REVIEW BOOK "THE DEVIL OF NANJING – THE HORRIFIC HORRIBLE OF CRIME"

The wounds of war have always been a topic that makes any reader feel pained with indescribable emotions. More than the war crimes that have appeared in historical documents, The Devil of Nanjing does not simply recount the barbaric acts that the Japanese committed during the war in China in the forties of the previous decade.

“Perhaps I should consider it a privilege to see Nanjing with my own eyes at this historic moment. From my tiny window, through the wire mesh, I could see what the Japanese army had left behind in Nanjing: deserted streets with charred buildings, rivers and canals filled with corpses.”

The journey to find the naked truths and the tragic mystery behind them unfolds in a captivating way under the pen of Mo Hayder. Nowadays, it is not difficult to find information and tragic images of Nanjing in 1937. Yet this piece of literature is so dense, straightforward and impressive.

If you have to answer when someone asks about a history book that is both sad and attractive, the answer will be nothing other than The Devil of Nanjing.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mo Hayder was born in 1962, is a famous British writer in the detective genre. She was born in London, her father was a university lecturer, at the age of 16 she left her family and started doing many different jobs such as security, service,... At the age of 25, she went to Japan, continued to travel to many places in the world, accumulating for herself a lot of experience observing the life and culture of many ethnic groups. Most importantly, Mo Hayder seriously studies and understands what she has learned from history, even if it is not the history of her homeland.

In addition, Mo Hayder also has a passion for animation, which brought her to Los Angeles. There, she studied for a Master's degree in Film at American University, and later, she also obtained a Master's degree in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She participated in film production in Japan in the 80s and taught English in Vietnam. Most of Mo Hayder's published works have received positive responses from readers. Among them, The Devil of Nanking (original name: The Devil of Nanking) was among the best-selling books in the UK when it was released in 2004.

Currently, Mo Hayder lives in the UK with her husband and daughter. In addition to her writing work, she also teaches at the university. The Devil of Nanking is the brainchild of the author's profound experiences in Asia, and is also the literary child that Mo Hayder has cherished since her youth. The origin of Mo Hayder's re-enactment of Nanking in 1937 came from when she accidentally saw a photo of a Nanking civilian being beheaded by a Japanese soldier. In 1937, the city of Nanking, China was engulfed in a sea of infernal fire, and the people who started the fire were none other than the Japanese army. During the occupation, Nanking was filled with the screams of pain like animals being torn apart before dying. What happened next exceeded the most terrible fears of the Chinese people as the invaders frantically carried out torture, rape and murder for a whole month. Realizing the horror of the incident, Mo Hayder published the novel The Devil of Nanking to denounce the crimes of war on her behalf. Set in the 90s, the reader plays a British female student known as Grey, a mentally ill girl who spends most of her time searching for evidence of the 1937 Nanking Massacre, which she considers her purpose in life. Almost desperate when the event happened in an oriental country and Grey was looking for information about it while she was in England, Grey started to travel to far away Asia, specifically Japan, with the purpose of finding a film clip that she learned about through the descriptions in the orange-covered book. The initial motivation was probably to prove to her family and everyone around her that she was not a mental patient as diagnosed by psychiatrists. Even though Grey's mother always insisted that there was no such book as her daughter's story, and that everything was just her daughter's wild imagination, Grey still forced his will to believe in his own unclear memories.

“Everyone said the execution was my imagination, a symptom of my insanity, and that such a terrible crime could never have happened in reality.”

No doctor or nurse in the hospital where Grey was supposed to be treated for his mental illness believed in that extremely barbaric story. The only bright spot that Grey could ask about clues and evidence of the Japanese army's crimes in China in 1937 was Professor Shi Chongming, who is currently teaching at a university in Tokyo. As if by fate, the man who grew up in his hometown of Nanjing, China, also carried within him a painful and anxious ambition during his many days living and working in Tokyo.

