Nanjing Massacre denial

The Nanjing Incident remains a highly controversial episode in Sino-Japanese relations.

Estimates of the death toll vary widely. Aside from the absence of accurate, comprehensive records of the killings, other contributors to the wide variance in estimates of the death toll include differences in definition of the geographical area, time period and nature of the killings to be counted. The Nanking Massacre can be defined narrowly to count only those killings happening within the Nanking Safety Zone, more broadly to include killings in the immediate environs of Nanking, or even more broadly to include the six counties around Nanjing, known as the Nanjing Special Municipality. Similarly, the time period of the massacre can be limited to the six weeks following the fall of Nanking or it can be defined more broadly to include killings from the time the Japanese Army entered Jiangsu province in mid-November until late March 1938. Variations in estimates based on the nature of the killings revolve around the question of whether the killings of captured Chinese soldiers and suspected guerrillas constituted legitimate executions.

The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimated 260,000 casualties; China's official estimate is 300,000 casualties, based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, while a few historians believe upwards of 340,000. Japanese historians estimate the death toll much lower, in the vicinity of 100,000-200,000. A minority, mostly Japanese right-wing nationalists, claim 40,000 or even deny that a widespread, systematic massacre occurred at all, claiming that the incident was fabricated for the purpose of political propaganda.

Although there is real debate in Japan over many aspects of the Nanking Massacre, no one there now accepts the figure of 300,000 victims as plausible; in China, on the other hand, the figure is generally accepted as accurate.

While the Japanese government has acknowledged and apologized informally by expressing remorse for the atrocities of the Nanking Massacre, some Japanese nationalists have argued that the death toll was military in nature and that no such civilian atrocities ever occurred. Negationism, denial of the massacre, and a divergent array of revisionist accounts of the killings, has become a staple of Japanese nationalist discourse. In Japan, public opinion of the massacres varies, and only a minority deny the atrocity. Nonetheless, negationist accounts have often created controversy that has reverberated in the global media, particularly in China and other East Asian nations. The 1937 massacre and the extent of its coverage in Japanese school textbooks continues to trouble Sino-Japanese relations.

The Nanking Massacre as a component of national identity

Takashi Yoshida asserts that, "Nanjing has figured in the attempts of all three nations [China, Japan and the United States] to preserve and redefine national and ethnic pride and identity, assuming different kinds of significance based on each country's changing internal and external enemies."

Japan

In Japan, Nanjing touches upon national identity and notions of "pride, honor and shame." Yoshida argues that "Nanjing crystallizes a much larger conflict over what should constitute the ideal perception of the nation: Japan, as a nation, acknowledges its past and apologizes for its wartime wrongdoings; or . . . stands firm against foreign pressures and teaches Japanese youth about the benevolent and courageous martyrs who fought a just war to save Asia from Western aggression." Accepting the "orthodox" position can be viewed in some circles in Japan as "Japan bashing" (in the case of foreigners) or "self-flagellation" (in the case of Japanese).

China

In China, the Communist Party has turned to history as a means of shoring up its tattered legitimacy, especially since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The Nanjing Incident has emerged as a fundamental keystone in the construction of the modern Chinese national identity. A refusal to accept the "orthodox" position on Nanjing can be construed as an attempt to deny the Chinese nation a legitimate voice in international society.

Death toll estimates

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Inscription at Nanjing Memorial Hall commemmorating 300,000 deaths

Estimates of the total death toll of massacred Chinese vary. The issues involved in calculating the number of victims are largely based on the debatees' definitions of the geographical range and the duration of the event, as well as their definition of the victims.

According to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, estimates made at a later date indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. These estimates are borne out by the figures of burial societies and other organizations, which testify to over 155,000 buried bodies. These figures do not take into account those persons whose bodies were destroyed by burning, drowning, or other means. The extent of the atrocities is debated between China and Japan, with numbers ranging from some Japanese claims of several hundred, to the Chinese claim of a non-combatant death toll of 300,000 A number of Japanese researchers consider 100,000–200,000 to be an approximate value. Other nations believe the death toll to be between 150,000–300,000. The casualty count of 300,000 was first promulgated in January 1938 by Harold Timperley, a journalist in China during the Japanese invasion, based on reports from contemporary eyewitnesses. Other sources, including Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking, also conclude that the death toll reached 300,000. In December 2007, newly declassified U.S. government documents revealed an additional toll of around 500,000 in the area surrounding Nanking before it was occupied.

