Nanjing Massacre denial

The Nanking Massacre 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, 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 there were a small number of deaths that were either justified militarily, accidental or isolated incidents of unauthorized atrocities. These denialists claim that the characterization of the incident as a large-scale, systematic massacre 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 outright. 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

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.

In Japan, interpretation of the Nanjing Incident is a reflection upon the Japanese national identity and notions of "pride, honor and shame." Takashi 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.

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.

Schools of thought

Massacre affirmation vs. massacre denial

Takashi Hoshiyama characterizes opinion in Japan about the Nanking Massacre as "broadly divided into two schools of thought: the massacre affirmation school, which asserts that a large-scale massacre took place, and the massacre denial school, which asserts that, a certain number of isolated aberrations aside, no massacre took place."

Hijacking of the debate by layperson activists

David Askew asserts that the debate over the Nanking Massacre has been hijacked by "two large groups of layperson activists".

‘Chinese’ are turned into a single, homogenised voice and portrayed as sinister and manipulative twisters of the truth, while the similarly homogenized ‘Japanese’ are portrayed as uniquely evil, as cruel and blood-thirsty beyond redemption, and as deniers of widely accepted historical truths.

Both positions are victimisation narratives. One depicts the Chinese as helpless victims of brutal Japanese imperialism in the winter of 1937-38, while the other depicts the gullible Japanese, innocent in the ways of the world, as victims of Chinese machinations and propaganda in the post-war era.

Three schools of thought

In contrast to the diametrically opposed camps described by Hoshiyama and Askew, Ikuhiko Hata posits a third group with a position between the two camps. Hata characterizes 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.

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 of the debate

Massacre denialists argue that the "Nanking Massacre" was a fabrication and false propaganda spread by the Chinese Nationalists and Communists. They argue that the activities of the Japanese military in Nanking were in accordance with international law and were humane.

In his book "The Fabrication of the 'Nanjing Massacre', Masaaki Tanaka argues that there was no indiscriminate killing at all in Nanjing and that the so-called Nanjing Massacre was a fabrication manufactured by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) and the Chinese government for the purpose of furthering anti-Japanese propaganda.

According to Takashi Yoshida, Tanaka argues that the "great massacre faction" errs because they

• accept the documents and claims submitted as evidence at the Tokyo Trials as reliable,

• fail to distinguish between killing of combatants and noncombatants,

• ignore the situation on the battlefield,

• ignore the high casualty count of the Japanese army during the Second Sino-Japanese War,

• disregard the illegality of Chinese guerilla tactics,

• overlook the atrocities committed by Chinese soldiers,

• ignore the fact that the IMTFE was more focused on meting out victors' justice than on providing a fair trial, and

• overlook the exaggerated emphasis placed on the Nanjing incident by the IMTFE.

Massacre denialists also make the following arguments:

• there is no direct testimony of the supposed massacres, particularly in the contemporary press;
• various frequently displayed photographs have been doctored;
• the Communist authorities in China did not denounce the supposed massacres until the 1980s,
• when they finally did so, their motive was to counteract the political consequences of opening the country to foreign influence, particularly from Japan

Categorization of casualties

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.

Historian Masami Unemoto composed a categorization of casualties in Nanking:

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.

Denialists admit that Japanese soldiers committed crimes in the city, but Professor Bunyu Ko, a controversial Taiwanese-born historian at Takushoku University in Tokyo, argues that the crime rate was much lower than the ones in cities occupied by the Chinese or Russians. Other denialists argue that the Japanese crimes in Nanking were similar to the ones committed by soldiers of the American occupation forces in Japan after the US-Japan war. Ko also argues that the "Nanking Massacre" was a fiction fabricated by the Chinese and no such thing occurred in Nanking.

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, US, 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.

Pre-massacre population of Nanking

• The Documents of the Nanjing Safety Zone that the total number of refugees in the Safety Zone were 200,000.

• Robert Espy, vice-consul of the American Embassy, reported to Washington, as did John Rabe to the German Embassy, that the population of Nanking was 200,000.

• Lily Abegg, correspondent for the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung, who escaped from Nanking just before its fall, wrote an article about her experience in February 1938 issue of Japanese magazine Bungei Shunju. 　She wrote that by the time of her escape, “Nanking had become a small city, with at most 150,000 people”.

• "Life" magazine also reported that about “150,000 Nanking civilians...cowered throughout the siege in a ‘safety zone’.(10 January,1938)

• Kuomingtang Major Zhang Qunsi, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese army, stated that the Chinese defense force of the city numbered 50,000, while noncombatants were 15,000.

• Brigadier Major General Lew who was in charge of defending Yuhuatai, and also taken prisoner by the Japanese army, and later promoted to Major General and the headmaster of Nanking Military Academy during Wang Jingwei’s administration, claimed that the population of citizens was “approximately 200,000”.

• General Matsui Iwane, commander-in-chief of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, wrote on December 20, "There are 120,000 Chinese in the Refugee Zone".

Contemporary accounts in the press

Western press

On 18 December 1937, the New York Times published an article with the caption "Butchery Marked Capture of Nanking - All Captives Slain"

The same day, the London Times published an article under the title "Terror in Nanking - Looting and Murder - The Conqueror's Brutality"

On December 28th, a Shanghai newspaper carried another London Times report on the Nanjing Massacre:"Streets were covered with the innocent citizens remains. At the city gate along the Yangtze River dead bodies were piled up to a meter high. Trucks and other vehicles were running over the bodies."

On 10 January 1938, Life magazine published in the United States a group of pictures titled "The camera overseas : the Japanese conqueror brings a week of hell to China."(The pictures are analyzed in the "Analysis of photographic evidence" section below)

Shōwa regime Censorship

See also : Censorship in the Empire of Japan

The Naikaku Johōkyoku (Cabinet Information Bureau), a consortium of military, politicians and professionals created in 1936 as a "committee" and upgraded to a "division" in 1937, applied censorship of all the media of the Shōwa regime and that this office held a policing authoring over the realm of publishing. Therefore, the Naikaku Johōkyoku's activities were proscriptive as well as prescriptive. Besides issuing detailed guidelines to publishers, it made suggestions that were all but commands. From 1938, printed medias «would come to realize that their survival depended upon taking cues from the Cabinet Information Bureau and its flagship publication, Shashin shūhō, designers of the "look" of the soldier, and the "look" of the war.»

Article 12 of the censorship guideline for newspapers issued on September 1937 stated that any news article or photograph "unfavorable" to the Imperial Army was subject to a gag. Article 14 prohibited any "photographs of atrocities" but endorsed reports about the "cruelty of the Chinese" soldiers and civilians.