Mo Hayder's writing style painted a Tokyo in 1990, like an illusion and a quick revival that left people amazed. “I have known a lot about this phoenix city, about how Tokyo rose from the ashes of war; but now seeing this city in the flesh, it seems almost unreal to me. Where is the Tokyo of wartime? Where is the city of soldiers? Is it all buried under these tall buildings?”

Of course, if Grey had received the approval of Professor Shi Chongming from the first meeting, The Devil of Nanking would not have become the masterpiece of war that it is now. Shi Chongming is a character whose every line is filled with profound implications. As for Grey, he seems to be a few parts simpler, recklessly moving forward alone without calculating what this country wants to do to him. The author skillfully and unsettlingly weaves historical images, culture and wartime pain into a peaceful Tokyo. Mo Hayder believes that it is the price paid by people who were indifferent to what their country did in Nanjing that year. The author's art of words comes from the way he integrates historical facts and social knowledge into his own unique line of thinking, whether when communicating with someone or talking to himself.

“For many years, schools in Japan did not teach students about the Nanjing massacre. Everything related to the war was removed from textbooks. Most Japanese youth only had a very vague concept of what happened in China in 1937. I wonder if the waitress even knew the name Nanjing.” There is a detail that appears more than once throughout the half-thousand pages of the book, which is the time when Grey talked to Shi Chongming or recited to himself about the journey to find out what happened in Nanjing in 1937. Part of Grey's patient, stubborn and brave personality is shown through this detail. A girl who understood that she had a serious problem when thinking about sex, searched for nearly ten years, to go to the land of the rising sun and meet Professor Shi Chongming - the name mentioned in a document that he had in his hands a film clip of Nanjing during that disastrous period.

All truths must be paid a worthy price before wanting to lift the curtain after many years. The film clip that Shi Chongming holds does not entirely belong to historical value, but also the value of love. By the time Shi Chongming himself met a foreign girl like Grey, many years had passed after the gruesome massacre by the Japanese army in Nanjing, he had the courage to turn back the pages of his old diary.

“The Japanese soldiers came up with all kinds of new ways to kill people, such as burying young people in sand up to their necks and then letting tanks run over them; raping the elderly, children and animals; using torture, beheading, dismembering; they used children as targets for bayonet drills. You cannot expect those who witnessed that massacre to regain faith in the Japanese.”

More than 380 pages of the book are a series of events that make it difficult for readers to close the book without knowing what will happen next. Using his skillful and engaging writing style, Mo Hayder urges readers to read more and more excited by the beauty of Japan, more and more chilled by the past of its abnormal people, and more and more terrified by the crimes that the Japanese army brought to the Chinese people.

SUSPICION IS AN INEVITABLE FEELING

Classified as a Detective - Horror novel, this is not a classic detective novel. The detective element is in Grey's search for the truth and Shi Chongming's hiding from that truth. The Devil of Nanking has no ghosts, no scares that make the reader jump, the work brings a chill to the spine when reading the author's descriptions of the killings of the Japanese army. It is a horror that haunts the reader long after finishing the book, just like Thomas Harris did with his works.

"When reading a novel, people rarely have to put their hands up to cover their mouths to stop the gasps of horror. With The Devil of Nanking, it is impossible not to find a way to stop those gasps from coming out."

The story is slow but logical with events happening continuously, making the reader surprised because the previous situation has witnessed a new surprise. Not easy to understand, the book is not suitable for everyone, it is recommended not to read if under 18 years old.

The work was built by Mo Hayder with a unique writing style. From the perspective of Grey in modern Tokyo, along with the autobiography from the escape diary pages of Shi Chongming when he was in Nanjing in the winter of 1937. Readers should pay attention to the dates on Chongming's diary pages to better visualize the events.

Unlike works written about wartime heroes who contributed to repelling foreign invaders. Nanjing Devil helps readers know what the life of an ordinary person was like during the chaotic war, how miserable our grandparents lived so that our generation today can be peaceful and happy. That is also one of the valuable points that this work brings.

