The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting
By Yichen Liu ’28
The politics of remembering and the politics of forgetting often go hand in hand, particularly for countries with difficult pasts. While some nations use nostalgia and others strong emotions as political tools to deliberately shape national memory through education and commemoration, other nations choose to bury unwanted elements of their past.
A prime example of this rift is shown through the disparity in the ways China and Japan remember the Second Sino-Japanese War. This war was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China during the timeframe of World War II. Although the Second Sino-Japanese War is lesser known against the backdrop of the Holocaust occurring in Europe, Japan committed mass genocide against the Chinese on several occasions during this war, the most notorious being the Nanjing Massacre. Within this instance, the Japanese Imperial Army perpetrated mass murder and widespread rape of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war. From December 1937 to February 1938, it committed war crimes, destroyed historic buildings, looted the city of Nanjing (formerly Nanking), and killed an estimated value upwards of 300,000 Chinese people in under two months. [1]
Today, China has dedicated a museum in Nanjing, China, as well as a national memorial day dedicated to this massacre and its victims. More recently, the movie “Dead to Rights” was released on July 25, 2025, about the Nanjing Massacre, currently holding a strong rating of 9.7 stars. [2] This film has earned over 421 million dollars from ticket sales and has more than 520,000 reviews. [3] After the movie’s release, the internet exploded with numerous accounts of Chinese users expressing profound anger towards the past actions of the Japanese, commenting iconic lines from the movie such as “We are not friends. We never were,” under Japanese social media posts. [4] Chinese social media posts also featured children cutting up their Japanese toys after watching the movie. This subsidization of history projects past enmity onto the present, enforcing a memory of harm rather than healing and highlighting how political history can instill nationalism through negative sentiments towards outside entities.
On the other hand, the Japanese government chooses to bury this history in order to promote unity and become a part of the larger world. Following Japan’s defeat in WWII, many political factions within the country portray it as a victim in the war rather than an aggressor. Over time, this perspective has been ubiquitously adopted within Japan, and the topic of the war, or its role in such, is seldom mentioned. Many Japanese soldiers partook in the mass murder and rape of Nanjing, although Japanese shrines worship these soldiers as national heroes, therefore diminishing the historical accuracy and erasing the cultural importance of the Nanjing Massacre. [5] Accordingly, there exists a widespread ignorance throughout the Japanese population, observed through their reluctance to mention the war, demonstrating how those in power can influence the population and fade aspects of history. [6]
History is unquestionably an important subject in terms of both honoring and learning from the past as a means of advancing modern society. However, the reality—exemplified through China and Japan’s stark contrast to remembering the Second Sino-Japanese war—that memory elicits contrasting social responses to history exposes the careful line that nations toe: the line between preserving historical accuracy and prioritizing political interest. Thus, as global citizens, checking bias and independent thinking are imperative for bridging divisions between nations and interacting with the world around us.
Footnotes
USC Shoah Foundation, “Nanjing Massacre.”
“南京照相馆.”
“南京照相馆.”
Wang, “WW2: How the Nanjing Massacre Still Haunts China-Japan Relations.”
“History│Yasukuni Jinja.”
Wang, “WW2: How the Nanjing Massacre Still Haunts China-Japan Relations.”
References
Wang, Fan. “WW2: How the Nanjing Massacre Still Haunts China-Japan Relations.” BBC News, August 14, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp89ed9j5ygo.
Yasukuni Jinja. n.d. “History│Yasukuni Jinja.” Www.yasukuni.or.jp. https://www.yasukuni.or.jp/english/about/history.html.
“南京照相馆.” 2025. Maoyan.com. 2025. https://piaofang.maoyan.com/movie/1522657.
USC Shoah Foundation. “Nanjing Massacre.” USC Shoah Foundation, University of Southern California, 2023, sfi.usc.edu/collections/nanjing-massacre.