The ancient Chinese capital of Nanjing has become synonymous with one of human history’s most horrible acts of savagery. In 1937, it was a place where the soldiers of the Japanese government committed acts of rape, murder, and torture that were not in any way exceptions as to how such men have acted before or since. The Japanese soldiers, in their Samurai tradition worshiped the honor cult and as men of courage served a coward emperor whose great ambition was to be a Marine Biologist. Those who served him used him as a living god so that they could act in his name with blood lust and imperial ambition that led to the death of millions. One of the many victims of the Japanese onslaught was Li Xouyin, a young woman who fought barehanded against the armed Imperial warriors.
In his romantic testament to Bushido, Inanzo Nitobe writes of honor, “implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth.” It is likely that many of the Japanese soldiers had read variations of such words or at least a bastardised adaption that suited the Imperial State. Li fought three Japanese soldiers who were attempting to rape her, each of them armed with a rifle and bayonet. She resisted them with fists and spirit, surviving 37 bayonet stabs. Her personal dignity and worth made the men furious. They could not defeat her, but only kill, maim, or rape her.
Eighteen-year-old Li was one of the many civilians abandoned by the government of China. Whether fascist nationalists, communists bandits who would go on to become the ultimate rulers of China, or warlord militias, the civil populace was a tax base to be ruled and controlled. The Japanese empire with a sense of manifest destiny took it upon themselves to colonize as the Western co-architects of modern Japan had inspired it to do. Li’s military husband was forced to abandon her, as she was seven months pregnant. It was then that a group of Japanese soldiers appeared. The soldiers seized the males for execution, then came to rape the girls and women. Li tried to kill herself by ramming her head into a wall, rather than allow the Japanese to take her. Instead of ending her life, she knocked herself out.
When she regained her senses, three Japanese soldiers appeared. Two of them rounding up the other women. The remaining soldier eyed her up and down as though she was produce for him to inspect before his consumption. Once he pounced on Li, she fought back. The pair grappled for his bayonet. Locked in struggle, the soldier began squealing for help as the other two soldiers rushed in and stabbed into her with their bayonets. She continued to fight with their fellow warrior. She then over overpowered her foe and used him as a shield from the incoming bayonet thrusts. The two soldiers went for her face, slashing flesh and skin from her skull as she continued to fight on.
Spitting her blood into their eyes, Li recalls, “I was furious. My only thought was to fight and kill them!” A soldier plunged his bayonet deep into her belly, she passed out. The soldiers continued to puncture her body with their bayonets after she fell, raping her with steel. Left for dead. Her body was soon discovered and taken to her father. She showed brief signs of life and was rushed to a hospital where news reached her husband. He had borrowed money and requested leave to be with his wife. Li kept fighting.
She recalled wishing that she had learned Kung Fu as a girl so that she could have been better at fighting the Japanese soldiers. She became a grandmother and lived until 2004, dying at 86 as a result of a respiratory failure. The fate of the three Japanese soldiers is unknown, though the chances of them surviving past 1945 is unlikely but possible.
Spirit and dignity are words that are either misunderstood or have lost value. Li possessed and exhibited both. She fought three armed men, trained war fighters, soldiers of the Samurai cult and she had exhibited a spirit that their martial culture fetishized. She stood with a dignity that too few value or dare to contain. She fought, without ever yielding or compromising. The men who served their government, their emperor god, acted as warriors. Waging war and conquering for their masters, this we are told is honorable and glorious. Beneath the tapestry of myth and stone walls with soldiers names etched on them lays the unmarked graves of the forgotten fallen of war, the props to others’ glory. There were many other women and girls who, unlike Li, did not survive the wars.
‘Better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war’ is an oft-repeated line about the virtues of being a warrior, to be prepared and trained to wage their masters’ imperial campaigns. Yet, we have seen farmers and common folk defeating warriors in the ‘garden.’ Li was just one recorded example in a history rife with unrecorded moments of courage and defiance. For these people of non-glory, seldom do monuments stand. Personal dignity and worth is not found in serving a master, only one’s own conscience. Such principles utterly transcend an obedience to a collectivist ideology or abstractions that demand servitude. Three paid warriors of the government versus one unarmed eighteen-year-old woman. Those odds truly sum up the world we live in, where might to take, plunder and kill is considered right and those who dare to defy are the outliers.
Li fought with the righteous indignation that individuals exhibit when they stand up for themselves or make the decision to uphold their principles. It can’t be swayed by threats of death and pain or simply bribed away. The soldiers exhibited the indignation of the collectivist bigot and those enamored by authority that is granted by government or class. She was Chinese, so they believed Li was inferior. They were soldiers, thus superior. They wanted her womanhood and life, it belonged to them. Intoxicated by the religion of Statist Shintoism and the delusions of Samurai myths these men could do no wrong. But Li Xouyin was an individual, she fought as one for herself, and for the universal principles that are washed away with the education of obedience and collectivist ideologies.
“Shame is the soil of all virtue, of good manners and good morals,” Nitobe attributes to Carlyle in his book on Bushido. It is unlikely that the Japanese murderer-rapists expressed any shame, or courage in battle. But killing and dying for empire was a source of great pride for many, to be expected even. Just as many who serve abstracts like the State tend to dismiss any complicity or responsibility for hardship, misery, or even destruction in the case of wars they may have helped cause. So is shame even possible? Or is it now conflated with Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or Moral Injury, again the victims forfeit. Is dignity even available for those who are no more than mercenaries, servants of a thing for which they have no love or belief. The three soldiers who stabbed a young woman 37 times no doubt murdered and raped countless others. To their friends and family they were honorable and good men. To the government, they were soldiers to be deployed and used as it saw fit. Whereas Li Xouyin had what few ever will, dignity. They could have merely killed her, but never could they have defeated her.
