China and Japan share a war past; a subject that was unmentionable for a long time. At present the traumatic events and troubled relations are increasingly dealt with in film and literature. Geling Yan's film adaptation of her novel Thirteen Girls from Nanjing is about a bloodbath in 1937 in the city of Nanjing, a very important theme in modern Chinese literature. Ian Buruma is an expert on China and Japan and wrote the historical novel The China Lover about a Japanese film heroine at the time of the Japanese occupation of China (1937-1945). How are both the roles of China en Japan in WOII reviewed? A conversation about coping with war traumas in China and Japan, with the use of film extracts. In English.

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