丘比特的圈套

Young seekers uncover Japan's wartime past across borders; Precious historical archives delivered amid 8Ist anniversary of Japanese surrender_我的网站

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Visitors view exhibits at the exhibition "Justice Will Prevail, Peace Will Prevail, the People Will Prevail—Exhibition on the Victory of the Anti-Fascist War in the China Theater and the Trial of Japanese War Criminals" at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province on August 14, 2026. Photo: VCG
August 15 this year marks the 81st anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender in World War II. As the main battlefield in the East for the war, China fought a 14-year resistance war at the cost of 35 million casualties. It pinned down the bulk of Japanese military forces and made indelible contributions to the victory of the global anti-fascist cause.
On this significant anniversary, French youth Marcus Detrez, his compatriot Bastien Rata, and Chinese youth Zhong Haosong will donate precious historical archives to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.
Global Times reporters accompanied the trio throughout their cross-border archival retrieval mission, witnessing firsthand the handover of historical materials collected in Paris and Tokyo to archival institutions and memorial halls in Chongqing, Shanghai and Nanjing.
"Without justice, there can be no true peace," Marcus told the Global Times during his trip from Shanghai to Nanjing on Thursday.
History through multiple perspectives
A landmark handover of historical documents shedding new light on Japan's wartime bombing of China took place on August 10 at the Chongqing Municipal Archives, as Marcus and Zhong donated digital scans of 138 pages of rare materials related to the devastating Chongqing Bombing.
Compiled by Bastien from the Nantes Diplomatic Archives Centre in France, the mostly French-language files—accompanied by Chinese texts and maps—offer an unflinching third-party account of Japanese air raids on Chongqing, Chengdu and other cities between 1938 and 1941. The archives detail exact bombing dates, aircraft formations, ordnance types, civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction.
Of particular note within the archives are the Chinese and French translations of a so-called Statement of the Government of the Empire of Japan. Attached to a letter dated November 1938, the document brazenly demanded that China cease its resistance against Japanese aggression and submit to Japan's so-called "new order in East Asia", threatening military punishment if its demands were rejected.
Marking the 89th anniversary of the August 13 Battle of Songhu, also known as Battle of Shanghai, the historical preservation effort reached another milestone on August 13 in Shanghai, where youth activists presented 891 pages of invasion-era archives to Shanghai Songhu Memorial Hall for the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression for further research.
The archives, obtained from the Nantes Diplomatic Archives Centre, include records detailing the dates and locations of Japanese bombing raids on parts of Shanghai during the Battle of Shanghai, as well as the number of aircraft involved. The materials also cover Japan's aggression in Northeast China, the puppet state of "Manchukuo", Japanese atrocities and bombings, with some records also relating to the Soviet Union and the Korean Peninsula.
The third batch of materials, scheduled to be handed over to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders on August 15, was brought back from Japan last week by Marcus, Zhong and others. During their trip, they visited several WWII archival collections and secondhand bookstores in Tokyo, uncovering more than 50 items weighing about 20 kilograms, including pictorials, publications, books and photo albums dating mainly from 1932 to 1945. The materials cover the Nanjing Massacre and Japan's preparations for launching the July 7th Incident, among other topics.
Among the finds was a book titled The Nanjing Front, which documents events related to the Nanjing Massacre despite not mentioning the massacre in its title. They also found photos taken by Asahi Shimbun of Japanese air raids, as well as images of the Great Wall after it was damaged during the Japanese military's occupation.
"These archives should go where they belong," Zhong told the Global Times.
'Guarded' Japanese collectors
