date indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. That these estimates are not exaggerated is borne out by the fact that burial societies and other organizations counted more than 155,000 bodies which they buried. They also reported that most of those were bound with their hands tied behind their backs. These figures do not take into account those persons whose bodies were destroyed by burning, or by throwing them into the Yangtze River, or otherwise disposed of by Japanese.’ However, in the IMTFE verdict against General Iwane Matsui, this appears to be revised, or at least rephrased, to ‘more than 100,000’; IMTFE, Judgment, p. 1180.
- 7.
- 8.
Some of the difference depends on how the massacre is delineated in terms of the timespan and geographical area, and whether the figure includes only civilian deaths or both civilian and military deaths. Harold Timperley, an Australian journalist who worked for the British Manchester Guardian and reported on the Nanjing massacre from Shanghai, sent a despatch on 16 January 1938 indicating that 300,000 Chinese civilians had been killed in the Nanjing-Shanghai area; see Lu [24, pp. 58–63). In April 1938 Timperley left for London, and in July 1938 he published edited testimonies and documents as the first book to address the massacre. This offered the relatively modest figure of 40,000 as those killed in Nanjing itself; Timperley [38].
- 9.
- 10.
Bob Wakabayashi warns that the history is more complicated than any simple numbers or single perspectives allow. Wakabayshi himself offers the range from over 40,000 to under 200,000; see Wakabayashi [45].
- 11.
The site is also known as the ‘Memorial for Compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression’. In 2015, despite objections from Japan, China persuaded UNESCO to add documents from the massacre and the post-war investigation to the Memory of the World Register, a program established in 1992 to preserve and ensure access to documentary heritage of world significance.
- 12.
A foundation stone was laid on 13 December 1983, and construction began in 1984. The site was opened in 1985. A second phase of major development took place in 1995, and since then a number of further renovations and enlargements have been added; Logan and Reeves [25].
- 13.
The exhibition hall itself is a very distinctive building, which some commenators compare to a tomb, since it built partly beneath the ground, and has a very sombre atmosphere, which visitors descend into.
- 14.
In 1998, further skeletal remains were discovered in a burial pit underneath the site. This pit was protected and incorporated into a display hall; Logan and Reeves [25].
- 15.
The cross was added in 1995 as part of the second phase of development; Logan and Reeves [25]. Despite its considerable height and prescence, it is eclipsed by the very tall flag pole in the middle of the sqaure, which flies the national flag.
- 16.
Chang [7].
- 17.
Some of the most creative contextual readings of scripture draw on the personal experience and the immediate cultural background of the interpreter or scholar. By contrast, this chapters stands one step removed from the context it seeks to draw upon, and relies on perspective provided in Chang’s disturbing work.
- 18.
- 19.
Hengel’s German title Mors turpissima crucis (‘most vile death of the cross’) echoes the words of North African theologian Origen (c. 185–254) in his Commentary on Matthew (on verse 27.22 and following). Hengel is especially interested in understanding Origen’s description of the cross ‘as most vile death’ but he does not explore the possibility that the sense of horror might be due to an association of crucifixion with extreme forms of sexual violence; see Hengel [14].
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
Two partial exceptions to this are: Cavanaugh [5], Neafsey [31]. However, neither Cavanaugh nor Neafsey link the sexual violence that commonly accompanies contemporary torture practices to the sexual violence that accompanied crucifixion. Neafsey mentions the use of rapes and other sexual violence in torture, for example, Crucified People, p. 22, 66. He also cites (p. 11) the work of Elizabeth Johnson, which argues that victims of sexual violence can find a positive value in the cross; see Johnson [20, pp. 263–264]. However, Neafsey does not identify or discuss sexual violence as an element of Roman crucifixion or as a part of the historical experience of Jesus. Other valuable collections that address the use of torture from an ethical and theological perspective is Hunsinger [18], and Theology Today 63(3) (October 2006). However, none of the contributions connects the sexual element of torture to crucifixion.
