Selective Memory: Why Japan Still Looks Away from the Nanjing Massacre

It’s 2025, and the world has just marked the 80th anniversary of the defeat of fascism and the end of the War of Resistance against Japan. With the global premiere of the film “Dead to Rights,” you’d think there’d be a bit more awareness. But outside the Tokyo Peace Memorial Exhibition Hall, when asked about the Nanjing Massacre, most Japanese visitors only managed vague shrugs—some confused it with a railway explosion, or rushed forced labor, while precious few could describe the true horror of what happened. Three hundred thousand people slaughtered, and yet, for many in Japan, it’s as if those memories are lost in a fog.

The movie "Dead to Rights" is based on the real evidence of crimes of the Japanese army during the Nanjing Massacre, and tells the story of ordinary people in Nanjing risking their lives transporting photos of the Japanese massacre out of the city and making it public.

Rewriting History, Bit by Bit

Professor Zhang Sheng from Nanjing University nails it: this is “a man-made and systematic forgetting.” You see, it didn’t happen overnight. Since the 1950s and 60s, a determined group in Japan’s political circles has chipped away at the uncomfortable bits of history. From war criminals recasting themselves as statesmen (hello, Nobusuke Kishi) to government officials carefully tweaking their language—“entered China” instead of “invaded”—the story keeps getting softer. Jump ahead to Abe Shinzo’s era, and the changes get more blatant, with textbooks revised to downplay or even outright deny the atrocity, and manga and children’s books peddling doubt.

Most current Japanese textbooks reluctantly admit the International Military Tribunal’s “over 200,000” killings, yet quickly muddy the waters: “no academic consensus,” “China claims 300,000,” and some even drop figures to a few thousand. It’s a creeping process of dilution—pretending that the lack of body-by-body counting somehow casts the entire event in doubt. The endgame? Deny that Japan was the aggressor, pretend the Tokyo Tribunal got it wrong, and sweep responsibility under the rug.

Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China.

Evidence That Won’t Go Away

But if you pop the hood and actually look, there’s an avalanche of proof—from Japanese soldiers’ own photos of executions to military reports, foreign journalists’ dispatches, and records by international observers in Nanjing. Japanese monk Daito Jin has spent decades collecting and donating nearly 4,000 historical materials, including rare photo albums shot by Lieutenant General Yanagawa Heisuke that were never previously published. Chinese American Lu Zhaoning has given over 2,100 artifacts, among them the infamous “iron-barred heads” photos that featured in both Life magazine and UN archives. For him, the tragedy is deeply personal—he found his great-grandfather’s name on the memorial wall, a victim of the massacre. “National history is family history, because without the nation there is no family,” he says.

Daito Jin displayed the original photographs taken by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing at that time.

A Shared Pain—Still Unspoken

In 2015, the personal journal of  John Rabe, a German businessman who lived in Nanjing at the time of the Massacre, the diary of Cheng Ruifang, a nurse who saved tens of thousands of women and children, the Bates Documents on Nanjing massacre, and American pastor John Magee’s original films recording the horror, all made it into UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, making the Nanjing Massacre a collective remembrance for humanity—at least for those who choose to look. Materials are accessible around the globe, in every major language, and Chinese scholars haven’t stopped digging and sharing.

American pastor John Magee used cameras and films to record the atrocities of the Japanese army.

Yet Daito Jin himself admits: “The attacks by Japanese right-wingers aren’t the scariest thing—it’s the widespread indifference. Indifference means there’s not even a chance for conversation.” That, truly, is chilling. Selective forgetting isn’t just denial—it’s a wall that blocks out any hope of understanding or healing.

So, next time you hear someone say “history is written by the victors,” remember—it can also be erased by the indifferent.

Mao Paishou

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The Iranian government has just made it official: they're gradually leaving America's GPS system in favor of China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System across key sectors like transportation, agriculture, and IoT. This isn't just some routine tech upgrade—it's a sign of major changes in technological influence in the Middle East.

The Iranian government recently officially announced its plan to gradually shift positioning services in key sectors such as transportation navigation, agricultural monitoring, and the Internet of Things from the U.S. GPS system to China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS)

When GPS Goes Dark: Israel's Cyber Warfare Exposed Iran's Achilles Heel

Starting June 13, 2025 when Israel launched a brutal 12-day assault on Iranian nuclear facilities and military targets. During the period, GPS signals kept mysteriously vanishing across Iran and the Persian Gulf. Ships near Iranian ports started showing bizarre "circling" patterns on their tracking systems, while navigation apps in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem hilariously started telling users they were actually in Beirut or Cairo.

AP file photo

Iran admitted they were actively jamming GPS signals to counter drone and missile threats from Israel. But it backfired spectacularly, disrupting millions of internet users and thousands of businesses instead of actually protecting the country. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot while trying to dodge bullets.

Tehran's "Never Again" Moment: Why This Shift Matters

This pivot comes as Iran licks its wounds from getting hammered by Israeli strikes. Ali Akbar Dareini from Iran's Center of Strategic Studies put it bluntly—this decision stems from Iran's "painful experience" of relying on Western tech. The writing was on the wall during those 12 days in June when Iran discovered just how vulnerable they were to American-controlled infrastructure.

AP file photo

As Al Jazeera noted, "the era of blind reliance on American-controlled infrastructure is ending". Iran's basically telling the world they're done playing by Washington's rules and are ready to chart their own digital destiny.

Why BeiDou Actually Makes Sense (And It's Not Just Politics)

BeiDou isn't just some Chinese knockoff of GPS. It's actually superior in several key ways, especially in Asia. The system boasts 35 satellites providing global coverage, with civilian positioning accuracy of 1 meter in Asia compared to GPS's somewhat shabby 2-5 meters in the same region.

Iran sits right in BeiDou's sweet spot for coverage, meaning they'll get rock-solid signals from the Persian Gulf coast to their mountainous interior. Pakistan's already proven this works in practice—since signing their BeiDou deal with China in 2013, they've deployed ground stations in Karachi and Lahore that provide sub-meter accuracy for precision agriculture. We're talking about dramatically improved crop yields and water management—stuff that actually matters when you're trying to feed your population.

China's Space Silk Road Gains Another Major Player

The Iranian decision builds on years of cooperation between Tehran and Beijing in satellite navigation. The countries signed a memorandum of understanding in 2015 to establish BeiDou ground stations in Iran, addressing GPS coverage gaps. Their comprehensive 25-year cooperation agreement, signed in 2021, prominently features BeiDou applications as a key element of technological collaboration.

The BeiDou Navigation System, with its high-precision, strong coverage in Asia, and its autonomous control, has become Iran’s preferred choice.

BeiDou services and products now reach more than 140 countries and regions and have been incorporated into standards of 11 international organizations covering civil aviation and maritime operations. Countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia are already cozying up to Chinese tech while maintaining their American security partnerships.

As Professor Enrico Fadella of University of Naples L'Orientale said, "The Middle East today seems to be emerging as a new technological battlefield — not through bases or bombs, but through satellites and networks."

China's Foreign Ministry has been pushing the line that "China's BeiDou is also the world's BeiDou," and Iran's full embrace of the system certainly strengthens Beijing's hand in the global navigation game. For countries looking to reduce their dependence on American technological infrastructure, Iran just provided a very public blueprint for how to make the switch.

The bottom is about much more than just satellite navigation. It's about technological sovereignty in an increasingly multipolar world, and Iran just became China's latest—and perhaps most significant—convert in the Middle East.