In 2005, Chinese author, Lee Xiao-Fang, published a book called “ Blood-Weeping Accusations” which featured elderly Chinese victims of contagions and diseases spread by secret units of the Imperial Japanese military during World War II. Inspired by the shocking photographs and the history of Japan’s “Unit 731,” filmmaker James T. Hong and artist Yin-Ju Chen embarked on a 6-year research trip to China and Japan to collect historical documents, interviews with the victims, and other documentary evidence. Their powerful documentary series not only reveals the horrors and suffering that still exist in some small, remote areas of China, it also addresses how governments, ideology, and propaganda affect the reception and perception of “historical truth.”

Focusing on the history and victims of Japanese biological warfare, Lessons of the Blood is a meditation on propaganda, historical revisionism, and the legacy of World War II in China. Cutaways of Jiang Chun Gen – Forward and Back Again is a portrait of an elderly Chinese farmer who was infected by Japanese biological warfare (glanders) in 1942, when he was 2 years old. The rest of his immediate family members perished from their infections, but he has lived and persevered for 70 years with open wounds.

June 15-July 6:

-Cutaways of Jiang Chun Gen-Forward and Back Again
-Wounds that Never Heal

July 9-July 27:

-Lessons of the Blood

Image: Cutaways of Jiang Chun Gen-Forward and Back Again, Director: James T. Hong, Chi-Wen Gallery