My road to Nanjing was long. Japan surrendered when I was four years old. Throughout my childhood I had

many painful post-war experiences. They shape my life even now. I didn’t want to think about war at all, and strongly

resisted going to Nanjing. I was not ready to fathom the depth and weight of all that had happened there. A year earlier, I

had bought an air ticket but could not bring myself to go. In 2007 came the seventieth anniversary. It occurred to me that

to make the trip.

 

From the windows of the express train from Shanghai to Nanjing, I saw mounds of raw black peat. This reminded

me of the campaigns conducted by the Japanese imperial troops to occupy coal and iron mines on the Chinese continent.

Coal was an initial motivation for the bloody battles our fathers and grandfathers fought. What on earth could I do in Nanjing?

I just wanted to listen deeply to the Chinese people and take in their sorrow and anger. There is a memorial site for the Nanjing massacre at Yanziji on the Yangzi River, from where one can view a picturesque landscape. I saw the vast river, cargo ships carrying coal, willow trees and vegetable fields spread on the shore. How could it be that in such a beautiful village so much slaughtering had taken place? Only seventy years earlier, our fathers and grandfathers inflicted unthinkable brutalities. Countless swollen corpses washed up on that very shore. I felt a burst of terror and lamentation and started sobbing from the bottom of my body.

 

In front of the Yanziji massacre memorial site, we Japanese participants laid out white linens, bowed down on

them, and apologized. We bore bouquets of flowers, embraced one another, and cried. Unstoppable tears dropped onto the

bouquet of blue-purple lotus flowers I had bought at a florist’s across the street from the Nanjing Normal University.

Wars are harmful to women, children, and the earth. China is the mother of our Japanese culture, and when the

Japanese invaded China, they raped their mother’s womb. There must have been something in the samurai code that

encouraged them to devalue life and glorify brutality. Violence within us may not be so far removed from the cruelty

committed by the Japanese imperial army. In my mind, the Nanjing massacre has taught us to understand the collective

responsibility we must bear.

 

My visit to Nanjing helped open the door to my heart, previously paralyzed in the practicality of daily life. Only

when we remember the tragedy of war, can our souls be liberated. Having returned from my journey, I now feel the possibility

of freedom for the future.