I am interesting about this topic because the war between China and Japan usually is a controversy history question. And all my summary and sources are support to my this topic and will let people to know this history more clearly.

When Hideyoshi unifies Japanese and became chancellor, he become more ambitious and has a plan to invasion Chinese Ming dynasty. This plan was a maneuver to divert the people’s attention in order to give the restless spirits in the home land another direction. Because Korea is the passage to China, Japan invaded Korea in 1592 and won very quickly.  “The war was fought with such terrible cruelty that in Kyoto a temple was erected above the ears and noses which had been cut off and salted.”(1) In this war Japanese used merciless ways to killed about 215000 Koreans.  Korean asked the Chinese for help, so Chinese Emperor sent General LI Ju-sung leaded an army to help. After fought, Li Ju-sung won and repelled Japanese very brilliant. In 1597 Hideyoshi was undertook a new advance, but he death in 1598 and his entire plan was death too, and the first war between Japan and China ended. At this war the more important point of controversy was Korea, that was call “Korean question”. For china it was a tribute-playing land; for Japan, it was an object for the extension of power.

Except the first book summary topic “Chinese-Japanese War” I also found these books to expand on the concept. First book “The Japan-China Phenomenon” by Arnold Toynbee, which deals with what kind of phenomenon between China and Japan, conflict or compatibility. “I myself visited both China and Japan for the first time in 1929. At that time, Japan’s superiority over China in technological development was patent.”(2) Different national power let Japan could invasion China successful, and Japan started the invasion war of China in 1937. So for this book was introduce how economy problems let the relationship between China and Japan change to conflict or compatibility.  Another book “Dictionary of Chinese History” by Michael Dillon, this book was show the history about China that also includes the war between China and Japan. For this book was specific to description of Japanese crimes at this war, for example: The Nanjing massacre. The Nanjing massacre was a tragedy on the modern history of China, took place in December 1937. “When the Chinese War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese Army in the Chinese capital of Nanjing a few months after the siege finally break, the Japanese mass killings in the city about three hundred thousand Chinese civilians”(3). Nanjing Massacre has been reported in the local newspaper in Japan, including the murder of two officers in the city game, these first-hand war records currently stored in libraries throughout the world, except to the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese also in other parts of China for many times the scale of large or small massacre. Has during World War II been the record of the Japanese massacre in the history of the Chinese in many other areas.

At the end I will summarize. The war between China and Japan, China usually was passive defense and never played invasion this role, like “Korea questions” war, the second war between China and Japan. So I chose this topic, because I want to let everybody know more clearly history and how the wars impact.

Works cited:

1.      Julia E. Johnson “Chinese-Japanese war, 1937-”. Page 45. 1th edition 1938. Printed by the H.W.Wilson Company.

2.      Arnold Toynbee “The Japan-China Phenomenon”. Page11.  Kodansha International Ltd, Tokyo, New York and San Francesco.

3.      Michael Dillon “Dictionary of Chinese History.” Page5. First published 1979 in Great Britain by Frank Cass And Company Limited.