Posted on 12/02/2004 10:46:16 AM PST by SteveH
A Sadness Set In
Commentary
John Harris Jr.
The article began “Best-selling Chinese-American author Iris Chang was found dead in her car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was 36 and had recently been treated for depression.”
Iris Chang spoke at my college graduation, here at Cal State Hayward. It was just last June. I remember sitting, thoroughly disenchanted by the regalia-clad mob swelling around me. Given it was a time of excitement and celebration, to the ceremony clung the uneasy sense of a population madding. It was in the way people fought in the stands for seats no better than many others yet unoccupied; graduates stood on chairs, cellphones in-hand, signaling to their air-horn-toting relatives in defiance of ceremony ... of decorum. The day smacked unfriendly and the ceremony, bleached both by rote and the summertime noon above.
Ms. Chang took the podium after two impressively lengthy (though awfully similar, having been cribbed from the program almost verbatim) introductions by the president, Norma Rees, and trustee William Hauck. When she spoke, it was clear and lasting; her presence made the rest of commencement seem subdued by comparison.
She spoke of hope and of future with an apparent conviction uncommon and unwelcome to the postmodern misanthropy of the stands. A marked departure from the safe, indecorously formal addresses preceding, Chang’s theme pitted personal responsibility and self-determinism, against the indomitable heft of mortality.
She challenged everyone there to simply write down their goals where they could be seen daily. In return, she promised direction. She challenged those in attendance to preserve the histories of their elders. In return, she promised vantage. It seems so telling now.
She took no more than 20 minutes, perhaps 15. But, the crowd was awash in wrest, thronging against her ardency and her sometimes-plaintive imperative for personal dialectic. The once-passable minority waxed both in rudeness and number with each of Ms. Chang’s five points. In keeping with this regrettable progression, the discomforted lot ceased interjecting audible boos when she announced her final point; instead, they erupted with castigating applause, a mocking and raucous air-horn fanfare.
I promised myself that I would write to her. I planned to express my gratitude for her words that day. Her unflagging candor and commonsense, though widely attributed, counsel struck me plainly, despite the interference.
When I learned of her suicide I was, like the many I told afterward, incredulous.
Though news stories reported that her depression stemmed from her work as an author/historian, I find myself unable to dissect causality as simply. I still feel somehow party to the sadness to which Ms. Chang eventually succumbed.
Though perhaps threadbare from overuse, a proverb is such for its indelible efficacy: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is engaged in a great battle.” (Philo of Alexandria)
John Harris Jr.,
CSUH Graduate,
Class of 2004
CA: Author/journalist found dead of gunshot wound in Los Gatos (Iris Chang/The Rape of Nanking)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1276983/posts
Iris Chang Suicide? Not So Fast..Officials Should be More Responsible (race card thrown)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1280402/posts
Noted Author Iris Chang Dies
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1292904/posts
I own her book. I found it remarkable, turning a clinical eye on an episode of WW II that has conveniently been swept under the rug. Contrast it with the item posted yesterday on FR that the Polish government was opening a formal investigation into the Katyn forrest massacre. FWIW, it's possible that her uderlying depresion, which had to have existed for a long while, was "stressed" by the research she did for the book. Wading through all the pics, and the archives, and the reports, it had to increase whatever pain she was feeling. I have no training in mental illness, but I have read that many young mothers who are suicidal will often kill their children before themselves. Sounds like she tried to keep herself away from her infant, fortunately.
I had the same thought. It was very difficult research and probably hard to do. Her parents generation grew up not wanting to talk about it, alluding to it vaguely. I'm sure she had to dig to find what she did. And I think that would be difficult for the hardiest of us.
In the late 60's while travelling in Europe, I read one of those interminable WW II autobiographies by some Brit Gen so-and-so. Seems like every Brit general office wrote his memoires, and 99% of them were awful. This one was also..he was a QM staffer...but the last part of the book described the logistics problems of the Brit unit that liberated one of the camps in Poland. The cold dry stats made it seem even more horrifying..
