2007-09-09
■ Susan Brownmiller 3 
The Rape of Nanking in "Against Our Will"
Susan Brownmillerが1975年に出した"Against Our Will"には、「慰安婦」の記述はありませんが、戦場でのレイプに関して「南京大虐殺」のことが数ページに渡って書いてあります。"The Rape of Nanking"がIris Chanの造語だとわけのわからん勘違いをしている御仁は引用者が強調した部分だけでも、web翻訳にかけてみてください。
The Far East equivalent of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal was held in Tokyo 1946. Now it was the Japanese war machine that was held under scrutiny, and now it was the master-race theory of the Land of the Rising Sun—with the Chinese nation forced to play the role of "inferior people"—that the ultimate victors of World War II had cause to examine and pass judgment upon. At the Tokyo tribunal the full story of the Rape of Nanking, almost ten years after the fact, was finally made known.
(snib)
Report of unchecked violence, including terrifying accounts of mass rape, filtered out of the captured city despite an official news blanket ordered by Generalissimo Chiang. But when the silence was finally broken in January, a curious thing happened. Nanking had clearly been the victim of unlawful atrocity. As the Western press jumped into the breach, accounts of wanton murder and looting were gravely brought to the world's attention, but stories of rape were handled gingerly—almost reluctantly—by international reporters. "A few uninvestigated cases of rape were reported" was the way Life magazine cautiously chose to inform its readers.
Despite the cynicism brought to bear by the Western press, stories of systematic mass rape in Nanking were unusually persistent, so much so that the "Rape of Nanking" soon passed into common usage as the world-wide metaphor for that city's invasion…..
(pp. 56-57)
The pathetic evidence submitted to the military tribunal was conclusive enough. The judgment at Tokyo that "approximately 20,000 cases of rape occurred within the city during the first month of occupation."*1 In its summation the tribunal stated:
Death was a frequently penalty for the slightest resistance on the part of a victim or the members of her family who sought to protect her. Even girls of tender years and old women were raped in large numbers throughout the city, and many cases of abnormal or sadistic behavior in connection with the rapings occurred. Many women were killed after the act and their bodies mutilated. . . . The barbarous behavior of the Japanese army cannot be excused as the acts of a soldiery which had temporarily gotten out of hand when at last a stubbornly defended position had capitulated—rape, arson, and murder continued to be committed on a large scale for at least six weeks after the city had been taken
.One month before the Nanking invasion General Matsui had crowed that his mission was "to chastise the Nanking Government and the outrageous Chinese." He wanted, he proclaimed, "to dazzle China with Japan's military glory." Ten years later it was the considered opinion of the Tokyo tribunal that the sack of the city had been "either secretly ordered or willfully committed." For his part in the Rape of Nanking General Matsui was sentenced to be hanged.
Matsui's defense had been to deny all charges of illegal atrocities, particularly the accounts of rape, which he called mere "rumors, Chinese passing on the information, perhaps in fun." On cross-examination he repeated in exasperation, " I am only trying to tell you that I am not directly responsible for the discipline and morals of the troops under the respective armies under my command." His intelligence officer, Major Yasuto Nakayama, was a trifle more humble, correctly polite. Concerning cases of rape and assaults against women and girls, Nakayama testified, " I believe there were several cases of this to a limited extent, and I regret that such cases occurred. It is very improper for me to state an opinion before this Tribunal—however, I hope that such incidents will not in the future occur."
Had it not been for the Tokyo war-crimes tribunal, who would have believed the full dimensions of the Rape of Nanking? The Japanese, like all warring governments, were mindful that rape in war was an unconscionable crime under the Hague Convention, and they did their best to cover up their unfortunate traces. The attempted cover-up was duly entered into evidence at the postwar trials.
In February, 1939, the Japanese War Ministry issued a set of top-secret instructions to commander in the field regarding the explicit stifling of certain kinds of conversation heard among men returning home on furlough. This was after the occupation of Nanking and Hankow, and the soldiers of the Rising Sun had been rather loose-tongued about where they had been and what they had done. The orders gave examples of the sort of remarks to be avoided in the future, citing quotes that had appeared in foreign newspaper stories:
- "One company commander unofficially gave [us] instructions for raping as follows: 'In order that we will not have problem, either pay them money or kill them in some obscure place after you have finished.'"
- "If the army men who participated in the war were investigated individually, they would probably all be guilty of murder, robbery or rape."
- "At ----- we captured a family of four. We played with the daughter as we would with a harlot. But as the parents insisted that the daughter be returned to them we killed them. We played with the daughter as before until the unit's departure and then killed her."
- "In the half year of battle about the only things I learned are rape and burglary."
America had not yet entered the war, and the secret orders were an effort to avoid unfavorable criticism at home and abroad.
(pp. 60-62)