The Naikaku Johōkyoku however dealt only with civilian matters. War bulletins were the domain of the Daihonei hōdōbu, the Press Department of the Imperial General Headquarters which was made up of the press sections of the Army and the Navy. The Daihonei hōdōbu deployed its own war correspondents and occasionally drafted civilian reporters for coverage.

Tokushi Kasahara of Tsuru University asserts, "Some deniers argue that Nanjing was much more peaceful than we generally think. They always show some photographs with Nanjing refugees selling some food in the streets or Chinese people smiling in the camps. They are forgetting about Japanese propaganda. The Imperial Army imposed strict censorship. Any photographs with dead bodies couldn't get through. So photographers had to remove all the bodies before taking pictures of streets and buildings in the city (...) Even if the photos were not staged, the refugees had no choice but to fawn on the Japanese soldiers. Acting otherwise meant their deaths..."

Testimonies of Japanese reporters

Due to censorship, none of the hundred Japanese reporter in Nanking when the city was captured wrote anything unfavorable to their countrymen. In 1956, however, Masatake Imai, correspondent for the Tokyo Asahi who reported only about the "majestic and soul-stirring ceremony" of the triumphal entry of the Imperial Army, revealed he witnessed a mass execution of 400 to 500 Chinese men near Tokyo Asahi's office. "I wish I could write about it", told his colleague Nakamura. "Someday, we will, but not for the time being. But we sure saw it", he answered.

Shigeharu Matsumoto, the Shanghai bureau Chief of Domei News Agency, wrote that the Japanese reporters he interviewed all told him they saw between 2,000 and 3,000 corpses around Xiaguan area and one, Yuji Maeda, saw recruits executing Chinese POWs with bayonet.

Jiro Suzuki, a correspondent for the Tokyo Nichi Nichi, wrote "When I went back to the Zhongshan Gate, I saw for the first time an unearthly, brutal massacre. On the top of the wall, about 25 meters high, the prisoners of war were rounded up in a line. They were being stabbed by bayonets and shoved away off the wall. A number of Japanese soldiers polished their bayonets, shouted to themselves pnce and thrust their bayonets in the chest or back of POWs."

Massacre denialists claim that what these reporters witnessed were the execution not of POWs, but of the illegitimate combatants who were arrested in the course of the “mop-up” operation and found hiding weapons, etc. It is a fact that the Japanese military executed several thousand such illegitimate and rebellious combatants; however, denialists claim that such execution was thought to be legitimate in the international law.

Total number of military and civilian victims

File:Nj06.jpg

Inscription at Nanjing Memorial Hall commemorating 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. 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 by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, based on reports from contemporary eyewitnesses and media reports such as the telegram of January 1938 by Harold Timperley, a journalist in China during the Japanese invasion. Other sources, including Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking, also conclude that the death toll reached 300,000. In December 2007, newly declassified US government documents revealed an additional toll of around 500,000 in the area surrounding Nanking before it was occupied.

International Military Tribunal for the Far East

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.

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.

Illusion school

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. Fujioka Nobukatsu, a professor of education at the University of Tokyo and a leading revisionist in Japan, adamantly argues that atrocities against civilians numbered forty-seven, and that "200,000 civilians could not have possibly have been massacred unless ghosts were killed."

Great Massacre school

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.

Revived international interest in 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 the 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.

Alleged humane treatment of Chinese POWs

Chinese prisoners of war released and going home smiling, apart from the Japanese military"

Liu Qixiong, a Chinese soldier who was caught as a POW in Nanking, and later became the commander of a brigade for Wang Jingwei's pro-Japanese government.

Chinese prisoners of war playing music with hand-made instruments in Nanking Concentration Camp

Massacre denialists point to a number of anecdotes which they assert demonstrate Japanese kindness and generosity toward Chinese POWs in Nanking after the fall of the city.

A chief of infantrymen who fought the battle of Nanking testified, "We defeated the enemies and saw thousands of dead enemies on the ground outside and near the walls of Nanking. But finding a Chinese soldier still alive, our captain gave him water and medicine. The Chinese soldier folded his hands and said "Xie xie" (Thank you) with tears welled up in his eyes. In this way, our infantry company saved 30-40 Chinese soldiers and let them go home. Among them there were many who cooperated with us and worked for us. When they had to part from us, they were reluctant to leave, shed tears and then went home."

One of the captured POWs was Liu Qixiong, a Chinese soldier who was found hiding in the Nanking Safety Zone, who was employed as a coolie for a time, and later became the commander of a brigade for Wang Jingwei's pro-Japanese government.

Many Japanese veterans testified that "Accept no prisoners" had always meant "Disarm them and let them go home" and they actually had done so, if there was no compelling reason to send them to the concentration camp. A staff officer Onishi told, "They could go home walking. There never was any military order or divisional order to kill POWs." And according to the veterans, Kesago Nakajima was removed from his post because he had been found appropriating the equipment of the residence of Chiang Kai-shek in Nanking for his own use.

Killing of civilians

Allegations that only a few civilians were killed by Japanese troops

Source: Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 16, 1937 - «Chinese women coming out from an air-raid shelter and protected by the Japanese military. Photo taken on Dec. 14, 1937, next day of the fall of Nanking.

Before the battle of Nanking, General Iwane Matsui strictly ordered the whole Japanese army not to kill civilians.

During the battle, every civilian had taken refuge in the Nanking Safety Zone. The Japanese army knew that many Chinese soldiers were also in the Zone, nevertheless the army did not attack it, and there were no civilian victims except several who were accidentally killed or injured by stray shells. The leader of the Safety Zone, John Rabe, later handed a letter of thanks for this to the commander of the Japanese army.

The Chinese people of the Red Swastika Society, which buried almost all of the dead in and around Nanking under the supervision of the Japanese army's special service, left a list of their burials, and yet, according to Ichiro Matsuo, a researcher of Sino-Japanese relations, in the list are almost no corpses of women or children.

The Westerners of the International Committee of Nanking Safety Zone forwarded to the Japanese embassy a total of 450 cases of disorder, such as rape, looting, arson and murder, allegedly committed by some indiscreet Japanese soldiers in Nanking; however, according to Tsukurukai, murder cases numbered only 49, among which were only a few murder cases of women and children. Denialists also point out that most of these cases were what the Committee members heard, not what they witnessed nor confirmed, and yet, even if these were all true, there were only a few murder cases.