Some days after her death (it must have been the Nov. 20/21 weekend) C-SPAN rebroadcast an interview of Iris Chang by Brian Lamb, originally broadcast on 11/17/1997. It was an excellent interview but hard to watch knowing she was dead so young and unnecessarily. She said that 300,000 Chinese had died in a 6-8 week period in Nanking and that 19 million Chinese perished in the war, but that the Japanese people are still "in denial."
If Mr. Harris read Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking, then perhaps he would understand her profound sadness.
Chang's book is banned in Japan.
A book can be banned in Japan?. I didn't know that? Under what laws? I'd appreciate any info?
Type in.....Rape of Nanking banned in Japan........lots of info there.
Amen. When her book first came out, I thought a great deal about what phenomenal fortitude she had to *write* this book. How many "Asian" Americans in the SF Bay Area would shun her, if not only deride her.. of how many of her ancestral cultural taboos she had taken on to write this book. I was saddened by news of her suicide. I wondered if, perhaps, her book hadn't written her; done her in. May she rest in peace. May her loved ones be comforted.
A touching and thoughful commentary. Thanks for posting it.
The book is not banned in Japan. It has not been published in Japan due to a controversy between Ms Chang and the publisher before her death. Her book was to be published along side another book which questioned the accuracy of her book. She did not agree to those terms.
Also, the "Nanking Massacre" has been discussed and researched thoroughly in Japan, despite what has been alleged by many on this board. Broadly speaking the scholarship in Japan concerning the Nanking incident can be broken up into three groups: One group alleges that a massacre did not occur at all. This group concludes that all the people killed in Nanking at the time were Chinese soldiers or Chinese soldiers who disguised themselves as civilians and who were later killed by the Japanese military. The second group acknowledges that a massacre took place but the number of innocent Chinese civilians killed ranged in the neighborhood of 10,000 - 20,000 innocent civilians killed. The third group of scholarship alleges that the massacred victims was much greater and in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand civilians. There have been over a hundred books in Japanese published in Japan about the Nanking Incident.
An excellent review of this scholarship can be found in a reseach paper done by the Australian scholar, David Askew.
You will discover the most advanced and meticulous research on this subject has been done in Japan.
By the way, I have read Iris Chang's book and I was deeply moved. I am also currently reading "Chinese in America" one of her other books. She is a gifted writer and certainly knows how to tell a story. I have also done a little research on her and I am very much aware that she is/was a very fervent activist. Her frequently mentioned number of 360,000 civilians massacred in Nanking is directly in line with the official Chinese government's account of the massacre.
It is true, sadly, that much of contemporary Japan is in near total denial about the events of WW II, even though Japanese scholarship may be focusing on it.
FYI.. Iris Chang was interviewed on C-span's "Booknotes" after the book came out. It was a marvelous program. I believed it's archived on the website, and if so, I recommend that you view it. Regards..
FYI..see #13..best..
Kind of like the Ramboulette agreement forced on the Serbs.......knowing full well it could never be accepted.
Your comment about the banning is rather disengenuous, IMHO.
You are welcome. Thanks for the information re the book notes interview. I believe that was the interview with Mr. Lamb. Yes, it was excellent.
Incidentally, I think I have read everything about her regarding the reasons for her suicide, but everything I read is speculation. Have you read anything definitive as to her reasons other than she was depressed five months ago and had to be hospitalized? Also, several of her close friends appear to suggest that she felt so strongly about the injustices that others suffered that she suffered also and this may have contributed to her demise.
Personally, none of these explanations seem plausible to me. She appeared to be such a strong, determined person, young and energetic, and fiercely driven to achieve her goals. I just find the idea that she would take her own life very strange. She had so much to live for: career, goals, husband and a two year old son. Just puzzling.
It's hard to even speculate long distance, with a paucity of information..It will be interesting to see the final coroner's report when released. They should be able to deduce a lot by tracing the weapon..
Amazon Japan has it available, in Japanese:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4396610904/ref=pd_bxgy_text_2/249-2439696-0487565
This as opposed to Germany who prosecutes any who would deny the holocaust.
The last I had heard about the book was about ten years ago.
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