Zhang Lianhong: Awakening a Longing for Peace and its Steadfast Preservation among People of Goodwill [1]
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. The inhuman acts of aggression, the appalling atrocities of massacre, and the barbaric, frenzied plundering and destruction committed by Japanese militarism brought catastrophic disasters to the Chinese people and the peoples of many Asian nations. Past experience, if not forgotten, is a guide for the future [1]. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "Condemning the brutality of the aggressors and emphasizing the importance of remembering historical experiences and lessons is not intended to perpetuate hatred. Rather, it is to awaken the yearning for and adherence to peace among people of goodwill; it is to use history as a mirror to face the future, and to jointly cherish and safeguard peace." In recent years, academic circles both at home and abroad have achieved fruitful results in the collection, organization, and study of historical evidence of Japanese war crimes in China, demonstrating unprecedented breadth and depth. From dust-laden archival documents, steady narratives of aging witnesses, and the diligent efforts of researchers, the history of Japanese war crimes has been presented to the world in a richer, more accurate, and more impactful manner. These studies are not only a reconfirmation of the past atrocities of the aggressors but also a profound inquiry into historical justice and an eternal commitment to human peace.
Continuous collection and organization of new historical materials further solidifies the history of evidence of Japan's crimes in China
Historical materials are the foundation of historiography. On the eve of the end of World War II, the Japanese government organized the large-scale destruction of core wartime classified archives, resulting in a lack of first-hand core archival documents for the postwar investigation of the Imperial Japanese Army's crimes and for historical research. In 2015, during the 25th collective study session of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee concerning the review and reflections on the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "To deepen the study of the War of Resistance, we must speak more through archives, data, facts, and witness testimony—through various forms of both human and material evidence. We must strengthen the foundational work of material collection and organization, comprehensively organizing archives, photographs, data, and artifacts of the War of Resistance from across the country, while simultaneously reaching out globally to collect video materials, books, newspapers, periodicals, diaries, letters, and physical objects." Over the past decade, through extensive collection and deep excavation by the international academic community, batches of long-buried original archives of the Imperial Japanese Army's crimes have come to light, and oral history interviews involving perpetrators, victims, and witnesses of the war are flourishing.
The continuous excavation of archival documents at home and abroad has further enriched and expanded the sources of evidence regarding the crimes of the Japanese military. In recent years, academia and domestic archives at all levels have released a series of archival documents exposing the Nanjing Massacre, biological warfare, chemical warfare, the "comfort women" system [2], indiscriminate bombing, and forced labor. Since 2021, the Federal Archival Agency of Russia launched the "1949 Khabarovsk Trial Archives" project, declassifying and putting online 370 sets of archival documents. These are core historical materials regarding Japanese biological warfare and constitute important evidence for a comprehensive understanding of the Khabarovsk Trial and key issues concerning Unit 731 [3]; they have greatly enhanced the overall understanding of the Khabarovsk Trial with rich historical details. Some righteous scholars within Japan have also continuously excavated and publicized various archives related to the Imperial Japanese Army’s biological warfare. For instance, Matsuno Seiya, a researcher at Meigaku University, collected and publicized first-hand archival materials such as the Register of Higher Civil Officials of the Army, Army Secretaries, and Army Technicians from the National Archives of Japan, further revealing the inner workings of the Imperial Japanese Army's biological warfare. The diaries of several Japanese soldiers, such as Lieutenant Colonel Kimura, Saijo Eisaku, and Arai Jun, have been published successively, further corroborating the truth of the Nanjing Massacre and the evils of the "comfort women" system. Additionally, archives concerning the "counterfeit currency war" launched by the Japanese army in South China have been made public; these archives record in detail the quantity, location, process, distribution of spoils, and usage regulations of forged fabi [4]. The excavation of more and more archival materials has constructed a more rigorous chain of evidence for the aggressors' crimes.
As a vivid supplement to archival documents, oral history possesses unique emotional power and detailed value. As eyewitnesses are now of advanced age, the "rescue-style" collection of their accounts is a matter of extreme urgency. In recent years, domestic universities, research institutions, and civil organizations have carried out oral history research on the victims of the Imperial Japanese Army's atrocities. Testimonies from survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, victims of biological warfare, victims of the "comfort women" system, and survivors of forced labor have been systematically recorded, organized, verified, and preserved. Scholars in Shandong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu provinces have organized university students to conduct rural investigations, successively publishing a series of oral materials from biological warfare victims and witnesses, providing important documentation for epidemiological research following the Japanese military's launch of biological warfare. Matsuoka Tamaki, founder of the "Association for Continuing the Memories of Nanjing" and president of the Japanese organization Meishinkai, along with Ono Kenji, a Japanese civilian researcher of the Nanjing Massacre, have interviewed Japanese veterans and organized the publication of their oral testimonies. In recent years, oral testimonies from former members of Unit 731, such as Kurumisawa Masakuni and the youth soldier Shimizu Hideo, have revealed crimes including human vivisections, human experiments, and the implementation of biological warfare. These oral materials not only record specific victim experiences, details of atrocities, and geographical environments but also carry indelible emotional trauma and life experiences, imparting the warmth of life to otherwise cold archives.