Massacre denialists thus claim that there were only a small number of civilian victims killed by the Japanese military during and after the battle of Nanking.

The Japanese army after the fall of Nanking did a “mop-up” operation to find out illegitimate Chinese soldiers in civilian clothing hiding in the Safety Zone. Chinese soldier did not have a sun tan on his forehead because of his cap, and he had calluses on his hands because of shooting. In addition, he did not have any family in the city. So, these were how to distinguish the hiding Chinese soldiers from civilians. There might be some misconceptions of civilians for enemy; however, massacre denialists claim that they were not many.

Nanking citizens with armbands of the flag of Japan selling vegetables on street on Dec. 15, 1937, two days after the Japanese occupation.

Confessions by Japanese veterans

In 2002, The Battle of Nanjing -- a Search of Sealed Memories was published in Nanjing; it consists of testimonies from 102 Japanese veterans who participated in Japan's aggression of China from 1937 to 1945, especially the battle of Nanjing. The book was compiled by Japanese peace advocates headed by Tamaki Matsuoka who interviewed some 250 veterans across Japan, the former soldiers, in their 80s and 90s, confessed to committing atrocities in Nanjing, including murder, rape and robbery.

Massacre denialists criticize this book, "It is a fact that there were relatively a small number of crimes committed by Japanese soldiers; however, all testimonies are either anonymous or attributed to individuals whose names are unverifiable as having actually been in Nanking at the time of the alleged massacre. As a result, none of the veterans can be held accountable for the truth and accuracy of his testimony."

Denialists further argue that, even if the testimonies of these veterans were true, it only meant that they were war criminals who had violated military discipline evading the scrutiny of the Japanese military police thereby managing to evade punishment. Moreover, denialists point out that even the testimonies of these veterans did not assert that a massacre of civilians in the hundreds of thousands.

Kozo Tadokoro, whose testimony is quoted in Iris Chang's book "The Rape of Nanking," says that he committed crimes of murder and rape during the "ten days period" after the fall of Nanking. However, Professor Tadao Takemoto (Tsukuba University) and Professor Yasuo Ohara (Kokugakuin University) point out that the unit to which he belonged has already left Nanking on December 15, which was two days after the fall of Nanking, and then, this person has not been able to have stayed in Nanking for ten days. He has confessed later, "I told a lie because the interviewer asked me to tell something exciting." Then, he himself has denied credibility of his talk.

Kazuo Sone has published his memoirs, and told his criminal acts of murders and his eye-witnessed stories. He describes himself as an Infantry squad leader. But, he has been a private of an Artillery Regiment. Professors Takemoto and Ohara point out that contrary to the Infantry, the Artillery generally has never been sent to the front line of battle. The 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, the 3rd Division, to which this man was assigned, has been located in the rear area, and has never been engaged in the battle directly against the Chinese Army. To the entry ceremony into Nanking, only a part of his regiment participates instead of the whole regiment. Therefore, it has been impossible for him to execute or eyewitness the brutal criminal acts inside or in the vicinity of Nanking as he described in his book. Also, his colleagues who were together engaged in the operation in Nanking say that they had not witnessed nor done any such criminal acts. In other words, denialists claim, Sone's memoirs are entirely his own creation.

Denial of massacre by Japanese veterans

Nanking citizens with armbands of the flag of Japan in Safety Zone on Dec. 15, 1937. "The Chinese citizens did not fear the Japanese and willingly cooperated with me for photo-taking," testified the press photographer Shinju Sato.

Professor Shudo Higashinakano also has published a compilation of testimonies by Japanese soldiers who participated in the Nanking operation in his book entitled “The Truth of the Nanking Operation in 1937.” None of these testimonies included any assertion that there had been a massacre of civilians nor POWs. For instance, Colonel Omigaku Mori said, "I have never heard or seen any massacre in Nanking."

Veterans of the 7th Regiment, which was assigned to sweep the Safety Zone, testified that the regimental command had been, "Don't kill civilians. Don't dishonor the army," and they had been very careful not to kill civilians.

Naofuku Mikuni, other Japanese soldiers and press reporters testified, “Nanking citizens were generally cheerful, and friendly to the Japanese just after the fall of Nanking, and also in August 1938 when I went back to Nanking.” They point out that if the Japanese crime rate was very high, such cheerfulness would have never been seen in the city.

Yasuto Nakayama, a staff officer, testifies, "I have neither heard nor witnessed any massacre in Nanking. After the fall of the city, I have never seen corpses of civilians within or around Nanking, except for dead bodies of Chinese soldiers in two places when I inspected the city."

Hirotsugu Tsukamoto, a judicial officer of the Japanese army, testified, “After the entry into Nanking, unlawful acts have been committed by Japanese soldiers and I remember having examined these cases. I think that there were four or five officers involving in the above cases I disposed, but the rest were cases mostly sporadically committed by the rank-and-file. The kinds of crimes have been chiefly plunder and rape, while the cases of theft and injury were few. And to the best of my knowledge I remember that there happened quite few cases that resulted in death. I remember there were a few murder cases, but have no memory of having punished incendiaries or dealt with mass slaughter criminals.”

Amicable relations between Japanese soldiers and Chinese civilians

A Chinese boy laughing with Japanese Second Lieutenant Takashi Akaboshi, who led a fight along the Yangzi River. Photo taken near the walls of Nanking just after the Japanese occupation.(Courtesy of his wife)

Japanese soldier handing a paper money to a Chinese family in the Safety Zone of Nanking. Photo taken on Dec. 27, 1937.

A sergeant major of infantrymen testified, "On the way to Nanking, I was ordered to stand as a guard having a rifle at night, when I noticed a young Chinese lady in Chinese dress walking to me. She said in fluent Japanese, ‘You are a Japanese soldier, aren’t you.” And she continued, ‘I ran away from Shanghai, other people were killed or got separated and I thought it would be dangerous for me to be near the Chinese military, so I’ve come here.” “Where did you learn Japanese?” said I, when she said, “I graduated from a school in Nagasaki, Japan, and later, worked for a Japanese bookstore in Shanghai.” We checked but there was nothing suspicious on her. And since we did not have any translator, we decided to hire her as a translator. She was also very good at cooking knowing Japanese taste, and turned on all her charm for all of us, so we made much of her. She sometimes sang Japanese songs for us, and her jokes made us laugh. She was the only woman in the military unit but made our hard march pleasant. Before the beginning of our attack to the city of Nanking, the commander made her leave for Shanghai.”

