City of Life and Death

This is another of the films dealing with the Nanking Massacre. It has one disc that is composed of behind-the-scenes stuff and interviews with people involved, although it's mostly people complaining about what was going wrong, not having enough money, etc, so it's not that very interesting. It's also two hours long.

The film is in black-and-white and centers around a Japanese soldier named Kadokawa. There is a great deal of emphasis on the Japanese execution of prisoners-of-war and on the comfort women, women who were usually forced to become sex slaves for the Japanese Army.

There's a minimum of talking in the film which is almost like a slice-of-life type production done to show the horror of what happened and how it affected the civilians and the Japanese soldiers themselves. This film is not for the faint of heart, but it presents a very good picture of what actually happened in Naking, including the looting, the murder of prisoners of war and civilians, and the use of the comfort women. It has a different feel to it, almost more personal in nature than other films I have seen on the topic.

As usual with the film, I'll do just a few scans and give my review of the film overall.

Since the film uses the 300,000 number then it's obvious it will be presenting the traditionalist approach to what happened.

Nanking on fire from the attack.

A lot of the Chinese troops want to flee the city since the mayor, the commanders, and the rich people have already left.

The Japanese have taken the city.

The Japanese soldier is Kadokawa, a main character, and he's talking to a German. Japan was allies with Germany at the time.

The Japanese soldiers enter a church where there are lots of Chinese. They tie anyone they suspect of being a Chinese soldier up and haul they out. One Japanese soldier shoots a confession box and it opens, the bodies of a number of girls spilling out. The Japanese soldiers facial expressions makes them appear to be part scared, part wild.

Later a group of Japanese soldiers is ambushed. It seems that the Japanese soldiers have much better weapons than the Chinese soldiers.

Then we see the Japanese looting.

Reenacting a famous photo.

Chinese prisoners. Shortly the Japanese will put a lot of them into a building and set it on fire.

Other prisoners are taken to the river where they will be machine-gunned to death. Another group is bayonetted to death.

The Chinese POWs that the Japanese troops have murdered.

Japanese soldiers get into the safety zone and start to rape girls but John Rabe and his Chinese helper stop them by saying they are all Nazis there. Then there's more scenes of similar things taking place outside the building.

There's also a sub-theme in the movie about Kadokawa falling for a Japanese prostitute who is there to service the men.

The Japanese want comfort stations set up. This is where they would kidnap women and force them to serve as prostitutes.

The Chinese helped to Mr. Rabe betrays the zone. Japanese troops pour in to find wounded Chinese soldiers.

Getting comfort women.

Women are taken from the Safety Zone.100 of the women they gather will be used for the comfort stations. If this isn't done the Japanese will destroy the Safety Zone. We also see that the women who are chosen are treated like dirt.

This part contains an elaborate dance on the part of the soldiers.

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