- 23.
The synoptic gospels (Mk. 15.24, Mt. 27.35 and Lk 23.34) are less explicit, and simply refer to the division of his clothes by lots, but they do not provide evidence to suggest that Jesus was allowed to remain partially clothed.
- 24.
See Tombs [41, pp. 104–107].
- 25.
For biographical background on Chang’s life, written by her mother, see Chang [6].
- 26.
Chang [7].
- 27.
In 1989 Chang had graduated from the University of Illinois where she had majored in journalism. She worked briefly as a journalist before becoming an author. She was only 29 when The Rape of Nanking was published. Her research included a visit to China in 1995 to interview victims, and a period at the library of Yale Divinity School, where many of the documents from western missionaries who had been in Nanking were deposited.
- 28.
See especially Chang [7, pp. 89–99].
- 29.
Chang [7]. McCallum worked for the United Christian Mission Society and was an administrator at the hospital. This passage was submitted to the IMTFE. A copy of McCallum’s diary was discovered in Shanghai in 1995. If anything, Chang’s quotation from McCallum slightly downplays the original diary entry. The version in McCallum’s diary, published in a collection [28], has an even more emphatic threefold repetition ‘Rape! Rape! Rape!’; James H. McCallum, ‘Account of the Japanese Atrocities at Nanking During the Winter of 1937–1938’ (19 December 1937) in Zhang [52].
- 30.
Magee [27, pp. 166–195]. Magee returned to the United States in 1940 and was the Episcopalian chaplain at Yale University from 1946 until his death in 1953. Magee described what he saw in letters to his wife and managed to take photos of some of the atrocities and made a sequence of short films. When these were smuggled out of the city they became the first available visual documenation of what had happened. On the films, Magee writes: The pictures herewith give but a fragmentary glimpse of the unspeakable things that happened following the Japanese occupation of Nanking on December 1937; Zhang [52]. Two of the surviving reels (Nos. 1 and 9) lasting about 22 min were later donated by his grandson to the archive at Yale Divinity School. These have now been digitized and are available at the Divinity Library Nanking Massacre Project website http://web.library.yale.edu/divinity/nanking.
- 31.
Magee [27]. Chang does not cite this particular letter, but might nonetheless have been influenced by it. She reports that she consulted Magee’s papers during her research at Yale Divinity School library, along with the papers of Robert Wilson (a doctor at a Nanjing hospital), Lewis Smythe (a professor of sociology teaching at the University of Nanjing), and Minnie Vautrin (who taught at Ginling Women’s College).
- 32.
Brownmiller [4, pp. 57–61]; see also Chang [7]. Brownmiller notes (p. 57, 58) that rape and sexual violence were excluded from the 60-page report that the International Committee submitted in June 1938 in her discussion of rape in World War II (Against Our Will, pp. 48–78), but were included in submissions to the IMTFE and were acknowledged by the Tribunal.
- 33.
Chang [7]. The IMFTE estimated: ‘Approximately 20,000 cases of rape occurred within the city during the first month of the occupation.’ IMFTE, Judgment, p. 1011.
- 34.
Even prominent Japanese sceptics appear to accept that sexual violence was widespread, and focus their criticisms on the numbers killed, for example, Tanaka Masaaki author of ‘Nankin Gyakusatsu’ no Kyoko [‘Rape of Nanking’ as a Ficition] in 1984; see Yamamoto [46]. Furthermore, as a perspective for reflection on crucifixion, Chang’s descriptions of different forms sexual violence are more important than quantifying the overall numbers.
- 35.
Chang writes: ‘Throughout my childhood Nanjing Datusha remained buried in the back of my mind as a metaphor for unspeakable evil’; Chang [7, p. 8].
- 36.
In light of Chang’s subsequent mental health difficulties and suicide, some have suggested that her efforts to uncover and address this unspeakable violence took a heavy toll on her health. See McLaughlin [29].
- 37.
On the dangers of such voyeurism, see Sontag [36].
- 38.