A first lieutenant testified, "When we had just entered the Nanking Safety Zone, every woman was dressed in rags with her face and all her skin dirtied with Chinese ink, oil or mud to appear as ugly as possible. But after they got to know that the Japanese soldiers were strictly maintaining military discipline, their black faces turned to natural skin, and their dirty clothes turned to fine ones. Soon, I often came across beautiful ladies on streets.

Another soldier testified, "When I was washing my face in a hospital in Nanking, a Chinese man came to me and said, "Soldier, good morning" in fluent Japanese. He continued, "I was in Osaka for 18 years." I asked him to become a translator for the Japanese army. He later went to his family, came back and said, "I told my family, 'The Japanese army have come. So, you are now all safe.'" He had cooperated faithfully with the Japanese army for 15 months until we reached Hankou." Denialists argue that if there was a massacre of civilians in Nanking, it would have been impossible for the Chinese man to work for the Japanese.

There are many other similar testimonies. Denialists point out that these testimonies tell a story that is radically different from the orthodox narrative of a "massacre" at Nanking.

Alleged humane treatment of the civilian population

Chinese citizens celebrating the start of the Nanking self-government on Jan. 3, 1938, waving the Japanese flag and the Chinese five-color flag.

Masayoshi Arai, a correspondent of Domei News Agency, testified, “In Nanking, I saw a Japanese soldier sharing rice to a POW. And just after the Japanese military entered the city, Chinese citizens were selling goods and sweets. Since Japanese soldiers were hungry for sweets, they often bought from them."

James McCallum, a medical doctor in Nanking, wrote in his diary on Dec. 29, 1937, "We have had some very pleasant Japanese who have treated us with courtesy and respect. Occasionally have I seen a Japanese helping some Chinese, or picking up a Chinese baby to play with it.".

Tatsuzo Asai, a photographer of Domei News Agency, testified, “I used to be with Arthur Menken of Paramount News in Shanghai. He was in Nanking but I did not meet him there. When I went back to Shanghai in January, I used to have lunch with him. I have not heard from him about a massacre.”

Correspondent Koike of the Miyako Shinbun newspaper testified, “There were some Chinese people who did not have food and were starving, and they said, “Please give us food.” Since our lodgings had bags of rice, we called the leader of the refugee camp, and shared to them two large carts of rice and side dishes.”

Colonel Isamu Tanida testified, “After the Japanese occupation of Nanking, from November 1938, I had been very busy working for the restoration of China and its economic development. My staff officers and I used to meet with Chinese officials and the people to cooperate together. I deepened a friendship with them but I never heard about a massacre even when I wined and dined with them.”

The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported on Jan. 3, 1938, that Nanking’s water and electricity services, which had been stopped since Dec. 10, had been restored from the New Year’s Day, 1938, as a result of the hard work of about 80 Japanese engineers and about 70 Chinese workers in cooperation for electricity, and a similar number of workers for water supply also. And on Jan. 3, citizens celebrated the start of the Nanking self-government, waving the Japanese flag and the Chinese five-color flag.

Allegations of acts of violence against civilians

Picture published in Asahi-ban Shina-jihen Gahō with the caption «Chinese citizens rejoicing to receive confectionery from Japanese soldiers on Dec. 20, 1937, in Nanking.»

Lieutenant General Yasuji Okamura once wrote his surmise based on what he heard from his staff officers, “It is true that tens of thousands of acts of violence, such as looting and rape, took place against civilians during the assault on Nanking."

This is sometimes referred to by massacre affirmationists. However, massacre denialists point out that Okamura was not in Nanking, and his surmise was based on the report he heard in Shanghai. Since the Westerners of the International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone, who were in Nanking, reported only 450 cases of violence such as looting, rape and murder (see "Testimony of Westerners" section), denialists assert that Okamura’s surmise of “tens of thousands of acts of violence” was clearly based on a wrong rumor.

Analysis of the estimated death toll

Discrepancies in the reported population of Nanking

Chinese merchants selling to Japanese soldiers in Nanking in January, 1938.

At the post-war Tokyo war crimes tribunal, the Chinese reported that the pre-massacre population of Nanking was about 600,000 to 700,000. Massacre denialists challenge this figure as grossly inflated to support the allegations of a massacre.

Massacre denialists argue that the population of Nanking just before the Japanese occupation was about 200,000. Professor Shudo Higashinakano, who was condemned on 5 February 2009 by the Japanese Supreme Court with his publisher Tendensha to pay 4 million yen in damages to a self-professed Chinese victim of the massacre , points out that the initial reports of casualties at Nanking run in the thousands inside the walls of Nanking and to a few tens of thousands outside the walls. According to them, these numbers seem to be at odds with the allegations of hundreds of thousands of casualties.

About a week before the Japanese attack to Nanking, on Nov. 28, 1937, the head of the Police Department of Nanking, Mr. Wan, announced at a press conference for foreigners, "About 200,000 people still live here in Nanking." The Japanese military occupied Nanking on Dec. 13, and five days after it, on Dec. 18, the International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone announced that the population of Nanking was about 200,000, and later, on Dec. 21, the Foreigners Association in Nanking referred to 200,000 as the population of Nanking. And about one month after the Japanese occupation, on Jan. 14, 1938, the International Committee announced that the population of Nanking increased to about 250,000.

Massacre denialists argue that, since the missionaries, who incessantly protested against the orgy of murders, looting, rapes and arson by the Japanese troops, did not record any drastic population drops as a result of the atrocities, the massacre of 300,000 or even 200,000 people simply looks implausible.

Chinese people hired by Japanese soldiers to carry food. Photo taken on Jan. 20, 1938, in Nanking. According to Higashinakano and his colleagues, the Japanese distributed the food to the citizens and there was no death by starvation in Nanking.

Shoichi Watanabe, a professor emeritus at Sophia University in Tokyo, argues that it was impossible for the Japanese to have killed 300,000 citizens in a city that had a population of only 200,000 people. And one month after the occupation many Nanking citizens, who had escaped the city, came back to Nanking, learning that peace had returned, and the population increased to about 250,000, for there is a record that the Japanese troops distributed food to that number of citizens.

Denialists argue that it is impossible to estimate the population of Nanking when the city fell onto the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army since no one recorded the inflow and outflow of people during wartime. However, from the day the Japanese troops occupied the city onward, many members of the International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone repeatedly stated in their official documents, diaries and letters that around 250,000 refugees were living in the camps within the Safety Zone and many fewer people, "probably not more than ten thousands," as reported by one of the members, Miner Searle Bates, were living outside the refugee camps.

