B4 Reiji Nakano
Hello, I’m Reiji. I visited Nanjing from 11th to 13th in September. This time, my purpose was to visit the Presidential Palace, Zhongshan Mausoleum, and Memorial Hall to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese soldiers. Nanjing is a historical city. Wu, the Six Dynasties, and Ming until Emperor Jianwen era held each court at Nanjing as the capital of the empire. According to a tour guide, today, the number of population in Nanjing is about 8.8 million, which is about 17 times larger than Utsunomiya city where my university is located. There are many high-rise buildings in a large city.
Figure 1 Dr. Sun Wen
The Presidential Palace and Zhongshan Mausoleum
In 1911, the Qing Dynasty was defeated by Xin-hai Revolution, and the Republic of China was established. Then, Nanjing was held as the capital for the first time in about 500 years. The Presidential Palace was the place where Dr. Sun Wen worked. A tour guide said that Dr. Sun Wen had been respected by all people in China as the father of the country because he broke feudalism, which had been kept in China for over 2000 years and introduced a republic for the first time.
Zhongshan Mausoleum is a grave of Sun Wen. ‘Zhongshan’ came from 「中山樵」, which was Sun Wen’s by-name in Japan. There are 392 stairs which were constructed to imply the number of the population in China those days that were 392 million people. When you look downstairs from the top, you can’t see a step at all. From his perspective, this design means that there is no difference among people in terms of social class. Once I saw many tourists there, I could understand the fact that Sun Wen has been significantly respected.
Memorial Hall to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Soldiers
Nanjing Massacre was an incident in which the Japanese army killed not only soldiers but also many civilians in Nanjing in December 1937. China estimated that the number of casualties reached 300,000 people. This Memorial Hall designed as a ‘broken Japanese sword.’ All exhibition was added Japanese and English translation so, if you can’t understand Chinese, you can know the Sino-Japanese War from the view of Chinese. Even today, Japanese and Chinese people quarrel hard how many people died in Nanjing. However, this Hall’s purpose is not to keep hate, but to awaken intention to peace. This mind is the same as the peace archives in Okinawa and Hiroshima. I thought that both people might understand each other someday because of this common.
If you have a chance to go to China, please visit. Thank you.
Figure 2 Nanjing Memorial Hall