Issues of definition

Scope of the massacre in time and geographical extent

The most conservative viewpoint is that the geographical area of the incident should be limited to the few km² of the city known as the Safety Zone, where the civilians gathered after the invasion. Many Japanese historians seized upon the fact that during the Japanese invasion there were only 200,000–250,000 citizens in Nanking as reported by John Rabe, to argue that the PRC's estimate of 300,000 deaths is a vast exaggeration.

However, many historians include a much larger area around the city. Including the Xiaguan district (the suburbs north of Nanjing city, about 31 km² in size) and other areas on the outskirts of the city, the population of greater Nanjing was running between 535,000 and 635,000 civilians and soldiers just prior to the Japanese occupation. Some historians also include six counties around Nanjing, known as the Nanjing Special Municipality.

The duration of the incident is naturally defined by its geography: the earlier the Japanese entered the area, the longer the duration. The Battle of Nanking ended on December 13, when the divisions of the Japanese Army entered the walled city of Nanking. The Tokyo War Crime Tribunal defined the period of the massacre to the ensuing six weeks. More conservative estimates say the massacre started on December 14, when the troops entered the Safety Zone, and that it lasted for six weeks. Historians who define the Nanking Massacre as having started from the time the Japanese Army entered Jiangsu province push the beginning of the massacre to around mid-November to early December (Suzhou fell on November 19), and stretch the end of the massacre to late March 1938.

Definition of "massacre"

Massacre denialists assert that the majority of those killed were POWs and "suspected guerrillas" whose executions they characterize as legitimate, and so they argue the use of the word "massacre" is inappropriate.

Japanese debate over the Nanking Massacre

Three schools of thought

Ikuhiko Hata characterized Japanese interpretations of the Nanjing Incident as falling into three schools of thought, based upon the number of casualties: the Illusion School (maboroshi-ha) which argues that at most several thousand were massacred in Nanjing; the Middle-of-the-Road School (chūkan-ha), which holds that between 13,000 (as estimated by Itakura Yoshiaki) and 38,000-42,000 (as estimated by Hata Ikuhiko) were massacred; and the Great Massacre School (daigyakusatsu-ha), which asserts somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 were killed in Nanjing.

Understanding the Japanese debate over the Nanking Massacre is important in understanding contemporary domestic Japanese politics. The debate within Japan about the massacre is also a debate about the legitimacy of the findings of the postwar military tribunals: the Nanjing Trial and the Tokyo Trial. One side, the Great Massacre School, is politically and ideologically committed to arguing for the validity of these tribunals and their findings. Representations of the Nanking Massacre in particular, and of Japanese World War II atrocities in general, have been widely mobilized in Japan to inculcate an anti-war philosophy.

The Illusion School, on the other hand, is based at least to a certain extent on a rejection of these findings as "victor's justice". The debate in Japan is thus heavily influenced by a broader philosophical and ideological debate on history and historiography, and in particular the debate on the legitimacy of the historical narrative on prewar Japan that emerged from the postwar military tribunals.

Central issues

Takashi Hoshiyama presents an analysis of the arguments put forth by what he characterizes as the "massacre affirmation school" and the "massacre denial school". Hoshiyama identifies five central points at issue:

1. The killing of captured soldiers,
2. The killing of non-uniformed soldiers mingled in with civilians,
3. Whether the killing of civilians was perpetrated under a systematic policy,
4. The killing of civilians, and
5. The total number of military and civilian victims.

Categorization of casualties

The first issues posited in Hoshiyama's analysis concern the categorization of casualties. Chinese historians do not generally distinguish between soldiers killed in action, soldiers killed while being held as POWs, illegitimate combatants who were executed and civilians who were massacred. As a general rule, Chinese historians take all the death statistics for each of these categories and roll them into a single death toll for the massacre. Historian Masami Unemoto, formerly a tank unit leader in the Battle of Nanking, composed a categorization casualties in Nanking, in a report (issue no. 11) on the Battle of Nanking published by Kaiko-sha, an association of former officers of the Japanese army.

