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In Nanjing, China, a bronze sculpture of an endlessly crying woman—complete with real tears—sits as a tribute to the victims of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. The bust is of an older woman, her wrinkled face in the midst of racking sobs. Her head and upper body emerge from the wall with a prompt imploring the viewer to “Please wipe them [the tears] off for her!” In videos shared online, someone does just that, using a cloth to remove the liquid from the sculpture’s face. The contorted visage is powerful on its own, but the physicality required of the artwork adds a layer of meaning as the viewer becomes an active participant in a healing process.
The endlessly crying sculpture is located in the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders. It’s a museum to memorialize those who were killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Nanjing Massacre (also known as the Rape of Nanjing) when the then-capital of China fell on December 13, 1937. During December 1937 and March 1938, the Japanese Army inflicted horror and committed war crimes that included rape, mass executions, looting, and torture. It’s estimated that around 300,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers were killed.
The statue sits at the site of a former “comfort women” station in Liji Lane, Nanjing. Its opening in 2015 was the first to memorialize comfort women, a term for women and girls who were forced into sexual enslavement by Japanese soldiers. In this case, a “station” was essentially a place that gathered the enslaved women for what culminated in widespread rape and abuse. Many women died from brutal mistreatment. Now, the site features about 1,600 cultural relics and 680 photos that shed light on what happened there.
Although the statue wasn’t installed until the mid 2010s, the Nanjing Memorial Hall opened in 1985. It features historical records and objects along with architecture, sculptures, and videos to show what occurred during this dark period in history.
“I visited this place some 15 years ago,” a Redditor said after watching the video of the crying woman statue. “It was eye-opening, but [I] also left feeling really depressed after seeing everything. Saw the open pit where they had thrown the bodies into, they had a walkthrough of the timeline of the invasion, and they have this really beautiful library that is brightly lit and looks very modern, but which is actually a library of names of people (listed in albums) who were killed during the Nanjing Massacre. I somewhat regretted making my friends put this in our itinerary, but at the same time I was glad I could visit an important part of history.”
The endlessly crying woman sculpture memorializes the “comfort women” who were victims of violence and abuse at the hands of Imperial Japanese soldiers during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
The sculpture is located in the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.
The institution features historical records and objects along with architecture, sculptures, and videos to show what occurred during this dark period in history.
Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders: Website
Sources: This sculpture in the Comfort Women Memorial Hall in China that never stops crying; Long-silent tears; Nanjing Massacre
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