Burial Records

A question often raised by many massacre denialists is the credibility of burial records of the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong), a 140-year-old charitable organization in Nanjing. Although their reports that recorded the burial of 112,267 bodies was adduced to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, they were actually prepared for the tribunal after the war ended because the original manuscripts were allegedly all lost during the eight years of Japanese occupation.

Piles of buried bones displayed at Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. Some Japanese veterans cited by Higashinakano testify that for plague prevention purpose they buried the bodies of Chinese killed in battle by the Imperial Japanese Army or by the Chinese supervisory unit. These veterans protest that the bodies are displayed in the Hall as an evidence of the "massacre."

Of course that does not mean that the Chung Shan Tang doctored their reports. The available Chinese documents of that time showed that the organization started burying the dead bodies scattered over certain parts of the city at the beginning of 1938 at the latest. Forty full-time staff and numerous part-timers buried their countrymen and women inside the city walls until March and worked outside of the walls in April.

It should be noted, however, that none of the other documents written by members of the International Committee or the Japanese authorities in Nanjing mentioned that the Tsun Shan Tang was engaged in burial work, while they recorded that another charitable organization, the Red Swastika Society, buried about 40,000 bodies.

Their burial reports also showed a rather disproportionate number of the bodies buried each month. In the first one hundred days from December to March they recorded 7,549 bodies, about 75 per day. In the last three weeks in April when they went outside the city walls, however, they claimed to have buried an additional 104,718, about 5,000 bodies per day.

According to Susumu Maruyama, a Japanese soldier who worked as the leader of the burial teams of the war dead in Nanking, the burial was completed around March 15, 1938, three months after the Japanese occupation, and the total number of the buried Chinese bodies were around 14,000-15,000, which were far different from 300,000.

Public statements by Chinese government and leaders during the war

Massacre affirmationists point to reports from the United Press and Reuters that indicate that, as early as December 16, 1937, three days after Nanking fell, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced , in Hankow, "Chinese army casualties on all fronts exceed 300,000. The loss of civilian life and property is beyond computation."

Massacre denialists argue however that the Kuomintang Ministry of Information, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong never once mentioned the Nanking massacre in the years between the fall of Nanking and the Japanese surrender.

For example, massacre denialists assert that Chiang Kai-shek broadcast his radio addresses hundreds of times to the Chinese people between the fall of Nanking and the end of World War II, but he had never mentioned about the “Nanking Massacre” even once. Satoru Mizushima asserted that "Chiang Kai-shek held 300 press conferences in the 11 months following the fall of Nanjing. He told the international media, 'Japan did this, and Japan did that.' But there was absolutely no mention of Nanjing. Not a single word."

In 1938, several months after the "massacre," nationalist Chiang Kai-Shek appealed to the West for support in his struggle against the Japanese occupation. In his appeals, he mentioned the "cold blooded" Japanese aerial bombardment of Canton, but did not mention a "Nanking massacre." Neither a publication by General He Yingquin, one of the top-ranking Nationalist officers and former minister of defense, Modern Chinese History: The Conflict with Japan, which contains military reports covering the period between 1937 and 1945 nor China Year Book 1938, published by the "North China Daily News & Herald (Shanghai)," which chronicles official Chinese speeches and events, mention the occurrence of a massacre in Nanking.

Shudo Higashinakano points out that the July 9, 1938 issue of China Forum, which was published by the Ministry of Information seven months after the fall of Nanking, carried a feature entitled "One Year of Sino-Japanese War: Review Questions for Study Groups." One of the questions was "What was the attitude of China after the fall of Nanking? The answer (intended to serve as a model) was "General Chiang Kai-shek said on December 16, 1937: 'No matter how the present situation may change, we must not surrender but march onward.'" No mention was made of a massacre.

Higashinakano further argues that Mao Zedong, who criticized Japanese military strategy in one of his famous lectures, stated that Japanese troops committed a strategical error by not annihilating enemy soldiers in Nanking but did not mention a massacre.

Japanese atrocities and Chinese atrocities

Refutation of Japanese veterans

According to the Asahi Shinbun, this is a photo of Japanese soldiers having a pleasant chat with Chinese citizens in Nanking on Dec. 20, 1937

Japanese veterans do not deny that there were relatively a small number of crimes of rape, looting, etc., committed by the Japanese in the city; however, according to them, these criminals were arrested when found, and were punished and Japanese military policemen were patrolling the city to keep such outrageous fellows under strict control.

Tokuyasu Fukuda, who was in Nanking as a Japanese diplomat, testified, "It is a fact that there were crimes and bad aspects of the Japanese military. But there was absolutely no massacre of 200,000-300,000, or even 1,000 people. Every citizen was watching us. If we do such a thing (massacre), it would be a terrible problem. Absolutely it is a lie, false propaganda."

Massacre denialists deny the occurrence of the alleged "Nanking Massacre"; on the other hand, they admit that there were some atrocities in Nanking. They thus claim that one should distinguish the "Nanking Atrocities" from the "Nanking Massacre." And according to them, some atrocities in Nanking were actually committed by Japanese soldiers; however, many other cases were committed by Chinese soldiers who had been hiding in the Nanking Safety Zone, and atrocity reports included false rumors and misconceptions also.

Reaction of General Matsui

Illness kept General Iwane Matsui, the commander of the Japanese army, from entering Nanking until December 17, four days after Japanese forces occupied the Chinese capital, when he was told about some of the atrocities that Japanese soldiers were committing; he immediately ordered that, "Anyone who misconducts himself must be severely punished."

After Matsui returned to Shanghai, the atrocities against the people continued in Nanking. Army division commanders did little to stop them. From Shanghai, General Matsui issued new orders, stating that the "honor of the Japanese Army" required punishment for the illegal acts of soldiers. Again, the Japanese commanders in Nanking were unwilling or unable to control their troops. Only after Matsui returned to Nanking in early February 1938, six weeks after the fall of the city, did order and discipline improve among the occupying troops.

As Matsui began to comprehend the full extent of the rape, murder, and looting in the city, he grew increasingly dismayed.

The general Iwane Matsui holding a memorial service in Nanking for both the Chinese and the Japanese war dead. He admitted that his men had committed some crimes.

On December 18, Matsui held a memorial service with his whole army to express condolences to both the Chinese and the Japanese war dead; in his speech he began to scold his men for what he had heard about crimes of rape, looting, etc. committed by Japanese soldiers in the city. Matsui said, “Some soldiers dishonored our Imperial Army by doing outrageous conduct. What the hell have you done? What you did was unworthy of the Imperial Army. From now on, keep the military discipline strictly and never treat innocent people cruelly. Remember it is the only way to console the war dead.”