Unemoto's classification of casualties at the Battle of Nanking

Category	Subcategories
I. Killed in action	1. Soldiers who died while defending Nanking 2. Soldiers shot while retreating or trying to escape from the city 3. Stragglers* who were shot 4. Guerillas in civilian clothing, who were discovered and executed
II. Killed in combat-related incidents	1.Individual soldiers who surrendered, but were killed 2. Citizens who were in the combat zone and either cooperated with the Chinese army, or were accidentally killed 3. Citizens mistakenly identified as guerillas and executed
III. Killed in illegal action	1. Soldiers taken in as prisoners, who were killed 2. Non-resisting "good" citizens (including women and children) who were killed*

Massacre denialists argue that estimates of the casualties at Nanking, even if they were not inflated, unjustifiably commingle casualties in all three of Unemoto's categories into one. They argue that casualties in Category I are legitimate and casualties in Category II, while regrettable, were the unfortunate accidents of war. Finally, denialists assert that the number of casualties in Category III was relatively small and aberrations due to the exigencies of war rather than the result of any systematic policy on the part of the Japanese army.

Killing of captured soldiers

During the battle for Nanking, there are instances where the Japanese army killed Chinese soldiers whom they had captured. In some cases, these executions took place some time after the soldiers had been captured, sometimes as much as several days afterward, as expressed in the diary of lieutenant-general Kesago Nakajima :"The general policy is "Accept no prisoners!" So we ended up having to take care of them lot, stock and barrel (....) Later, I heard that the Sasaki unit alone disposed of about 1,500. A company commander guarding Taiping Gate took care of another 1,300. Another 7,000 to 8,000 clustered at Xianho Gate are still surrendering. We need a really huge ditch to handle those 7,000 to 8,000 but we can't find one, so someone suggested this plan : Divide them up into groups of 100 to 200, and then lure them to some suitable spot for finishing off." .

Massacre denialists argue that, in order for the Chinese soldiers to be recognized as "belligerents" and thus eligible for treatment as prisoners of war, there had to be a commander present. However, since the senior commanders had fled Nanking, the denialists argue that the soldiers did not qualify as "prisoners of war". The denialists further argue that, despite the fall of Nanking on December 13, the Chinese army did not formally surrender, resistance from the Chinese army did not cease and heavy fighting continued. There were some instances where Chinese troops rose up against the Japanese after having surrendered. As a result, denialists argue that the killing of Chinese troops should not be characterized as "execution of POWs" but as "mopping-up operations".

There was a doctrine that interpreted international law to sanction the killing of POWs if there was no way to provide for their physical needs or to release them without endangering the Japanese army.

In response, the massacre affirmation school asserts that, even when no commanders are present, the international law on prisoners of war remains in effect. They further reject the doctrine that military exigencies take precedence over the laws and precedents of war. The massacre affirmation school asserts that killing of POWs can only be justified to protect the safety of the capturing army's soldiers and that this situation did not exist during or after the battle of Nanking.

Killing of non-uniformed soldiers

Japanese soldiers have testified that when they got near the Safety Zone, they saw piles of Chinese military uniforms heaped onto the streets that separated the Zone and the rest of the city. From this evidence, the Japanese command inferred that retreating Chinese soldiers had escaped into the Safety Zone, discarding their uniforms and camouflaging themselves as ordinary citizens.

Massacre denialists argue that former Chinese soldiers who were arrested in the safety zone were not entitled to the privileges as POWs because they did not meet any of the four qualifications of belligerents as stipulated in the Hague convention of 1907:

1. To be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
2. To have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance;
3. To carry arms openly; and
4. To conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Denialists argue that those soldiers who did not satisfy these qualifications were deemed to be illegitimate combatants and, as such, were not eligible for the protection under the international law. The denialists argue that execution of unlawful combatants on sight was not a violation of international law. Denialists further argue that not all unlawful combatants were executed, only those who offered continued resistance. Denialists argue that, since these executions took place as part of a "mopping-up" operation, they came under the "rubric of combat action".

