China is making claim to a string of uninhabited Islands they call

the Diaoyo Islands. The problem is these are the exact same islands.

The dispute is putting extra strain on the already tense relationship between China and

Japan. The question is why are things so tense, and why have they been tense for the

last hundred or so years?

Well, there is a shockingly long history of military conflict between China and Japan.

The first recorded battle dates all the way back to 663 AD, but the incident at the heart

of this conflict is the treatment of the Chinese by the Japanese during the Second Sino-

Japanese War. A war that continued deep into World War Two and included one of the

largest atrocities of modern times: the Nanking Massacre, also known as

“the rape of Nanking.” I should mention now that this section of our video is going to

be graphic, but describing the scale and cruelty of the Nanking Massacre is crucial to

understanding the relationship between China and Japan.

In 1937 Imperialist Japan, which is a very different country culturally than current

day Japan, invaded China and captured the Chinese capital of Nanking. During the

invasion and the first six-weeks of occupation, the Japanese army committed countless

shocking and heinous war crimes. According to the International Military Tribunal For

The Far East, that the war crimes tribunal later established, Japanese soldiers raped

approximately 20,000 women including infants and the elderly. Many of these women

were mutilated, and left to die. This period also saw widespread looting, arson, and the

murder of between 40,000 and 300,000 Chinese Civilians, including the extrajudicial

killing of Chinese prisoners of war and a highly publicized murder spree between two

Japanese soldiers to see who could be the first to kill 100 Chinese citizens by sword.

They both surpassed this mark on the same night to great fanfare at home. Those are

the general details of the massacre, but the stories from the survivors and Western

observers that were there at the time are much worse than what we were able to

mention here and the long term effects of this atrocity are still having an impact today.

The Rape of Nanking is why a large percentage of the Chinese public still hates

Japan. They also hate Japan because, since the Nanking Massacre, Japanese officials

and schools have downplayed the Nanking Incident, making it seem like less of an

atrocity than it actually was, in many of their textbooks and public statements.

The two nations also have enormous political and cultural differences. China is a

communist nation with close ties to Russia and a history of siding with the USSR during

the Cold War. Japan is a free market economy with close ties to the United States and a

history of siding with the US during the cold war. They are also both making aggressive

gains in military strength, and both fighting for greater influence in the region. The issue

over the disputed Islands mentioned at the top of this video, is a microcosm of the

greater dispute between the two nations over influence and resources. The situation is

tense, but China and Japan are also trade partners and as such both their economies

benefit from keeping open negotiations and a continued peace.

If you’d like to hear more about tensions between countries, check out our video on

the rocky relationship between Serbia and Albania.

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