Matsui held this memorial service for the dead in Nanking because it had been a Japanese custom to express condolences for friend and foe alike. The Japanese had such a service after every battle. The Chinese do not have the custom, but according to Professor Bunyu Ko, dead enemies are no longer enemies in Japanese thinking.

That same day, Matsui reportedly told one of his civilian aides: "I now realize that we have unknowingly wrought a most grievous effect on this city. When I think of the feelings and sentiments of many of my Chinese friends who have fled from Nanking and of the future of the two countries, I cannot but feel depressed. I am very lonely and can never get in a mood to rejoice about this victory." He even let a tinge of regret flavor the statement he released to the press that morning: "I personally feel sorry for the tragedies to the people, but the Army must continue unless China repents. Now, in the winter, the season gives time to reflect. I offer my sympathy, with deep emotion, to a million innocent people."

On New Year's Day, Matsui was still upset about the behavior of the Japanese soldiers at Nanking. Over a toast he confided to a Japanese diplomat: "My men have done something very wrong and extremely regrettable."

Later, Matsui testified in the Tokyo Trial on Nov. 24, 1947, “After the fall of Nanking, some young officers and men committed atrocities, for which I deeply feel sorry… However, I had never heard or seen in Nanking such a large scale massacre or atrocities as the ones the prosecution insist, and never been reported when I was in Shanghai also.”

Allegations of crimes committed by Chinese troops

According to some testimonies, those who committed "rape, looting, arson and murder" were not the Japanese military, but rather the Chinese military. A Japanese sergeant major testified, "We reached a Nanking suburb, where the troops of Chiang Kai-shek once had been. Hearing from the inhabitants, we got to know the inhabitants had been plundered all of their food and household goods by the Chinese army, who also had made the village men work very hard. How poor the people of such a country are!"

Itaru Kajimura, a Japanese second lieutenant, wrote in his diary on Jan. 15, 1938, when the battle of Nanking had already ended and his unit was stationed near Shanghai, that a nearby Chinese village had been attacked by 40-50 remnants of a Chinese defeated army, when the village people had come and asked his unit for help. Kajimura and about 30 men hurried there with the village people, but it was after the enemy had committed looting, rape, murder in the village and already gone. Kajimura wrote, “Chinese civilians, who were attacked by Chinese soldiers, ask Japanese soldiers for help. What a contradiction! This one thing shows what Chinese soldiers are like.” He also wrote that the village people had been “very reluctant” to part from the Japanese unit.

Tillman Durdin, an American news reporter, wrote, "(From Dec. 7 the Chinese army) set fire to nearly every city, town, and village on the outskirts of the city (Nanking). They burned down...even entire villages...to cinders, at an estimated value of 20 to 30 million (1937) US dollars" and Durdin also wrote that the damage by the fire was more than the one by the Japanese air raid.

James Espy, the American vice-consul at Naking, reported to the American Embassy at Hankow concerning the condition before the fall of Naking, and in the report he included atrocities committed by Chinese soldiers in Nanking. He wrote, "During the last few days some violations of people and property were undoubtedly committed by them [Chinese soldiers]. Chinese soldiers in their mad rash to discard their military uniforms and put on civilian clothes, in a number of incidents, killed civilians to obtain their clothing."

Kannosuke Mitoma, a press reporter of the Fukuoka Nichinichi Shinbun newspaper, testified, "After entering Nanking, I interviewed a Chinese husband and his wife who had been in the Nanking Safety Zone since before the Japanese occupation. They said, 'When Chinese soldiers were in the city, they came to refugees everyday to plunder food, commodity and every cent of money. Horrible was that they took away young men for labor and young women to rape. They were the same as bandits. Besides, in this Safety Zone, there are bad Chinese men.'"

Resistance of hiding Chinese soldiers

The New York Times on Jan. 4, 1938, reported about rape and looting which had been committed by Chinese soldiers hiding in Nanking:

«“American professors remaining at Ginling College in Nanking... had been harboring a deserted Chinese Army colonel and six of his subordinate officers. The professors had, in fact, made the colonel second in authority at the refugee camp... The ex-Chinese officers in the presence of Americans and other foreigners confessed looting in Nanking and also that one night they dragged girls from the refugee camp into the darkness and the next day blamed Japanese soldiers for the attacks.”»

There were thus Chinese soldiers hiding and doing anti-Japanese maneuvers in Nanking. The China Press also reported on Jan. 25, 1938:

«"Lieutenant General Ma, it is claimed, was active in instigating anti-Japanese disorders within the zone, which also sheltered Captain Huan An and 17 rifles, while the report states that Wang Hsianglao and three former subordinates were engaged in looting, intimidating and raping.»

The Tokyo Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported on Dec. 16, 1937, “The Imperial Army estimates that about 25,000 Chinese soldiers in mufti, wearing civilian clothes, are still hiding in the city of Nanking. The Army is making an effort to mop up the enemy remnants and to protect the aged and women.” The New York Times on Dec. 17 also reported the same thing. Denialists allege that these many Chinese soldiers in the Zone were "instigating anti-Japanese disorders," engaged in "looting" and "raping," and "intimidating" victims to lie that assailants had been Japanese.

Tokushi Kasahara asserts that the Chinese resistance in Nanking against the Japanese aggression "was not enough to threaten the Imperial Army. There was rather sporadic resistance. At any rate, it does not give any excuse for illegal executions, let alone rape, looting and other atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese troops..."

General Iwane Matsui of the Japanese army testified in the Tokyo Trial about the atrocities in Nanking, "There were quite a few atrocities committed by the Chinese in Nanking also. If these were all attributed to the Japanese military, it would distort facts."

Denialists argue that massacre affirmationists overlook the atrocities committed by Chinese soldiers.

Atrocities committed by Chinese refugees

Denialists claim that there were many atrocities committed not only by hiding Chinese soldiers, but also by Chinese refugees in the Nanking Safety Zone. Guo Qi, who was the commander of one of Chinese battalions and had stayed hidden in the Italian Embassy, wrote about the reality of looting by the Chinese refugees:

«Refugees, who were generally badly-off but courageous, hid themselves during the day and moved around during the night just like so many rats. The night was the good opportunities for refugees to take actions, since wild soldiers [Japanese soldiers] became inactive and only the Japanese guards were posted to watch over the area where soldiers slept. The refugees went outside their area and ransacked large firms, shops, and houses of whatever they wanted. In those days, food was in store in food companies, daily provisions in consumer goods companies, and silk products in silk textile wholesales. One day's work, therefore, enabled them to get everything, and anything they want became available and at their disposal.»