Denialists cite Lewis Smythe, who investigated the Japanese occupation of Nanking, wrote in his report about the Nanking Safety Zone: "We have no right to protest about legitimate executions by the Japanese army." Denialists argue that no Europeans and Americans who were living in Nanking in those days reported any cases in which the Japanese army had executed prisoners of war.

In response, the massacre affirmation school asserts that, after the fall of Nanking, non-uniformed Chinese soldiers were not unlawful combatants engaged in guerrilla activities in the accepted sense of the term. The affirmation school asserts that the resistance of Chinese soldiers was weak and "virtually negligible". Moreover, they assert that trials before a military tribunal would have been required before such prisoners could be executed.

Whether the killing of civilians was part of a systematic policy

It is claimed by the massacre affirmation school that there was a systematic policy to kill civilians. They cite the description of a "take no prisoners policy" in an Army's directive of August 6 1937, personally ratified by Emperor Shōwa. This directive removed the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners and also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoner of war". They also refer to the campaign diary of Lieutenant General Kesago Nakajima.

However, massacre denialists counter that there is no mention of such a policy in the official records of the Sixteenth Division, the unit to which Nakajima belonged. Moreover, they argue that, if the Japanese army had such a policy, other divisions would have been orderd to apply it as well and there is no official record of such a policy at any of the other divisions either.

Killing of civilians

Massacre denialists argue that there are no historical documents that substantiate the Japanese army slaughtered the civilian populace. They claim that investigation of the Japanese, U.S., British, and German records have not found any eye-witness accounts of such killings. The denialists argue that, as a result, the testimony of foreigners cannot given very much credence because they are based on hearsay accounts from Chinese people. In addition, since many of the foreigners who provided evidence were engaged in propaganda on behalf of the Republic of China, their objectivity is called into question.

Total number of military and civilian victims

At the Tokyo Tribunal, the Chinese Nationalist government claimed that 300,000 people had been killed at Nanjing. The tribunal's verdict stated that more than 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war had been killed in and around Nanking.

Massacre denialists argue that, if the population of Nanking prior to the Japanese attack was in the range of 120,000 to 200,000, then it could not have been possible for 300,000 people to have been killed. Their arguments for a pre-battle estimate of 200,000 is based on documents submitted as evidence in the Tokyo Trial, reports made by diplomatic personnel of that era, contemporary reports in newspapers and magazines and statements made by Chinese and Japanese military officers at the time.

The massacre affirmation school points to the verdict of the Tokyo Tribunal which acknowledge the fact that the number of corpses buried totaled 155,000. In his book Nankin Jiken, Tomio Hora reasoned, “when the Japanese army started its attack on Nanking, there were said to be 250,000 to 300,000 citizens in the city” , and that “it is said that nearly 200,000 citizens lived in Nanking after the Japanese army’s mopping up operation” “…which means that 50,000 to 100,000 people were massacred”.

Tokushi Kasahara estimates roughly 100,000 casualties for the immediate Nanjing area and rising to as high as twice that figure for the much wider region.

Global awareness of the controversy

Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking brought the controversy over the Nanking Massacre to global attention. The book sold more than half a million copies when it was first published in the US, and according to The New York Times, received general critical acclaim. The Wall Street Journal wrote that it was the "first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city", and that Chang "skillfully excavated from oblivion the terrible events that took place". The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that it was a "compelling account of a horrendous episode that, until recently, has been largely forgotten"."

Chang's book, however, was criticized by many historians. Joshua A. Fogel, Canada Research Chair at York University, argued that Iris Chang's book is "seriously flawed" and "full of misinformation and harebrained explanations". He suggested that the book "starts to fall apart" when Chang tried to explain why the massacre took place, as she repeatedly commented on "the Japanese psyche" which she sees as "the historical product of centuries of conditioning that all boil down to mass murder" even though in the introduction, she wrote that she will offer no "commentary on the Japanese character or the genetic makeup of a people who could commit such acts". Fogel criticized that part of the problem is Chang's "lack of training as a historian" and another part is "the book's dual aim as passionate polemic and dispassionate history". David M. Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize winning professor of history at Stanford University, also pointed out that while Chang noted that "this book is not intended as a commentary on the Japanese character," she then wrote about the "'Japanese identity'—a bloody business, in her estimation, replete with martial competitions, samurai ethics, and the fearsome warriors' code of bushido", making the inference that "'the path to Nanking' runs through the very marrow of Japanese culture." Kennedy also suggested that "accusation and outrage, rather than analysis and understanding, are this book's dominant motifs, and although outrage is a morally necessary response to Nanjing, it is an intellectually insufficient one." Roger B. Jeans, professor of history at Washington and Lee University, refers to Chang's book as "half-baked history", and criticizes her lack of experience with the subject matter:

