Japan and China

War and reconciliation: a tale of two countries | The Japan Times Online

This is an interesting article on how China and Japan deal with the Rape of Nanjing. There's a museum in that city now that deals with it.

I like this description of how, in Japan, the controversial Yusuhukan museum near the Yasukuni Shrine deals with it:

There one can view a video of Japanese troops bellowing a collective "Banzai!" from atop the city wall that abruptly cuts to a scene of a soldier ladling out soup for the elderly and young, while the narrator helpfully explains that the Japanese troops entered the city and restored peace and harmony.

Throughout the exhibit, Japan's invasion of China is portrayed as a campaign to quell Chinese "terrorism" — a post-9/11 narrative that demonstrates just how much the present impinges on the past. At the museum, there is no mention of invasion, aggression, massacres or atrocities committed by Japanese troops in China. Improbably, the suffering of Japanese is the only suffering on display.

On the other hand, the writer says:

As a teacher, I have noticed how much better informed Japanese students are now than they were 20 years ago about this shared past. Only one of the more than 100 research papers submitted in my classes on Nanjing expressed anything but condemnation and contrition.

All interesting.