Iris Chang incorporates Historical Allusions throughout The Rape of Nanking : “In November 1937, after their successful invasion of Shanghai, the Japanese launched a massive attack on the newly established capital of the Republic of China. When the city fell on December 13, 1937, Japanese soldiers began an orgy of cruelty seldom if ever matched in the world history. Tens of thousands of young men were rounded up and herded to the outer areas of the city, where they were mowed down by machine guns, sued for bayonet practice, or soaked with gasoline and burned alive. For months the streets of the city were heaped with corpses and reeked with the stench of rotting human flesh.” This passage bids the imagery of blatant devastation of human existence. The Japanese who fronted the annihilation of the Chinese men display inhumanity of the highest order which should not be anticipated in civilized societies. The Japanese terminate lives cold-heartedly as a rapist would assault a target.
Logos aids Iris Chang to illustrate the enormousness of the rape: “The death toll of Nanking- one Chinese city alone- exceeds the number of civilian casualties of some European countries for the entire war. ( Great Britain lost a total of 61,000 civilians, France lost 108,000, Belgium 101,000 and Netherlands 242,000)…(The figure 225,000 as accepted internationally at the time, but more objective accounts now place the number of Dresden casualties at 60,000 dead and at least 30,000 injured).Indeed, whether we sue the most conservative number-260,000- or the highest-350,000- it is shocking to contemplate that the deaths at Nanking far exceeded the deaths from the American raids on Tokyo.” Iris Chang’s quantitative scrutiny exposes the ferocity of the “Rape of Nanking.” The massive demolition prompted an unconceivable death toll which surpasses that which would be accredited to mass bombings. Therefore, the brutality that was enacted at Nanking is punishing and unsurpassed.
Iris Chang exploits Pathos to accentuate the materiality of “Rape of Nanking”: “ The Rape of Naking should be remembered not only for the number of people slaughtered but for the cruel manner in which they met their deaths. Chinese men were sued for bayonet practice and in decapitation contests. As estimated 20,000-80,000 Chinese women were raped. May soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters and sons their mothers, as other family members watched. Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs, the roasting of people become routine, but diabolical tortures were practiced.” The Chinese people were maltreated, distressed and debased. Torment which they sustained throughout the tribulation evokes empathy in the reader. Humans display punishing inhumanity towards others in an unfathomable manner. Possibly, even the harshest animals would not show such a life-threatening scale of cold-heartedness.
