ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the 2015 inscription of archival documents related to the 1937 Nanjing massacre into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Memory of the World (MoW) Register within the context of Sino-Japanese memory politics. Seven Chinese archives jointly submitted a nomination for the inscription of the documents. The chapter analyses both Chinese and Japanese reactions to the inscription. It shows that in China the inscription was understood as recognition and a way of securing the official Chinese narrative about the massacre against what is considered Japanese denial of this memory. In Japan, the inscription was criticized as a Chinese attempt to use UNESCO for political purposes. While the Japanese government was unable to reverse the inscription, it focused on reforming the system for MoW inscription in order to prevent the inscription of documents similarly related to wartime Japanese aggression on behalf of China or other states in the future. Through the analysis of this case, the chapter highlights the difficulties related to archives as instruments for reconciliation in international as opposed to national settings.