In writing about this horrific event, Chang strives to portray it as an unexamined Asian holocaust. Unfortunately, she undermines her argument—she is not a trained historian—by neglecting the wealth of sources in English and Japanese on this event. This leads her into errors such as greatly inflating the population of Nanjing (Nanking) at that time and uncritically accepting the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and contemporary Chinese figures for the numbers of Chinese civilians and soldiers killed. What particularly struck me about her argument was her attempt to charge all Japanese with refusing to accept the fact of the 'Rape of Nanking' and her condemnation of the 'persistent Japanese refusal to come to terms with its past.'

Jeans continued against what he calls "giving the lie to Iris Chang's generalizations about the 'the Japanese'" by discussing the clashing interest groups within Japanese society over such things as museums, textbooks, and war memory.

Robert Entenmann, professor of history at St. Olaf College, criticized that the "Japanese historical background Chang presents is clichéd, simplistic, stereotyped, and often inaccurate." On Chang's treatment of modern Japanese reaction to the massacre, he writes that Chang seemed "unable to differentiate between some members of the ultranationalist fringe and other Japanese", and that "her own ethnic prejudice implicitly pervades her book." Stating that Chang's description of the massacre is "open to criticism", Entenmann further commented that Chang "does not adequately explain why the massacre occurred".

Journalist Timothy M. Kelly described the book as "simple carelessness, sheer sloppiness, historical inaccuracies, and shameless plagiarism." He pointed out that Chang's "lack of attention to detail", citing her book's incorrect reference to Matthew C. Perry as "Commander" rather than "Commodore", and writing Itô Nobufumi's name as "Ito Nobufumo", without a circumflex on the letter o. As an example of what Kelly argues is "sheer sloppiness", he cited Chang's sentence, "Another rape victim was found with a golf stick rammed into her", and noted that while "golfers do colloquially refer to their clubs as 'sticks'", the terms "golf club" or "the shaft of a golf club" should have been used. According to Kelly, Chang also had plagiarized passages and an illustration from Japan's Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini.

Kennedy criticized Chang's accusation of "Western indifference" and "Japanese denial" of the massacre as being "exaggerated", commenting that "the Western world in fact neither then nor later ignored the Rape of Nanking" and that "nor is Chang entirely correct that Japan has obstinately refused to acknowledge its wartime crimes, let alone express regret for them." Chang argues that Japan "remains to this day a renegade nation," having "managed to avoid the moral judgment of the civilized world that the Germans were made to accept for their actions in this nightmare time." However, according to Kennedy, this accusation has already become a cliché of Western criticism of Japan, most notably exemplified by Ian Buruma's The Wages of Guilt (1994), whose general thesis might be summarized as "Germany remembers too much, Japan too little." Kennedy pointed out that a vocal Japanese left has long kept the memory of Nanking alive, noting the 1995 resolution of Japan's House of Councillors that expressed "deep remorse" (fukai hansei) for the suffering that Japan inflicted on other peoples during World War II and clear apologies (owabi) for Imperial Japan's offenses against other nations from two Japanese Prime Ministers.