Cavanaugh’s discussion of torture and the broken body in Torture and Eucharist might provide a basis for exploring how the liturgy of the eucharist could be drawn upon to offer one appropriate way to include a subdued acknowledgment of sexualised violence in memory of the breaking of the body.
- 39.
Chang [7, p. 94]. Chang [7, p. 88, 89] comments: ‘The incidents mentioned above are only a fraction of the methods that the Japanese used to torment their victims. The Japanese saturated victims in acid, impaled babies with bayonets, hung people by their tongues. One Japanese reporter who later investigated the Rape of Nanking learned that at least one Japanese soldier tore the heart and liver out of a Chinese victim to eat them. Even genitals, apparently, were consumed; a Chinese soldier who escaped from Japanese custody saw several dead people in the streets with their penises cut off. He was later told that the penises were sold to Japanese customers who believed that eating them would increase virility’.
- 40.
Brownmiller also drew attention to the dis-robing of Jewish women as a form of shaming. She cites Sala Pawlowicz, a Polish Jew who survived Bergen-Belsen, who described the disrobings as a humiliation that Germans staged for their ‘diversion’. Pawlowicz writes: ‘They forced us to undress and lie on the ground as they walked by, laughing and making lewd comments. Then we were beaten with whips on our bare backs and chased through the ghetto. Their actions shamed me.’; cited Brownmiller [4]. Brownmiller also points to a widespread pattern of rape, sexual tortures, and humiliations against Jewish women during World War II and the Shoah; Brownmiller [4, pp. 49–56]. These abuses received very little attention in most histories of the war, perhaps because of a naive and mistaken assumption that the anti-Semitic 1935 Nuremberg race laws would have prevented them. In fact, sexual violence against women and children was widespread and varied; see, Hedgepeth and Saidel [13].
- 41.
Chang [7, p. 93].
- 42.
Chang [7, p. 94].
- 43.
Brownmiller [4, pp. 31–113].
- 44.
Even if the sexual violence at Nanjing was the result of a break-down in Japanese military discipline, and not an intentional instrument of terror, there is little evidence of Japanese commanders seeking to prevent or punish what happened, despite their obligation to protect civilians.
- 45.
Josephus [22, p. 314].
- 46.
Chang [7].
- 47.
Chang [7, p. 6].
- 48.
Chang [7, p. 6].
- 49.
On the relationship of power and conquest in the 1960–1996 conflict in Guatemala, and its expression through sexual violence, see Tombs [39].
- 50.
See for example, the History Channel television programme Crucifixion (2008) directed by Jon Taylor on the historical origins of Roman crucifixion.
- 51.
Chang [7, p. 87].
- 52.
Samuelsson [34].
- 53.
Chang [7, p. 95].
- 54.
Jones and Zotto [21].
- 55.
See for example, the, Archdiocesan Human Rights Office (ODHAG) report on the Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI) presented on 24 April 1998 and translated as REMHI [33]. The presentation of sexual violence against males in this reports is discussed in Tombs, ‘Honour, Shame and Conques’.
- 56.
- 57.
Agger [1, pp. 311–12].
- 58.
- 59.
This translation is KJV. The NRSV read ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’. In Mt. 27.54 the same statement is made by the centurion guarding the tomb, but it is placed later in the narrative. In Matthew it is prompted by the earthquake and breaking open of tombs, whereas in Mark it is when Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
- 60.
The shifting of blame to the Jews as ‘Christ killers’ has contributed to a horrifying legacy of anti-Semitism in Christian tradition.
- 61.
- 62.
It is possible that Chang herself was so deeply disturbed by her research, and the intensity with which she pursued it, that it may have affected her mental health and possibly contributed to her depression and suicide in 2004.
- 63.
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Tombs, D. (2020). Unspeakable Things: Drawing upon the Nanjing Massacre to Read Crucifixion as an Assault on Human Dignity. In: Xie, Z., Kollontai, P., Kim, S. (eds) Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5081-2_3
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