09 · After the Memorial: History, Memory, and Clarity
Every breath, every line of code, reminds me that ordinary life in peacetime was never a given.
On the Plaza Outside the Memorial
Today, when I walked out of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders and stood on the plaza of cold grey gravel, I could not settle for a long time.
I was born in Nanjing. The name of this city is bound to one of the heaviest memories in the history of human civilization. Yet, like many young people raised in peacetime, I had heard of the Nanjing Massacre countless times without, for a long time, truly approaching the details preserved in historical records. When I was young, the elders in my family rarely spoke of it. Only today did I begin to understand: that silence was not necessarily forgetting, but something closer to a “post-traumatic silence”—pain too deep for words—and the instinct of grandparents who had lived through turmoil, out of love, to shield the next generation from too early a shock.
Inside the museum, facing documented evidence, air-raid shelter remains, and the historical scenes in black-and-white photographs, grief and shock arrived together.
As a computer science student used to thinking in logic, I suddenly grasped a calm but heavy probability: during those roughly six weeks in the winter of 1937, the Japanese army carried out large-scale, systematic atrocities. If my great-grandfather and great-grandmother had taken one wrong step while fleeing search parties, or been one second too slow, and become among the three hundred thousand victims, there would be no girl named Maggie in this world today.
Every breath I take, every line of code I type, every independent thought I form rests on lives my ancestors fought to protect. That recognition turns “remembering” from a slogan into a concrete responsibility.
When History Meets “Whataboutism”
Carrying that weight back into some of today’s international debates, I see more clearly a common form of argument: Whataboutism.
Online and even in daily life, some people quickly shift the focus whenever this history is mentioned: “Every country made mistakes in war. People fixate on others’ sins and forget their own stains. British and American forces caused civilian deaths in Iraq; Australian special forces had scandals in Afghanistan—why single out Japan?” Sometimes they even try to end the discussion early under the banner of “looking out for you” or “avoiding sensitivity.”
Such claims can sound like a pursuit of “completeness,” yet they easily blur structural differences between historical events. Equating isolated crimes in modern military conflicts with the state-driven, systematic, large-scale aggression of Japan in World War II is not rigorous. Many scandals in modern societies can still be exposed by domestic media, investigated, and even prosecuted; whether historical responsibility is faced continuously and sincerely is the more important question.
Germany, which also shared a fascist Axis past, undertook relatively systematic reflection, reparations, and civic education after the war. By contrast, Japanese society has long seen dilution, revision, and controversy in historical writing and public memory. To this day, some Class-A war criminals convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East remain enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine—a fact that continues to raise questions among neighboring countries in East Asia and the wider international community.
If one imagines today’s Germany publicly enshrining Hitler and his core associates in a national shrine, European opinion would hardly accept it lightly. Then, when Japan still shows avoidance on historical responsibility, is brushing it aside with “everyone was wrong” truly objective?
As for urging victims and their descendants to stay silent in the name of “political safety,” that often looks more like an exit strategy when debate stalls. We do not deny the complexity of history, nor do we need anyone else to decide for us how we should remember.
Pop Culture, Travel Filters, and Historical Responsibility
Before I understood this history more deeply, I too once treated Japan as just another popular travel destination. Now my attitude is more cautious: until related historical responsibilities are more fully faced, it is hard for me to look at it through a lighthearted filter. This is not an emotional declaration of “cutting ties,” but a personal choice—to place time, money, and attention first where societies are more willing to face history and reflect on themselves.
Many young people today immerse themselves in anime, cherry blossoms, and “Japanese aesthetics,” yet rarely touch the more complex historical context behind these cultural products. Meanwhile, younger generations in Japan may also grow up with incomplete historical education and limited awareness of this past. That is what warrants vigilance: once history is ignored, entertainmentized, or dissolved, it does not truly disappear—it may reappear in dangerous forms in the future.
What needs distinguishing is this: ordinary people in contemporary Japan are not the perpetrators of that era; but whether the state continues to bear historical responsibility should not be confused with the goodwill generated by pop culture. Liking a cultural product does not prevent us from asking for honest historical memory.
Walking Out Clear-Eyed into a Wider World
Leaving the memorial, looking at the sunlight outside, I know more clearly where I stand.
I will not turn grief only into lasting anger and inner friction. A truly strong response is not shouting louder online, but resisting the dilution and beautification of history with facts, logic, and restrained language. As a descendant of those who survived in this city, I will carry this clarity as I learn, travel, and come to know a wider world.
We did not take part in the past, but we have the right—and the responsibility—to help decide how the future should treat memory, justice, and civilization.
See you around.
— Maggie
Nanjing · 22 May 2026