Sonni Efron of Los Angeles Times warned that the bitter flap over Iris Chang's book may leave Westerners with the "misimpression" that little has been written in Japan about the Nanjing Massacre, when in fact the National Diet Library holds at least 42 books about the Nanjing massacre and Japan's wartime misdeeds, 21 of which were written by liberals investigating Japan's wartime atrocities. In addition, Efron noted that geriatric Japanese soldiers have published their memoirs and have been giving speeches and interviews in increasing numbers, recounting the atrocities they committed or witnessed. After years of government-enforced denial, Japanese middle school textbooks now carry accounts of the Nanjing massacre as accepted truth. Fogel also writes: "Dozens of Japanese scholars are now actively engaged in research on every aspect of the war.... Indeed, we know many details of the Nanjing massacre, Japanese sexual exploitation of 'comfort women,' and biological and chemical warfare used in China because of the trailblazing research" of Japanese scholars.

Historiography

According to David Askew, "the majority of academic research on the Nanjing Incident is conducted in Japanese, English and Chinese. Of the three language groups, Japanese has produced the most sophisticated research, with the debate in English lagging decades behind. The most objective Chinese language materials are the collections of various primary sources, including the recollections of many of the Chinese military personnel in Nanjing." Askew asserts that "the research [written] in Japanese remains superior to that [written] in English and Chinese.

The major waves of Japanese treatment of the Nanking Massacre have ranged from total cover-up during the war, confessions and documentation by the Japanese soldiers during the 1950s and 60's, minimization of the extent of the Nanjing Massacre during the 70's and 80's, official distortion and rewriting of history during the 80's, and total denial of the occurrence of the Nanjing Massacre by some government officials in 1990.

During the Sino-Japanese War

During the war, the Japanese Government kept a tight control over the news media. As a result, the Japanese public was not aware of the Nanking Massacre or other war crimes committed by the Japanese military. In fact, the Japanese military were always portrayed as heroes. Japanese officials lied about civilian death figures at the time of the Nanking Massacre, and some Japanese ultranationalists are still active in attempting to deny that the killings ever occurred.

One brief lapse in the Japanese Government's control over negative depictions of the war was the fleeting public distribution of Tatsuzo Ishikawa's wartime novel, Living Soldier (Ikiteiru heitai), which depicted the grim and dehumanizing effects of the war. Ishikawa and his publisher tried to satisfy government censors by a deliberate decision to self-censor lines about soldiers 'forag[ing] for fresh meat' and 'search[ing] for women like dogs chasing a rabbit,' while still preserving the overall tone and import of the novel. The novel was published in 1938 but was pulled from circulation within days; Ishikawa was sentenced to a four month prison term for disturbing 'peace and order.'

International Trials

It was not until the Tokyo Trial (tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East) and the Nanjing Trial that the truth of the Nanking Massacre was first revealed to the Japanese civilians. The atrocities revealed during the trials shocked Japanese society at the time.

1950s

Yoshie Hotta wrote a series of pieces of historical fiction in the 1950s about the atrocities in Nanjing.

1960s

In 1967, Tomio Hora published his seminal account "Nankin Jiken" in which he refuted revisionist denial of the massacre. This detailed treatment of the incident was the first meaningful and in-depth description of the massacre in Japanese postwar historiography.

Leftwing journalists in Japan began researching the events of the massacre in the late 1960s; in some cases, these efforts were inspired by the contemporaneous American war in Vietnam.

1970s

International interest in the Nanking Massacre waned into near obscurity until 1972, the year China and Japan normalized diplomatic relationships.

The debate concerning the killings and rapes took place mainly in the 1970s. During this time, the Chinese government's statements about the event were attacked by the Japanese because they were said to rely too heavily on personal testimonies and anecdotal evidence. Also coming under attack were the burial records and photographs presented in the Tokyo War Crime Court, which were said to be fabrications by the Chinese government, artificially manipulated or incorrectly attributed to the Nanking Massacre.

During the 1970s, Japanese journalist Katsuichi Honda traveled toChina to explore the wartime conduct of the Imperial Army. Based on his research in China, Honda wrote a series of articles for the Asahi Shimbun on the atrocities (such as the Nanjing Massacre) committed by Japanese soldiers during World War II called "Chūgoku no Tabi" (中国の旅, "Travels in China"). The publication of these articles triggered a vehement response from Japanese right-wingers regarding the Japanese treatment of the war crimes.

The denial movement began with two controversial yet influential articles: an article by Shichihei Yamamoto, "Reply to Katsuichi Honda"; (2) an article by Akira Suzuki, "The Phantom of The Nanjing Massacre".