CHARACTERS SYMBOLIZE THE CONTRADICTIONS OF LIFE

When a work is considered good, the art of character building of that work has something interesting and unique that makes the reader enjoy or hate that character. The Devil of Nanjing is built on characters that are mostly not good people, nor are they completely bad people.

With two main characters, Grey and Shi Chongming: A 20-year-old girl who has experienced terrible stories that no one expected, an old professor who has carried a heavy burden on his shoulders for the past 50 years. One is full of determination to dig for the truth, while the other tries to bury that truth deep under the dust of time. But the two of them meet and help each other because of the deep connections inside.

“Ignorance is not a crime”

Grey made mistakes in the past because of ignorance. Also because of ignorance, she thought that everyone realized the truth about Nanjing like her. Shi Chongming was an arrogant person but because of ignorance, he pushed his family into a miserable and dangerous situation.

Grey is the incarnation of “crazy” people, courageously searching for the forgotten and distorted truth because “history is written by the winners”. Shi Chongming symbolizes people who have experienced pain with the desire to forget what they have witnessed, to correct mistakes and find back what they have lost.

Other characters such as Jason, two Russian girls working in a nightclub, Fuyuki’s Yakuza family, … have a significant impact on the story. Especially Nurse Ogawa, a ruthless murderer with a penchant for embellishing her crimes, makes readers shiver when witnessing the scenes where the main character and her confront each other. All of these people have brought a relatively complete character system to this story full of dark and horrifying colors.

WAR CRIMES EXPOSED

From the very first pages, the image of the Imperial Army's invasion was recreated without any cover. The capital Nanjing at that time was no different from a delicious prey hanging before the eyes of wild beasts. The fascist army with its destructive power that spared nothing and the brutality of the commander nicknamed "the king of Nanjing", a large-scale sweep and killing through each word was enough to make people's hair stand on end. Although modern recording equipment had been put into common use, the evidence of how the Japanese soldiers took the lives of countless civilians in Nanjing at that time was extremely fragmentary. Grey's search for the film clip in Professor Shi Chongming's hands was just as hopeful as the way people searched for information about Nanjing in 1937. Moreover, in the historical documents of Japanese students, there was absolutely no mention of their barbaric strategies in the past. Perhaps, this was due to the fear of revenge.

The Devil of Nanjing has absolutely nothing in common with a detective novel, but is a document that evokes the search for historical truth. A nation that took away the freedom of another nation, and moreover, was not as civilized as they often boasted. Mo Hayder did not skim over the details of the war, on the contrary, she was very realistic and the lines describing the miserable scene and the people of Nanjing at that time were not written superficially. It is undeniable that the non-historical research, including the culture and thinking of the time of the two countries of China and Japan, that the author mentioned in The Devil of Nanjing.

How many people died in Nanjing at that time? Was it ten or five thousand? It was all very vague when the statistics at that time were still controversial. The Japanese denied that they did not kill that many people, while the Chinese said the opposite. However, there was a real massacre in Nanjing at that time, and this work is a denunciation of that crime.

Mo Hayder spent a lot of time researching the history and culture of China and Japan to be able to write an excellent novel, touching the hearts of literature lovers around the world. She used her own words to expose the crimes of the Japanese army as well as the war that had caused. A great trauma. The messages in this work were skillfully incorporated by her, making it easy for readers to recognize and admire.

The fictional story that Hayder wrote was a real event in real life. The horror in Nanjing in 1937 with columns of dead bodies, hills of corpses, raped women, burned victims, brutally and cruelly murdered children, etc. created a wave of indignation among people all over the world. That tragedy, which seemed to have been forgotten, was reawakened and the best result was that the harsh truth was finally returned to history. The character Shi Chongming represents the few lucky survivors, but the haunting horror and the purge caused by the "King of Hell Nanjing" could not be washed away even if all the water in a river was washed away.