Ian Buruma: History by Decree

Song Gengyi, a journalism teacher in Shanghai, was firedlast month for doing her job. She had encouraged her students to verify official accounts of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, the orgy of mass murder and rape perpetrated in the then-Chinese capital by the Imperial Japanese Army. Another teacher, Li Tiantian, who protested against the firing, was punished by being committed to a psychiatric