Testimony of Westerners

Complaints of killings and rapes reported by the International Committee

By February 5, 1938, the International Committee had forwarded to the Japanese embassy a total of 450 cases of disorder by Japanese soldiers that had been reported directly or inderctly after the American, British and German diplomats had return to their embassies. Amongst these, were reports of civilians killed or injured with bayonet by Japanese soldiers and rape by Japanese soldiers.

By 5 February, the Safety Zone Committee had forwarded to the Japanese embassy a total of 450 cases of disorder by Japanese soldiers that had been reported directly or inderctly after the American, British and German diplomats had return to their embassies. Amongst these, were reports of civilians killed or injured with bayonet by Japanese soldiers and rape by Japanese soldiers.

«Case 5- On the night of December 14th, there were many cases of Japanese soldiers entering houses and raping women or taking them away. This created panic in the area and hundreds of women moved into the Gingling College campus yesterday.»

«Case 10- On the night of December 15th, a number of Japanese soldiers entered the University of Nanking buildings at Tao Yuen and raped 30 women on the spot, some by six men.»

«Case 13 - December 18, 4 p.m., at No. 18 I Ho Lu, Japanese soldiers wanted a man's cigarette case and when he hesitated, one of the soldier crashed in the side of his head with a bayonet. The man is now at the University Hospital and is not expected to live.»

«Case 14 - On December 16th, seven girls (ages ranged from 16 to 21) were taken away from the Military College. Five returned. Each girl was raped six or seven times daily- reported December 18th.»

«Case 15 - There are about 540 refugess crowded in # 83 and 85 on Canton Road. (...) More than 30 women and girls have been raped. The women and children are crying all nights. Conditions inside hte compound are worse than we can describe. Please give us help.»

«Case 16- A Chinese girl named Loh, who, with her mother and brother, was living in one of the Refugee Centers in the Refugee Zone, was shot through the head and killed by a Japanese soldier. The girl was 14 years old. The incident occurred near the Kuling Ssu, a noted temple on the border of the Refugee zone (...)»

«Case 19 - January 30th, about 5 p.m. Mr. Sone (of the Nanking Theological Seminary) was greeted by several hundred women pleading with him that they would not have to go home on February 4th. They said it was no use going home they might just as well be killed for staying at the camp as to be raped, robbed or killed at home. (...) One old woman 62 years old went home near Hansimen and Japanese soldiers came at night and wanted to rape her. She said she was too old. So the soldiers rammed a stick up her. But she survived to come back.»

Shigeo Tanihara, a member of Tsukurukai, points out that even if supposing these 450 cases were all true, murder cases numbered only 49, which were far different from the tens of thousands of massacre victims claimed in the most conservative estimates.

Higashinakano also points out that most of these 450 cases were based on hearsay with the exception of only a few cases that the Committee members themselves eyewitnessed or directly confirmed. As for the 49 murder cases, the ones which were witnessed by the Committee members themselves numbered only 2, which were both legitimate; in other words, nobody of the Committee members witnessed illegitimate murders.

As for rape cases, Professor Tadao Takemoto (Tsukuba University) and Professor Yasuo Ohara (Kokugakuin University) point out:

«How many cases of rape were (including attempted) reported in the documents by the Safety Zone Committee? The total number was 361. And among them, there were only 61 cases, which definitely clarified who witnessed the cases, who heard and reported. Among these cases, only seven cases were clarified to be crimes committed by Japanese soldiers and notified the Japanese Army of the crime in order to disclose the fact and to capture the suspects... Furthermore, as reported in the article of the Chicago Daily News dated on February 9, 1938, the Japanese Army investigated criminals about seven cases and severely punished them. The punishment was so severe that some complaints were expressed among the soldiers.»

Tokuyasu Fukuda, a probationary diplomat of the Japanese embassy in Nanking, testified about the International Committee:

«The nature of my duties required me to visit the office of the International Committee almost everyday. At the office, I saw Chinese men come in one after another, saying, "Japanese soldiers are now raping 15-16 years old girls in such and such a place," or "Japanese soldiers are committing looting at a house of such and such a street," etc.. Rev. Magee, Rev. Fitch and several others were typing these charges immediately to report to their countries. I warned them again and again, "Wait, please. Do not report them without confirmation." Occasionally, I hurried with them to the scene of the rape, looting, etc.,　but found nothing, nobody living there, and no trace of it; I experienced such cases often. I believe that Timperley’s book "What War Means" was written based on such unconfirmed reports.»

Denialists also claim that this report of the International Committee included many cases which had been committed by Chinese soldiers hiding in the Nanking Safety Zone, wearing civilian clothes, for anti-Japanese maneuvering purpose.

File:Image-Hirota.gif

Harold John Timperley's telegram of 17 January 1938 describing some atrocities, which were in part published in the North China Daily News, and referring to not "less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians slaugthered". It was used as part of the proof by the prosecution team before the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal

Documentary film by John Magee

On 10 February 1938, Legation Secretary of the German Embassy, Rosen, wrote to his Foreign Ministry about a film made in December by Reverend John Magee to recommend its purchase. Here is an excerpt from his letter and a description of some of its shots, kept in the Political Archives of the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

«During the Japanese reign of terror in Nanking - which, by the way, continues to this day to a considerable degree - the Reverend John Magee, a member of the American Episcopal Church Mission who has been here for almost a quarter of a centuty, took motion pictures that eloquently bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Japanese. (....) One will have to wait and see whether the hisghest officers in the Japanese army succeed, as they have indicated, in stopping the activities of their troops, which continue even today(...)»

«5. On December 13, about 30 soldiers came to a Chinese house at #5 Hsing Lu Koo in the southeastern part of Nanking, and demanded entrance. The door was open by the landlord, a Mohammedan named Ha. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mrs. Ha, who knelt before them after Ha's death, begging them not to kill anyone else. Mrs. Ha asked them why they killed her husband and they shot her dead. Mrs. Hsia was dragged out from under a table in the guest hall where she had tried to hide with her 1 year old baby. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest, and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. The baby was killed with a bayonet. Some soldiers then went to the next room, where Mrs. Hsia's parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters aged 16 and 14. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. The grandfather grasped the body of his wife ans was killed. The two girls were the stripped, the elder being raped by 2-3 men, and the younger by 3. The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed in her vagina. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horible tratment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between 7-8, who was also in the room. The last murders in the house were of Ha's two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword. (...)»

