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November 11,
2004 I HAVE JUST BEEN GUT-PUNCHED BY THE NEWS that a dear friend and intellectual soul mate over the last several years, Iris Chang, was found dead in her car near Santa Clara, California. Iris's book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, had immeasurable impact on a collective historical amnesia problem not only in Japan, but also in the United States and around the world. This brilliant and beautiful writer and thinker was, to me, a modern Joan of Arc riding into the nastiest of battles calling for honest and fair reconciliation with the past. We met via email years ago. She joined a quest I was on some years ago to try and get people to look seriously at the contemporary legal consequences of back room deal-making by John Foster Dulles on the eve of signing the San Francisco Peace Treaty, formally ending Allied Occupation of Japan on September 8, 1951. I wrote a New York Times piece on this subject, which appeared on 4 September 2001. Whereas I thought I had found an interesting historical tidbit that had been neglected by historians and lawyers, Iris Chang knew that I had just wandered unsuspecting into a raging battle between Chinese and Japanese warriors over memory and the historical record. She called me, and we had a two hour phone conversation where she helped prepare me for the onslaught of criticism that would fly my way from those who wanted to preclude any discussion of Japan's wartime responsibilities. She followed up with her own New York Times articles on the debate about Japan, war memory, and what I called -- America's complicity in Japan's historical amnesia. Unfortunately, her articles are not available on the internet. We met several times in person, once after a talk I gave at De Anza College in Cupertino, California where she sat anonymously in the back of a room of 500-600 people interested in Japan's war memory debate. This subject is one she owned -- and was one that I had just stumbled into -- but her brilliance and authority on this subject was tempered by intimidating modesty. She never let anyone know that she was there at De Anza. We also shared a platform together at a conference organized in April 2002 by the University of San Francico Center for the Pacific Rim. It would be irresponsible for me to suggest anything more than the authorities are suggesting about her death, but I would only add that I find it distressing and worrisome that two brilliant change-agents, Iris Chang and the late film-maker Juzo Itami, who made us see our worlds differently than we otherwise would -- each supposedly committed suicide, after bouts of depression. I have never bought the story about Juzo Itami, whom I also knew and who was at war in his films with Japan's national right wing crowd and yakuza. I have no choice but to accept what has been reported about Iris's death -- but all I can say, and I can barely express anything sensible about this tragedy, is that the world has lost much in her passing. Iris Chang wrestled with the tensions between conviction, faith, and communal lies. She was attacked from so many corners for her important work that she tried to untangle why truth was so frequently strangled by conviction, faith, and delusion. We once discussed at length this passage from Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Anti-Christ." I don't believe that Iris was a Nietzche acolyte, but what follows below captures much of what we were both struggling with at the time: One step further in the psychology of conviction, of "faith." It is now a good while since I first proposed for consideration the question whether convictions are not even more dangerous enemies to truth than lies. ("Human, All-Too-Human," I, aphorism 483.) This time I desire to put the question definitely: is there any actual difference between a lie and a conviction? -- All the world believes that there is; but what is not believed by all the world! -- Every conviction has its history, its primitive forms, its stage of tentativeness and error: it becomes a conviction only after having been, for a long time, not one, and then, for an even longer time, hardly one. What if falsehood be also one of these embryonic forms of conviction? -- Sometimes all that is needed is a change in persons: what was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son. -- I call it lying to refuse to see what one sees, or to refuse to see it as it is: whether the lie be uttered before witnesses or not before witnesses is of no consequence. The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense. -- Now, this will not to see what one sees, this will not to see it as it is, is almost the first requisite for all who belong to a party of whatever sort: the party man becomes inevitably a liar. For example, the German historians are convinced that Rome was synonymous with despotism and that the Germanic peoples brought the spirit of liberty into the world: what is the difference between this conviction and a lie? Is it to be wondered at that all partisans, including the German historians, instinctively roll the fine phrases of morality upon their tongues -- that morality almost owes its very survival to the fact that the party man of every sort has need of it every moment? -- "This is our conviction: we publish it to the whole world; we live and die for it -- let us respect all who have convictions!" -- I have actually heard such sentiments from the mouths of anti-Semites. On the contrary, gentlemen! An anti-Semite surely does not become more respectable because he lies on principle ... The priests, who have more finesse in such matters, and who well understand the objection that lies against the notion of a conviction, which is to say, of a falsehood that becomes a matter of principle because it serves a purpose, have borrowed from the Jews the shrewd device of sneaking in the concepts, "God," "the will of God" and "the revelation of God" at this place. I am too sad to write more about her now. Arafat's passing has been grabbed by many as an opportunity to move the sorry state of Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a new direction. Perhaps those in Japan who reviled Iris Chang's important work can step down from their strident