The New Sunrise

Brandon Yu

Good morning, dead people!

Welcome to the 1937 Nanking Tournament, pitting the Chinese Nationalists against the Imperial Japanese. This morning’s debate will be hosted by Human Folly, and refreshments will be served by existing public infrastructure that hasn’t been bombed into oblivion by Japanese air raids. As all Western powers have declined to intervene, no interruptions are allowed.

The grand prize — survival — will be awarded to the victors. However, the Japanese, without the benefit of the home advantage, will receive a bonus award of one hundred unarmed Chinese soldiers aged from eight to fifty-eight, who will be disposed of via mass execution by the riverside with cross-lane machine gun fire.

The stakes are high, ladies and gentlemen. Our current contenders for this morning’s debate — the first real one of the season — is Liu Huang, age nineteen, coming from his hometown of Chongqing. “I just want to go home,” he says to the interviewer, who adopts the shape and form of his mother in his waking dreams. “Please, I’m hungry.”

“What was that?” Jia Hao, his lieutenant, says from behind.

Liu Huang wags his head in exhaustion. “Forget it,” he growls. The Captain of the Chinese Nationalist Debate Team may seem tired, but he has pulled an all-nighter studying for this debate. He arrives at the 1937 Nanking Tournament with three stick grenades, a handful of shells of various calibers scavenged from the bodies of dead Nationalist troopers, and a rusty bolt-action hunting rifle passed down by his great-grandfather.

As he steps across the rubble-strewn wasteland of the Nanking Convention Center, something tells him he should have started earlier. He was too busy working on his father’s farm to care about some tournament on the other side of the country, but now that he’s here, his stomach wrenches with pre-debate anxiety. His mouth dries up. His forearms harden with goosebumps, and his soldier’s instinct tells him something isn’t quite right.

On the opposing side of this tournament is Hiroshiro Watanabe, aged eighteen, coming from his hometown of Osaka, Japan. Unlike Liu Huang, the Captain of the Imperial Japanese Debate Team and his team members are nothing but prepared. They even have a Type-97 anti-infantry tank, which everyone can agree looks totally badass in the background of their team photo, everyone grinning and smiling in the expectation of a sure victory.

No one smiles now. Hiroshiro and his friends lost their ride on the way to China’s coastline. They have walked for hundreds of miles in bad weather, and that puts them in an argumentative mood. Already, they have argued with massive crowds of Chinese civilians — men, women, and children — with rifles and bayonets, mortars and grenades. Most of these debates are improbably one-sided, but Hiroshiro thinks the people of China should have prepared harder if they didn’t want to lose so bad.

In the spirit of bad sportsmanship, he has come up with a few nicknames to describe the currently absent Chinese Nationalist Debate Team, who seem to be running late. They are the Chinese chinks, cockroaches, or pigs, depending on his current mood. Today they are pigs, and the Nanking Convention Center will become his slaughterhouse. So far, no one has said this was in bad taste.

This tournament will be mediated by God, who left unceremoniously halfway through the Imperial Japanese debate tour and never came back. Although a few of Liu’s men have turned their faces to the overcast sky in an unconscious semblance of prayer, none of them have found anything except a couple of raindrops.

They are desperate to prove themselves, and no one knows this better than Liu Huang. After their previous debate team quit on them halfway through the Siege of Nanking — the nightmare legend of the Imperial Japanese Debate Team was enough to petrify most of his team members with fear, and Liu Huang had seen many of his friends automatically disqualified by suicide or desertion — Liu’s debate team was called in to substitute for them.

The premise of their hastily prepared thesis to defend China’s capital consisted of three cans of ammunition, thirty-eight sandbags, and a semicircular trench from which to hold their last line of defense. As the Imperial Japanese Debate Team arrived, Liu’s team opened the discussion with a concentrated burst of machine gun fire and a volley of hand grenades. Hiroshiro’s team was caught off guard for a moment — flustered, even — but they responded with such power and persuasiveness, using artillery fire and aerial bombings as supporting evidence, that Liu’s thesis was effectively rendered moot. As the pre-tournament finals drew to an end, Liu was forced to disqualify three of his own recruits with a German Luger when they threw down their rifles and tried to flee.

Embarrassed and enraged, Liu gathered the members of his team still eligible to compete and left early so they could get a head start on the 1937 Nanking Tournament. Liu still has a couple good points he hadn’t mentioned, such as suicide grenade vests and a few Molotovs he is kicking himself for not using earlier.

His team members gaze at the various trophies the Imperial Japanese Debate Team have strung up with barbed wire across telephone lines, chronicling their victories from past debates. Others have not had time to be put on display. Instead, they are sprawled across the Nanking Convention Center in a haphazard fashion, as if they had to be chased down first before they were accepted, sometimes by several debate team members all at once.

