The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall and the Historical Identity of China in Asian and Global History

This essay focuses on the historical and political, and not just moral and symbolical aspects of the discourse elaborated in, and the message conveyed by, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in its present structure – actually an evolving structure resulting from many important changes that have been realized since its first construction in 1985, making of it both a ceremonial place of remembrance and an authentic laboratory of ‘public history’. The Memorial is in fact a complex, articulated and constantly developing example of ‘public history’ told in several formats, textual, monumental, architectural and exhibitionary. It is not just a memorial site commemorating one of the most cruel episodes of WWII, when the Japanese invading army stormed Nanjing in winter 1937-1938 and exterminated its civil population, but it should be read also in the light of the main aspects of Chinese contemporary public discourse dealing not only with the relationships with Japan, but more generally with post- Maoist PRC’s historic role in the Asiatic and global arena, centred on some key concepts such as ‘friendship’, ‘humanity’, ‘peace’ and ‘harmony, representing a direct link between contemporary politics and the classic Confucian legacy.