Online platform databases have become a new medium for exposing evidence of Japanese aggression. In September 2018, the "Database of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and Modern Sino-Japanese Relations," established by the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), was officially launched. The platform's literature covers seven major categories of resources: books, newspapers, periodicals, archives, audio, images, and videos. It features a total of over 83 million pages of high-definition images and nearly 180 million words of bibliographic descriptions, and is open to the entire society for free. In Japan, the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR), established in 2001, continues to use the internet to release Asian-related materials from the early Meiji period to the end of the Pacific War, held by the National Archives of Japan, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Military Archives of the National Institute for Defense Studies. These two major data platforms in China and Japan provide a vast amount of historical documents relating to Japanese war atrocities. Additionally, South Korea's "Database of Records on Japanese Military 'Comfort Women'" has collected and organized over 80,000 items of related data for academic use. The massive volume of literature converged on these online platforms has greatly broadened the paths for researching the crimes of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Interdisciplinary integrated research continuously uncovers new dimensions for understanding the crimes of the Imperial Japanese Army
General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "We must persist in using historical materialism to understand and record history, basing historical conclusions on the support of detailed and accurate historical materials and deep, meticulous research and analysis." In the study of evidence of Japanese war crimes, the academic community has continuously collected and enriched first-hand archival documents and oral materials, but deep and meticulous research is still required to reach scientific historical conclusions, profoundly expose the crimes of the Japanese military, and restore historical truth. In recent years, the study of evidence of Japanese war crimes has gradually shown a clear trend toward interdisciplinary integration. Particularly with the application of big data, the theories, methods, and perspectives of multiple disciplines are deeply converging, continuously uncovering new dimensions for understanding these crimes.
The deepening of microhistory case studies and global macrohistory has greatly enriched the levels of research. Microhistory focuses on specific regions, events, groups, and even individual life histories. For example, in-depth investigations into villages such as Hushan and Xigangtou in Tangshan Town on the outskirts of Nanjing, which were massacred by the Japanese army, have utilized multiple forms of evidence—including Japanese battlefield diaries, local gazetteers, genealogical records, and especially survivor oral histories—to reconstruct the specific process of the massacres, the collapse of village social structures under violence, and the difficult post-war survival trajectories of survivors. This type of "thick description" research allows abstract numbers in grand narratives to return to named, flesh-and-blood individuals, revealing the destructive impact of war violence on the most grassroots levels of rural society. Simultaneously, the global history perspective places Japanese war crimes within the broader context of imperialist expansion, colonial systems, and the global spread of fascism. Researchers have deeply analyzed the internal correlations and shared patterns among Japanese war crimes in the Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific region, and have conducted comparative studies between Nazi German Holocaust atrocities and Japanese massacre atrocities in the Far East. This perspective breaks through the limitations of nationalist historiography, revealing both the uniqueness and the commonality of Japan's war crimes.
Interdisciplinary research has demonstrated powerful explanatory force regarding Japanese military atrocities. The involvement of legal studies (especially international law and the laws of war) provides a rigorous legal analysis framework for determining the nature of specific Japanese military atrocities (crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity). Scholars have used legal theory to meticulously analyze the illegal constitutive elements of the Nanjing Massacre, the "comfort women" system, indiscriminate bombing, and the use of chemical and biological weapons, while exploring mechanisms for pursuing Japanese state responsibility and the individual responsibility of war criminals. Their research results directly serve the present-day demand for historical justice. The sociological perspective focuses on topics such as social structures, population mobility, family relationships, and intergenerational trauma caused by the war. Through social surveys and data analysis, researchers study war-induced refugee waves, the issue of orphans, the legacy of sexual violence, and the post-war crisis of social trust, revealing how war atrocities have a lasting impact on the social psychology of the public, particularly among the youth. Emerging fields such as the history of medicine and environmental history have also contributed unique insights. Medical history research focuses on Unit 731 and other Japanese biological units, exposing the essence of their anti-human atrocities—including vivisection, bacterial infection, frostbite experiments, and biochemical warfare—carried out in the name of "science" and "medical progress." These research results critically analyze how wartime Japanese science and technology were hijacked by militarism, completely betraying the medical ethics of healing the wounded and rescuing the dying to become a killing machine. The environmental history perspective focuses on the systematic destruction of China's ecological environment caused by the war of aggression: the long-term poisoning of regional ecosystems by biological warfare conducted for military purposes, the persistent pollution of soil and water by abandoned chemical weapons, and the predatory extraction of forest and mineral resources. These studies reveal that war is not only a disaster for human society but also a catastrophe for the ecological environment.
