In the Name of the Emperor

"The Rape of Nanjing"...it sounds vaguely like a classic artwork or an 18th century epic poem, but it's neither. In December of 1937, Japanese soldiers in their newfound alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy continued their invasion of China by raping or massacring some 300,000 women, children and men over a six-week period. To this day, many Japanese textbooks downplay the incident, and as recently as 1994, a high ranking Japanese official denied it ever happened. Combining archival film footage--particularly that filmed by Rev. John Magee--and interviews with former Japanese soldiers, Chinese survivors, and scholars from both countries, filmmakers Christine Choy and Nancy Tong have made a film that leaves no doubt as to the brutal reality of the Nanjing massacre. In a sidebar woven into the second half of the film, the plight of the "comfort women," young girls imported from Korea to service the Japanese soldiers' sexual needs is also addressed. Although In the Name of the Emperor is a powerful assemblage of footage--the endless scenes of charred, bayoneted, and beaten Chinese bodies constitute a fairly potent assault on the senses--it is, finally, more of a pointing finger than an absorbing study of a tragedy. The film relentlessly presents a catalog of horrors both visual and narrative; but watching them is neither particularly illuminating nor redemptive. Still--and this is no mean feat--the film uncovers a very horrible truth and insists that the world acknowledge it happened. Recommended, with reservations, for larger Asian history collections. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)