In France, archival research was a race against time. Bastien told the Global Times that they had only four days to work at the French diplomatic archives in Nantes. Each person could access no more than six boxes a day, or 24 boxes over four days. Some contained as many as 10,000 to 20,000 pages, while only 10 to 20 percent might relate to Japan's war of aggression against China. "We had to go through the pages one by one, quickly identify anything relevant and scan it immediately," Bastien said.
The team then spent nearly a month organizing the material, working about eight hours a day. They also developed an AI-powered system to translate and classify the records and extract information on dates, locations, people and events, while linking the French diplomatic archives with photos and notes left by Marcus' grandfather.
Finding wartime records in Japan posed a different challenge. Much of the material is not publicly catalogued online, so the team had to visit collectors one by one and keep asking specific questions.
"The biggest challenge is that many Japanese collectors are cautious about what we are looking for. Some know these materials exist but choose to avoid the issue, while others have clues but are unwilling to share them," Zhong said.
The team visited one Tokyo collecting institution twice. Despite explaining during their first visit that they were looking for wartime materials from the 1930s and 1940s, the collector initially showed them only ordinary photos of Japanese soldiers. The team then changed its approach, asking why many Japanese WWII records contain gaps concerning China. The collector said Japan generally refers to the conflict as the "Sino-Japanese War," rather than Japan's war of aggression against China. The team pressed further, asking whether there were records related to Shanghai, Nanjing or Chongqing. Only then did previously unseen materials gradually emerge.
The team also cross-checked promising finds with Chinese institutions, including the the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, and traced their provenance. One photo album, for instance, came from the family of a Japanese soldier and still contained the photographer's details and names of people pictured.
Anchoring hard-won peace
In early August, Marcus and Zhong stood at a busy intersection in Tokyo's Shibuya district, dressed in black and holding Japanese-language banners urging Japan to confront its history of aggression, including the Nanjing Massacre. They spent about three hours raising awareness on the street. Some foreign tourists stopped to ask what had happened, while some Japanese passersby tried to stop them.
There was also support. A Japanese female blogger livestreamed the event, saying she wanted to share the truth and promote peace. Japan's refusal to face its wartime history and apologize, was "irresponsible," she said.
"Our long-term goal is simple: to let the world see the truth of history," they told the Global Times.
Zhao Yongsheng, a professor at the Institute of Regional and International Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said the growing involvement of international friends in uncovering Japan's wartime history and preserving the truth carries unique value. It not only helps safeguard historical truth, but also challenges long-standing Western biases and neglect of the Eastern theater of World War II. More importantly, it demonstrates that exposing wartime atrocities and defending peace and justice are shared moral responsibilities of humanity.
"There are concerns that confronting Japan's wartime past could create new instability in Asia. In fact, the opposite is true," Zhao said. "Germany became a 'stabilizer' in Europe partly because it confronted its Nazi past. In Asia, only by fully confronting Japan's wartime crimes and curbing the ambitions of right-wing forces can the region escape the shadow of militarism and achieve lasting peace and development."
Regarding the newly recovered materials, an official with the Shanghai Songhu Memorial Hall for the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression told the Global Times that experts will first authenticate the archives before their formal handover. Zeng Jin, deputy director of the Chongqing Municipal Archives, said the materials would complement existing collections and provide new evidence for research through third-party perspectives from foreign governments and societies.
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二 | 　　由文牧野执导、沈腾领衔主演的“反战+美食”题材电影《欢迎来龙餐馆》正在热映。截至目前，影片票房(含预售)已突破16.8亿元。

