In this blog, I want to expand on the ideas I discussed at the end of my presentation, especially those related to World War II, since these works are all connected to that history in some way.
First, I want to return to a point from my slide, which is “We may be talking about the same war, but we do not necessarily notice the same things first.” Growing up in China, when I learned about Japan’s invasion of China, the focus was usually on invasion, resistance, national suffering, and the harm experienced by ordinary Chinese people. But when I read these Japanese works, the war appears through a different way: a father’s silence or a child who never has enough to eat.
I think different perspectives matter because they shape what we notice first and how we understand the people involved. Literature introduces us to particular individuals, and it can also influence whom we sympathize with. As we follow Murakami’s account of his father, we come to understand his pain through the writing. But imagine the same event being told by the child of the Chinese prisoner who was killed. The story might begin with a meal before the father left home and end with his family waiting for someone who never returned. Our feelings might be very different. The two accounts would not even need to contradict each other factually. This is what I find interesting about literature: even the same event can give readers very different experiences depending on whose perspective we follow.
This leads to another question: literature may help us understand someone, but once we understand them, should we forgive them? I think one of the biggest difficulties is deciding who has the right to forgive whom. As readers, we can certainly decide how we feel about a person. In the case of Murakami’s father, we can feel sad about the life the war interrupted, respect his prayers for the Chinese people who died, and still continue to ask what he did during the war.
While reading, I felt that I could understand his pain and the difficulties he faced. But I cannot forgive him on behalf of the prisoner who was killed or the prisoner’s family. Similarly, it is difficult for anyone to speak for all Chinese people and say either “We will never forgive” or “We have already forgiven.” As personal forgiveness, public judgments about history, and legal accountability are different things.
(By the way, the question of why ordinary people participate in obvious atrocities during wartime reminded me of Milgram’s obedience experiment. Participants believed they were helping with a study of learning and memory. They were instructed to give another person increasingly powerful electric shocks whenever that person answered a question incorrectly. In reality, the other person did not receive those shocks. In one experiment reported in 1963, 26 out of 40 participants continued to the highest setting, labeled 450 volts, while 14 refused to continue at some point. Of course, a laboratory experiment cannot directly explain Japan’s invasion of China. Or explaining how people come to participate in atrocities does not excuse them, either. Which "following orders” does not erase responsibility for wrongdoing. )
Finally, I find the idea of “inheritance” especially complicated. Murakami’s father told him about the execution only once, and Murakami remembered it for the rest of his life. He did not inherit a firsthand experience of the event, but he did inherit some of its trauma. For Chinese people born much later, like me, our connection to this history and its trauma may come through textbooks, museums, literature, film, and television.
I think it matters how we, as the people who inherit these memories, deal with them. What we originally wanted to pass down might have been an understanding of what happened to particular people. Over time, however, that can turn into the belief that a whole group of people will always deserve hatred. The victims’ names, lives, and hopes may gradually disappear, while hatred itself becomes the easiest thing to pass on.
I tend to believe that we have a responsibility to remember the harm, but no obligation to reproduce the same hatred. I do not need to hate someone to prove that I have not betrayed the past, and I do not need to forgive someone to prove that I am open-minded enough. So what I hope to inherit is not hatred, but is a memory of the harm, the ability to keep asking who was responsible, and an awareness of how similar things might happen again.
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