The Concubine and the Deserter: A Screenplay by Garey Riester

Shattered by horror, rape, and despair during the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanking, three strangers join forces with a passion, as well as improbable love and irrational romance, to risk everything attempting to save innocent women and children from the onslaught of violence, rape, and certain death. The main characters are Genji, stepdaughter and concubine of the owner of the major newspaper in Nanking; Miso, a young Japanese infantryman who cannot continue with the senseless murder and rape of innocents; and Jack Cohen, an American entertainer lucky to escape the Japanese bombing. These three main characters are fictional- but many other characters are real as are events depicted in the story. This script was written after reading The Rape of Nanjing by Iris Chang. (A number of years after completing this book, Chang took her own life.) While living in China in 2003, I visited Nanjing and went to the Nanjing Museum several times. The Japanese did not include it in their history books until the late 1980s. Little was done by the rest of the world to stop or intervene in this onslaught.