Japanese history textbooks

See also: Japanese history textbook controversies

On June 12, 1965, an author of the school textbook, Professor Saburō Ienaga, sued the Ministry of Education. He claimed that he suffered through his experience that the government's allegedly unconstitutional system of textbook authorization made him change the contents of his draft textbook against his will and violated his right to freedom of expression. This case was ultimately decided in Ienaga's favor in 1997.

The way in which the subject is taught in Japanese schools became the center of controversy in the Japanese textbook controversies of 1982 and 1986. The Nanking Massacre "was still absent from elementary school textbooks [but] junior high school textbooks such as those published by Nihon shoseki and Kyōiku Shuppan in 1975, for instance, mentioned that forty-two thousand Chinese civilians, including women and children, were killed during the Massacre." Two other textbooks mentioned the massacre but the four other textbooks in use in Japan did not mention it all. By 1978 the Ministry of Education was able to remove the numbers killed out of all text books in use.

In 1982, the Ministry of Education embarked on a campaign to reframe the presentation of the history of World War II in history textbooks. History textbooks were reworded to describe the Sino-Japanese War as "advancing in and out of China" instead of "aggression" which was deemed to be a more pejorative term. The Nanjing Massacre was characterized as a minor incident which was sparked by the frustration of Japanese soldiers at meeting strong resistance from the Chinese Army. These moves sparked strong protests from other Asian countries.

Besides total denial, another line of Japanese thought insisted that the scale of the Nanjing Massacre had been exaggerated by the Chinese. This view was expounded by Ikuhiko Hata in his book "Nanjing Incident" . Hata asserted that the number of victims in the Massacre was between 38,000-42,000. He also argued that the killing of surrendered or captured soldiers should not be considered as "Massacre". This book is now considered as the official authoritative history text on the issue by the Japan Ministry of Education.

1980s

It was not until the 1980's that the Chinese began a serious study of the Massacre. Their painstaking research of burial records, documents, and interviews, concluded that the massacre took the lives of nearly 300,00, thus corroborating the findings of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

Massaki Tanaka's book "Fabrication of Nanjing Massacre" not only denied the Nanjing Massacre denied but laid the blame for the Sino-Japanese war on the Chinese Government.

In September 1986, the Japanese education minister, Fujio Masayuki, dismissed the Rape of Nanking as "just a part of war."

The Japanese distributor of The Last Emperor (1987) edited out the stock footage of the Rape of Nanking from the film.

Denial by Japanese government officials in the 1990s

A number of Japanese cabinet ministers, as well as some high-ranking politicians, have made comments denying the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army in World War II. Among these were General Nagano Shigeto, a World War II veteran and a former chief of staff of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force who was appointed justice minister in spring of 1994. Shigeto told a Japanese newspaper that "the Nanking Massacre and the rest was a fabrication."

In an interview with Playboy magazine, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said, "People say that the Japanese made a holocaust but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie." Some subsequently resigned after protests from China and South Korea.

On November 10, 1990, during a protest by Chinese Americans against the Japanese actions on the island of Diao-Yu-Tai, the Deputy Japanese Consul in Houston asserted that, "the Nanjing Massacre never occurred."

In response to these and similar incidents, a number of Japanese journalists and historians formed the Nankin Jiken Chōsa Kenkyūkai (Nanjing Incident Research Group). The research group has collected large quantities of archival materials as well as testimonies from both Chinese and Japanese sources.

Apology and condolences by the prime minister and emperor of Japan

On August 15, 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the Surrender of Japan, the Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama gave the first clear and formal apology for Japanese actions during the war. He apologized for Japan's wrongful aggression and the great suffering that it inflicted in Asia. He offered his "heartfelt" apology to all survivors and to the relatives and friends of the victims. That day, the prime minister and the Japanese Emperor Akihito pronounced statements of mourning at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan. The emperor offered his condolences and expressed the hope that similar atrocities would never be repeated.

