Japanese attempts at genocide in China

My novel ‘The Ishii Legacy’ takes the historical facts about Ishii’s demonic work in China and the ongoing tensions between the countries as the backdrop to a modern detective story.

In the west many of us are familiar with the Nazis’ genocidal ambitions. The word Holocaust is now almost exclusively linked to the Nazis near complete extermination of the Jews. Additionally Dr. Mengele has become famous for his horrific and bogus medical experiments on people.

What is less well known in the west is Japan’s efforts, during their occupation of China, to systematically clear the country of its people. They had their own vision of a Holocaust and their own version of Mengele, one Shirō Ishii, who oversaw a network of bio-weapon research and vivisection facilities throughout China and Southeast Asia. Like the Nazis the Japanese military high command sought to exterminate an entire race, the Chinese.

Today the Japanese government persists with its pretence that Ishii’s network was engaged in harmless medical research. This insistence, along with many other factors, continues to obstruct an improvement in Sino-Japanese relations. 

To put it simply, the Chinese and the Japanese don’t like each other very much.

Opinion polls conducted in both countries in October 2010 found that 90 percent of the Japanese and 81 percent of the Chinese surveyed considered their bilateral relations to be bad. 

This is an astoundingly high percentage and though a follow-up poll in 2011 presented a more positive result it is likely that that improvement is due to improved, and temporary, feelings of gratitude and sympathy around China’s offer of help after the calamitous Tsunami of Mar, 2011 struck Japan.

I hope that in reading my novel ‘The Ishii Legacy’ people will both be entertained by a good story and informed about a truly dreadful phase in China and Japan’s shared history.