The nude female bodies testify to the Imperial Japanese Debate Team’s fundamental thesis: that Chinese people have no right to live. So far, it has become the most popular thesis in Eastern Asia, and their debate tour is a massive success.

Liu feels sick, but he can’t find a restroom. Instead, he vomits in front of his knees and wipes off his spit with his uniform sleeve. His own team members are too hungry to even muster the strength for that. Instead, they supply the grim, listless expressions of those who know they will soon be incorporated into the trophy decorations the Japanese have displayed around the convention center.

They walk farther. Liu hears a low rustling that belies a massive undercurrent of muffled noise, like a distant swarm of locusts. As the Chinese Nationalist Debate Team rounds a street corner, the noise clarifies into the unhurried movement of fifty pairs of footsteps coming in the opposite direction, and Liu’s breath catches inside his throat as the entire Imperial Japanese Debate Team appears in front of him.

The refreshments are gone. Things are going to get ugly.

Hiroshiro Watanabe’s eyes widen in shock. He stares into a bizarre optical illusion, as if a thick cloud of dirt and soot has just materialized in front of him. Many of them have guns. He falters imperceptibly and regains his balance. Then he raises his own rifle, and the 1937 Nanking Tournament starts off with a bang.

The conversation of gunfire is cordial and brief. Soon, the debate descends into an intense, cerebral argument where all facets of reason and logic are considered in a civil manner. Hiroshiro couldn’t have started the discourse fast enough. He has so many new ideas he wants to impart on the Chinese Nationalists, such as the air-cooled heavy machine gun his team members have set up for the occasion.

As the Type-92 unloads its rattling, cantankerous diatribe of the futility of human life, Liu’s team members scatter like shrapnel, reassembling in small groups for a counterattack. They retaliate with the sharp, biting retort of rifle fire. But when ammunition runs low, they have no choice but to shout. Hand grenades don’t detract the Imperial Japanese’s argument by much, but it makes it very hard for Hiroshiro Watanabe to concentrate.

Agitated and upset, Hiroshiro shouts back. His face reddens, and he feels a powerful compulsion to one-up his opponents. Screaming to his debate partners, the Type-97 tank finally opens up with a percussive lecture on the most brutal, efficient way to be removed from existence. It drowns out all the other voices, because no member of the Chinese Nationalist Debate Team can hold their own against a megaphone. 

Astonishingly, the heated debate seems to bring all the participants closer together. Now that shouting isn’t necessary to prove their points, they gain a more nuanced understanding of each other’s perspectives as the groups break up into thoughtful one-on-one conversations with rival participants. These exchanges are surprisingly passionate, and many of Liu’s men are moved to tears by the strength of the Imperial Japanese Debate Team’s beliefs.

A few of them are so impressed by the creative insults and vicious ad hominins Hiroshiro’s men whisper at them with each thrust of their bayonet in close quarters that they gradually and painstakingly give up, mid-debate. Somehow, these hurtful remarks seem far more personal than their previous argument techniques.

The 1937 Nanking Tournament concludes with an unambiguous and overwhelming decision in favor of the Imperial Japanese. By then, most of Liu’s remaining team members are so demoralized they have all but given up. Taking advantage of the situation, Hiroshiro decides to stand in as judge. They have won the championship, and festivities are in order. 

Hiroshiro’s team first commemorates Tojo, their bespectacled Debate Team President, with a recitation of the official team motto — Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! — in the clear morning air. Afterwards, they raise their banner at the highest point of the Nanking Convention Center, replacing the sunrise with their own.

Liu’s team members kneel in a row, hands bound behind their backs. They stare at the ground with sullen, closed expressions as Hiroshiro unsheathes his katana. He plans on imparting a few words to each member of the Chinese Nationalist Debate Team, both to say goodbye and as an act of post-victory grace.

He approaches Jia Hao, the Chinese Nationalist lieutenant, first. His katana hisses with a smooth, sibilant voice, like a woman whispering into her lover’s ear — final, endearing, and tinged with a hint of playful cruelty — before he is permanently barred from competing in future competitions.

Liu watches as his friends are cut down, one by one, until he is the last remaining member of the Chinese Nationalist Debate Team. A sad, eerie silence fills the air. Surrounded by fanatical contrarians on all sides, he musters up the last bit of his courage in the one final act of defiance.

“Long live China!” he screams.

Hiroshiro steps over and issues a cutting admonition with his katana, and Liu’s words, as thin and insubstantial as thoughts, hang in the air for a brief moment before they vanish into the new sunrise.