The application of big data assists in analyzing new fields of Japanese war crime research. Based on oral history materials of biological warfare, some scholars have used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and statistical tools to perform quantitative analysis on oral accounts, combining this with archives from both China and Japan, local gazetteers, and cultural-historical materials to achieve multi-party corroboration. On the basis of spatio-temporal analysis, they have reconstructed wartime rural historical scenes, analyzed the directions and destination choices of displaced populations, and constructed a chain of evidence linking Imperial Japanese Army activities with local disease outbreaks. Other scholars have used pre-trained models to perform sentence-level sentiment polarity recognition on The Diaries of John Rabe, exploring Rabe’s emotional distribution characteristics, trends, and emotional inclinations toward different figures before and after the Nanjing Massacre through temporal statistics, map mapping, and historical comparisons. The research indicates that Rabe had no narrative intention to exaggerate Japanese atrocities, nor did he harbor obvious national or ethnic biases, thereby refuting the Japanese right-wing's questioning of the objectivity of the third-party observer John Rabe.
Guarding historical truth and jointly building a peaceful future for humanity
"History is the best textbook and the best sobering agent." The profound and systematic study of evidence regarding Japan's war crimes in China has a significance that goes far beyond restoring history itself. It transcends national borders and concerns the shared conscience and future of humanity. On May 7 of this year, General Secretary Xi Jinping published a signed article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta titled "Using History as a Mirror to Jointly Create the Future," pointing out: "The memory and truth of history will not fade with the passing of years; the enlightenment they bring us will forever illuminate reality and manifest the future." History is a lamp that illuminates reality and inspires the future, carrying irreplaceable value for the era.
We must fight back against the counter-current of historical nihilism. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "Any attitude that disregards the history of wars of aggression, and any rhetoric that beautifies the nature of wars of aggression, no matter how many times it is said and no matter how high-sounding it is, constitutes a danger to human peace and justice." Research results backed by ironclad evidence are the most powerful weapons to strike back at the systematic attempts by right-wing forces within Japan to deny the history of aggression, beautify colonial rule, question atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre, and deny the coercive nature of the "comfort women" system. After the end of World War II, the crimes of Japan's war of aggression were subjected to the judgment of justice and were forever nailed to the pillar of historical shame. History will not change due to the passage of time, nor will facts disappear because of clever denials. The solid chain of archival evidence, the testimonies of victims with specific names, and rigorous academic demonstrations constitute an unshakeable historical fortress. Every discovery of a new archive and every deepening of research is a reinforcement of the fortress of historical truth, leaving any words or deeds that attempt to distort or whitewash history with nowhere to hide in the face of facts. This defense is not only a lashing of the aggressors but also a consolation to the victims, a defense of national dignity, and an adherence to the basic moral bottom line of human society.
Cultivating the national spirit and fortifying collective memory. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: “In the face of the aggressors' butcher knives, the Chinese people built a new Great Wall with their own flesh and blood, everyone possessed by a determination to face death. Thousands upon thousands of heroes advanced courageously amidst the aggressors' artillery fire and met their ends heroically under the aggressors' knives, manifesting the noble spirit [5] of the Chinese nation, which refuses to be cowed by force.” It is precisely this noble spirit, passed down through generations of the Chinese nation, that burst forth at the critical moment of national survival as a powerful spiritual force of the entire country sharing a common hatred for the enemy [6] and viewing death as a return home [7]. In-depth research into the evidence of Japan's crimes in China allows that history of arduous struggle, soaked in blood and tears, to be more clearly and profoundly integrated into the national lifeline and transformed into collective memory. It educates generations of Chinese people that today's peace and dignity were forged by countless martyrs with their own flesh and blood, and are the result of the Chinese nation rising unyieldingly amidst profound suffering. This memory, based on indisputable historical facts, can effectively stimulate a deep and rational patriotic sentiment among the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation. This shared memory has made the Chinese nation more tenacious due to the suffering of war and more confident due to the victory of the War of Resistance. The victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression thus became the turning point for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, strengthening the spiritual ties of the community of the Chinese nation.
Warning the people of all countries to join hands in building a peaceful future. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: “Peace is not easily won; peace must be defended.” Research into the evidence of Japan’s crimes in China holds profound global significance; it reveals the catastrophic consequences of extreme nationalism, militarism, and power politics. The anti-human atrocities committed by the Japanese invading army during the war represent a massive trauma in the history of human civilization. In-depth research into their roots, mechanisms, and consequences provides a classic case study for all of humanity to reflect on war and cherish peace. The war of aggression against China launched by Japanese fascists brought unprecedented disasters to the Chinese people, resulting in over 35 million casualties among Chinese military and civilians, $100 billion in direct economic losses, and $500 billion in indirect economic losses... Only after 14 years of bloody battle [8] by the Chinese people did the sunshine of peace shine upon the earth once again. This heavy historical lesson warns the world: peace is like a finely carved jade vessel that requires the careful protection of every one of us; human rights and dignity cannot be trampled upon under any pretext; only by respecting history and taking history as a mirror can the people of all countries truly avoid the repetition of tragedy, thereby joining hands to build peace and promote the construction of a community with a shared future for humanity, which concerns the beautiful future of mankind.
(The author is a Professor at the Research Center of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression at Nanjing Normal University) Source: People's Daily, September 1, 2025, Page 13. Web Editor: Tongxin