defense of a white-washed history and find a course that leads to a more introspective and self-aware nationalism than is the case today. -- Steve Clemons POSTSCRIPT: COMMENT BY IRIS CHANG IN INTERVIEW WITH KINUE TOKUDOME This important and interesting clip was just sent to me by journalist-activist Kinue Tokudome in an October 1998 Ronza magazine interview. I thought some of you might like to read her words about historical memory and Iris's support of those in Japan who want to reconcile the past and present. From Kinue Tokudome's interview with Iris Chang: Are you planning to go to Japan after The Rape of Nanking comes out there? I don't know. All I do know is that I recognize that there are many sincere, wonderful and courageous people in Japan who want nothing more than to promote the truth, and these kinds of people - though in small numbers - can be found worldwide. This is a human quality that transcends ethnicity and nationality. Such people recognize that what happened in Nanking and in other regions of China is a human rights issue, and that patriotism or nationality or ethnicity has no bearing on human rights issues. They see the larger picture. I am one hundred percent behind those people in Japan, and I certainly hope to meet them one day. Iris Chang -- Steve Clemons Posted by steve at November 11, 2004 09:48 AMSteve, Steve, you are really blessed to have been exposed so frequently to
extraordinary people and powerful ideas. I can feel your pain and tears
in what you have written today. I'm going to read Iris Chang's book on
Nanjing and her more recent one on the Chinese in America. Thanks for
sharing your thoughts on her passing, Paris, Steve, you have written a poignant tribute to Iris Chang and have hopefully helped people remember her inspired agenda in the world. She had a good friend in you, and people like me who did not know her have a better sense (because of you) of how we are all a little less well off when people of her caliber leave too early. Posted by: tommyinchicago at November 11, 2004 12:00 PMSteve, I'm sorry to hear about Iris Chang's death. The tribute you wrote, and whatever you write in the future, will be a beautiful testimony to her life. Good luck. Posted by: Jesse at November 11, 2004 12:24 PMSteve--a powerful testimonial and so well written. Obviously a great loss. We all need to keep a careful eye on what to believe and a truthful view of history. Posted by: Egils Milbergs at November 11, 2004 12:29 PMYour remarks on conviction reminds me that men seem to need rules and
law which becomes a set of convictions....and no longer needing concern
or validation. Mr. Clemons, I did not know Iris Chang and had not read her books, but I have spent the last hour cruising the net on her work and yours -- and my hat is off to you. I feel very honored to have come across her name and work because of your blog. She seems, from what I see from her site, very delicate yet very tough-minded and brilliant. As someone who has now just become a devoted reader of The Washington Note, I want to say that we readers of yours are thankful to people like Iris Chang (and dare I say you as well) who stand against the conventional and fight for something that is often just ahead of history. I don't mean to be melodramatic. I mean it seriously. I have seen great talent and brilliance choked to death and suffocated by stifling group think and corruption. We have apparently lost yet another voice of a person committed to MY and OUR greater good, and it makes me sad. Again, Mr. Clemons, thank you for your inspired commentary. I am a bit overwhelmed after consuming your fair-minded and thoughtful perspectives. I will make sure that my friends and neighbors know about the work of Ms. Iris Chang. Posted by: RKO at November 11, 2004 12:49 PMSteve, I really appreciated your article on Iris Chang. Steve, your moving tribute brought tears to my eyes. I know this isn't much comfort but, with friends like you speaking on her behalf, her work will live on. Posted by: wonkie at November 11, 2004 02:02 PMEven though I strongly disagree with Ms. Chang's "truth" in her book, I agree with her beautiful comment (from Ronza interview): "This is a human quality that transcends ethnicity and nationality...." For readers in the US, I'd like to remind two things in the style of Ms. Chang: "What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a human rights issue, and that patriotism or nationality or ethnicity has no bearing on human rights issues." 220,000 innocent Hiroshima & Nagasaki citizens were killed (comparable to the TOTAL population of Tallahassee, FL), and that fact has not been properly acknowledged by the US government/public. "What has been happenning in Baghdad, Falluja and in other regions of Iraq is a human rights issue, and that patriotism or nationality or ethnicity has no bearing on human rights issues." About 15,000 civilians (and counting) were killed because of US/UK military invasion. In the Abu Ghurayb Prison, Iraqi prisoners (men & women) were raped repeatedly by US guards; pregnant prisoners were released but many were soon killed by their families. God bless her soul. Posted by: Grace Kim at November 11, 2004 03:09 PMsorry for your personal loss Steve, and the loss for all of us of a gifted and influential thinker and writer who used her talents for the greater good. That we had more of these, the world would be a better place. Posted by: psycholinguist at November 11, 2004 03:33 PMThe lying bastards never change from war to war. From a briefing
today by General Myers: "Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the
U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier in the day that
"hundreds and hundreds of insurgents" have been either killed or
captured in the assault, but did not offer more specific figures.
No civilian casualties? Geez they think we're a bunch of gullible
dupes. Makes me want to puke....... Dear Mr. Clemons: Thank you for wrting the great requiem for Iris. It
deeply touched my heart and it also refected all my thoughts. Yes, it is
frightening to think how dangerous the world we live in. I also want to
thank you for how couragiously you spoke out the truth and justice!
Thank you for your encouragement which made me more resolved to my
commitment! |