三 | 　　8月25日，《欢迎来龙餐馆》片方宣布，启动在中国香港、中国澳门及海外多地发行。　　9月11日在中国香港、中国澳门上映。　　9月11日在澳大利亚、新西兰、马来西亚上映; 　　9月17日在新加坡上映; 　　9月18日在日本上映; 　　计划10月与柬埔寨、印度尼西亚、泰国、老挝、菲律宾观众见面。　　《欢迎来龙餐馆》将故事延伸至国际化战争背景，讲述中国厨师徐福(沈腾饰)远赴中东谋生。

四 | 一间中餐馆，既是他谋生还债的落脚点，也在炮火纷飞之中，成为大家寻求喘息的小小庇护所。“龙餐馆里只有和平和美食”，一句朴素台词，道出影片核心价值：要美食不要战争。　　01 　　中国电影　　在全球叙事的一次重要表达　　长期以来，全球战争题材的影像表达，深受好莱坞创作范式的浸染，观众看到的不少故事，都带有其独有的叙事烙印。这些影片习惯以强者视角展开叙事，用英雄拯救者的逻辑去解读世界各地的苦难，人物塑造、价值判断往往带着固有的视角偏向，常常被收拢进一套既定的故事模板之中。 “龙餐馆”官宣出海！　　而同样是反战题材的《欢迎来龙餐馆》则提供了一个完全不同于好莱坞的叙事样本。　　影片没有塑造无所不能的英雄，徐福有普通人的私心与怯懦，也有危难时刻流露的善意与担当。有观众表示，以一间餐馆切入反战主题，正是独属于东方的表达：好好吃饭、好好生活，一张热气腾腾的餐桌，便是战乱之中最坚韧的希望。 “龙餐馆”官宣出海！　　《欢迎来龙餐馆》以东方和平视角，为全球叙事提供了好莱坞之外的选择。　　要怎么讲中国故事?怎么发出中国的声音?什么是恰当且应有的文化软实力输出?龙餐馆很好地回答了这个问题。　　影片用东方的价值视角审视战争、苦难与和平。以温柔共情世界，以善意消解隔阂，这样的文化输出柔软又有力量。　　——不少观众在观影后发出感慨。

五 | 　　如果说叙事视角的突破打开了全球表达的窗口，那么“好好吃饭”这句朴素的期许，恰恰诠释着中国人的和平温度。 “龙餐馆”官宣出海！　　“龙餐馆里只有和平和美食。” 　　谈到对这句台词的理解，沈腾说：“那个时候，徐福已经在庇佑其他的小孩了，他希望他的一亩三分地不要有战争，他觉得人吃饱了饭才是最重要的。”这种价值观，既是中国的，也是世界的，它用最朴素的方式，道出全人类对和平的共同向往。　　影片当中，所有的温柔与和平，都浓缩在烟火美食之中。导演文牧野坦言，美食是困境中最温暖的力量，美食与日常的美好，更反衬出战争的残酷，让和平的珍贵直击人心。

六 | 　　“好好吃饭”“要美食不要战争”，这份能够跨越国界的情感共鸣，恰恰道出中国人最本真的处世态度：安分务实，重情向善。影片将东方的处世之道与人文底色，尽数糅进人物的取舍抉择、灶台升腾的烟火之中。观众得以透过普通人的浮沉命运，读懂刻在东方思维里的悲悯与包容，看见中国人对于和平那份朴素而坚定的向往。　　02 　　产业赋能　　拓宽中国电影全球表达维度　　我国拥有规模全球第一的本土银幕市场，庞大的国内观影底盘，为国产电影孕育出充足的创作土壤。日渐成熟的电影工业，让创作者拥有双重底气：一方面可以沉下心深耕本土，挖掘故土记忆、民族情感，讲好属于中国人的故事;另一方面也敢于跳出地域局限，将目光投向全世界共同面对的命题，把东方的人文思考融入世界性题材当中。 “龙餐馆”官宣出海！　　据了解，《欢迎来龙餐馆》里逼真的中东街巷、古城风貌，并非剧组在海外实景拍摄，而是在国内“造”出来的一座中东之城。

七 | “龙餐馆”官宣出海！　　影片70%的场景在青岛东方影都基地搭建，25%在宁夏石嘴山石炭井拍摄。　　仅在东方影都，搭建面积就超10万平方米，共使用了14个摄影棚、9个置景车间以及一个大型外景地。凭借多个摄影棚和置景车间同时运转，东方影都已把置景、拍摄、制作和技术保障形成完整的产业链条，实现了从“提供摄影棚”到“支撑一个大型电影项目完整落地”的跨越。 “龙餐馆”官宣出海！　　近年来，中国电影行业持续探索IMAX特制拍摄，《欢迎来龙餐馆》便采用了此项技术。借助IMAX大银幕优势，《欢迎来龙餐馆》以超大画幅细腻呈现影片中的人间烟火与温情百态，沉浸式还原影片细节质感。　　依托中国电影工业的这份底气，国产电影不断收获国际舆论场的关注。《哪吒2》向世界证明了中国电影的制作水准与市场潜力，《南京照相馆》和《给阿嬷的情书》深耕了家国情怀和本土叙事的情感厚度，《欢迎来龙餐馆》则以和平共情的东方叙事，为全球反战题材贡献出中国思考。