1990s

As far as Japanese academics are concerned, the controversy over the occurrence of atrocities ended in the early '90s. Both sides accept that atrocities did occur; however, disagreement exists over the actual numbers. The debate is focused on the questons of whether to include archival or anecdotal evidence, what time period to use in defining the massacre, and what geographical area to use in defining the massacre.

Interest in the West remained muted until the publication of Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking, in 1997. Even though her book was criticized in Japan by both sides of the debate for flaws in accuracy of its historical research, the book raised consciousness of the incident in a much wider Western audience.

Contemporary debate

Currently, no notable group in Japan, even among right-wing nationalists, denies that killings did occur in Nanking. The debate has shifted mainly to the death toll, to the extent of rapes and civilian killings (as opposed to POW and suspected guerrillas) and to the appropriateness of using the word "massacre". Massacre denialists insist that burial records from the Red Swastika Society and the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong) were never cross examined at the Tokyo and Nanjing trials, arguing therefore that the estimates derived from these two sets of records should be heavily discounted. Although they admit that personal accounts of Japanese soldiers do suggest the occurrence of rapes, they insist that this anecdotal evidence cannot be used to determine the extent of rapes. Moreover, they characterize personal testimonies from the Chinese side to be propaganda. They also point out that, unlike the burial records that document the number of deaths, there are no documented records of the rapes, and so they argue that the allegation of mass rape is unsubstantiated. Massacre denialists also assert that the majority of those killed were POWs and "suspected guerrillas" whose executions they characterize as legitimate, and so they argue the use of the word "massacre" is inappropriate.

However, within the public the debate still continues. Those downplaying the massacre have most recently rallied around a group of academic and journalists associated with the Tsukurukai. Their views are often echoed in publications associated with conservative, right-wing publishers such as Bungei Shunjū and Sankei Shuppan. In response, two Japanese organizations have taken the lead in publishing material detailing the massacre and collecting related documents and accounts. The Study Group on the Nanjing Incident, founded by a group of historians in 1984, has published the most books responding directly to revisionist historians; the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility, founded in 1993 by Yoshiaki Yoshimi, has published many materials in its own journal.

In 2004, the Japanese Minister of Education expressed a desire to overcome "self-torturing" accounts of Japanese history.

In 2005, violent riots erupted in China over new history textbooks published by right-wing publisher Fusosha which were approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education.

In 2007, a group of around 100 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers again denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication, arguing that there was no evidence to prove the allegations of mass killings by Japanese soldiers. They accused Beijing of using the alleged incident as a "political advertisement".

On November 2, 2007, the Tokyo District Court upheld a suit filed by Xia Shuqin, a victim of the Nanjing Massacre. Xia had come from a family of nine and was only eight years old at the time of the massacre which claimed the lives of seven of her family members. Only she and her four-year old sister survived. Xia was stabbed three times with a bayonet and lost consciousness, while her sister, hiding under bed quilts, went unnoticed. However, Japanese massacre denialists argued that Xia’s testimony had been fabricated so she sued these writers for defamation of character and won.

Sources

• Hata, Ikuhiko (1986). Nanjing Incident (Nankin Jiken Gyakusatsu no kozo 南京事件―「虐殺」の構造). Chuo Koron Shinsho. ISBN ISBN 4121007956, ISBN 4121907957. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• "Reply to Katsuichi Honda". Every Gentlemen. March 1972. {{cite journal}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Missing pipe in: |first= (help)
• Higashinakano, Syudo. The Truth of the Nanking Operation in 1937. Shogakukan.
• Higashinakano, S., Susumu, Kobayashi and Fukunaga, S. Analyzing the "Photographic Evidence" of the Nanking Massacre. Shogakukan.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Tanaka, Massaki (1984). Fabrication of Nanjing Massacre. Nihon Kyobun Sha.
• The Truth about Nanjing (2007) a Japanese-produced documentary denying that any such massacre took place.
• Suzuki, Akira (April 1972). "The Phantom of The Nanjing Massacre". Every Gentlemen.
• Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi (ed.). The Nanking Atrocity 1937–38: Complicating the Picture". {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Yang, DaQing (June, 1999). "Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing". American Historical Review: 842–865. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

See also

• Holocaust denial
• Denial of the Armenian Genocide
• Bosnian Genocide