According to the Asahi Shinbun on Dec. 21, 1937, this photo is Rev. John Magee holding a Sunday worship service and singing hymns with Chinese Christians in Nanking after order had been restored to the city.

Magee heard about this horrible crime from the “7-8 years old girl” who had been bayoneted but survived and told this whole thing 2 weeks after the crime. Magee wrote that he had recorded this story adding some corrections to what the girl had told with the help of her relatives and neighbors. Higashinakano doubts whether these ”30 soldiers” were in fact not Japanese, but Chinese, because on Dec. 8 every citizen had been forced to move to the Safety Zone by the Chinese army but the family were outside the Zone, it was most dangerous and most unlikely that they were outside there on Dec. 13 when the Japanese military were firing on the city except the Safety Zone and entered the city, and it is thus very likely that the crime was actually committed before Dec. 8 or 13 by Chinese soldiers. And the killing practices "a bottle thrust into her vagina" and "a cane was rammed in her vagina" are, according to denialists, typical Chinese ones, not Japanese ones.

This “7-8 years old girl” appears in Magee’s film. Higashinakano wrote in his book in 1998 that the girl and Mrs. Shuqin Xia, the old woman testifying that she had been the girl filmed by Magee, were different persons. She sued him for having been defamed by the book, and on 5 February 2009, the Japanese Supreme Court ordered Higashinakano and the publisher Tendensha to pay 4 million yen in damages to Mrs. Xia. Higashinakano was unable to prove that she and the girl were different persons, and that she was not a witness of the Nanking massacre, contrary to what he had claimed in his book.

Massacre denialists claim that even when one watches Magee's film, he can’t find any scene of a clearly massacred victim. The captions are alleged atrocities of the Japanese; however, the movie has no scene of Japanese soldiers executing POWs, no scene of thousands of dead bodies, and the movie has mostly scenes of living people. Denialists also point out that the murder case eyewitnessed by Magee himself was, as he testified in the Tokyo Trial, only one, which had been a Japanese soldier shooting a Chinese who had begun to run away being questioned about his name and identity by the Japanese soldier. The Japanese soldier was searching Chinese soldiers in mufti, ordinary clothes, and such a killing is recognized as legitimate in the international law. Denialists assert that in other words, Magee did not see the alleged 300,000 or even 40,000-60,000 massacre victims in his all days in Nanking.

According to Magee, the eyewitnessed cases by himself except this were only one rape and one rubbery. The rest were all hearsays. The alleged “rape” he witnessed was that he had seen a Japanese soldier coming to a wife of a man; however, Magee did not see a raping scene. According to denialists, the Japanese soldier might have come there to question her or her husband with suspicion. And the alleged “robbery” was that Magee had seen a Japanese soldier coming out from a house with an icebox in his hand. In other words, denialists claim, Magee himself did not see horrible crimes in Nanking.

Miner Bates

Miner Searle Bates was a key witness during the International Military Tribunal of the Far East. As a leader of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, and a professor of history at the University of Nanking, Bates was present in Nanjing before, during, and after the battle for the city. Bates asserted he witnessed a number of atrocities firsthand and that a number of civilians were massacred by the Japanese. When asked about the death toll at the trial, he answered, "The question is so big, I don't know where to begin...The total spread of this killing was so extensive that no one can give a complete picture of it." (Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking)

Bates also testified in the Tokyo Trial that he had seen many civilian dead bodies lying about everywhere in his neighborhood for many days after the fall of Nanking.

However, according to the Japanese newspaper Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun on Dec. 26, 1937, when correspondents Wakaume and Murakami visited Professor Bates at his university official residence on Dec. 15, two days after the fall of Nanking, Bates welcomed them in a good humor and said, “I am so happy that the orderly Japanese military entered Nanking and peace has been restored to the city.” And according to the correspondents, they did not see in his neighborhood “many civilian dead bodies lying about everywhere” which Bates testified to have seen.

Bates wrote, "Evidences from burials indicate that close to forty thousand unarmed persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanking, of whom some 30 percent had never been soldiers."

However, Takemoto and Ohara point out that the “evidences of burials” of the Red Swastika Society, which Bates referred to, contain only 0.3% of women and children (The burial records include burials carried out not only in the period of the Japanese campaign in Nanking, but also in the period between July to October 1938.) This shows a clear contradiction against the massacre of civilians and the estimation of Bates.

Bunyu Ko claims that in Nanking there were many Chinese soldiers who were killed not by the Japanese, but by a Chinese supervisory unit, who were soldiers waiting behind to kill their fellow Chinese soldiers who tried to run away from the battlefield. They claim the casualties that Bates mentioned included such victims also.

Higashinakano also points out that Japanese soldiers saw, when entered Nanking, a lot of Chinese military uniforms taken off and abandoned on the ground of all over the city and that those were the uniforms which Chinese soldiers had taken off to appear as civilians to make their way to the Safety Zone where many citizens took refuge. Bates mentions in his letters that these Chinese soldiers were fleeing Japanese brutality and killing of POWs. Kenichi Ara, a researcher of modern history graduated from the Faculty of Literature of Tohoku University, argues that most of those whom Bates counted as "civilian casualties" were in fact such illegitimate soldiers. And Higashinakano asserts that that was why the Chinese Year Book 1938-1939, published in Shanghai in English, removed the reference to "close to forty thousand unarmed persons were killed... some 30 percent had never been soldiers" and only recorded other accusation of Bates.

Massacre denialists also claim that information of Bates on the massacre of civilians was actually not what he witnessed, but was only a hearsay perhaps from the Chinese officers whom the members of the International Committee had sheltered, because there is no name of Bates in the “witness” part of murder case reports, and his report on Japanese atrocities was written all in hearsay style. In addition, he could not prove the massacre of civilians when he was required proof from Consul John M. Allison.

Bates was an adviser to the Chinese Nationalists Party, and after the war he was decorated by Chiang Kai-shek, the head of the Party, for his contribution to it. The strategy of the Chinese Nationalists Party was to convey the news of a miserable state of China and atrocities of the Japanese to the world to drag the United States into the war against Japan. Higashinakano claims that the report of Bates was made in accordance with this strategy.

James M. McCallum

On 19 December 1937, Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary :

«I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet... People are hysterical... Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases.»

However, Higashinakano omits this excerpt and choose to focus instead, arguing that McCallum wrote on Jan. 8, 1938, that he had heard a Chinese refugee testify, “I can prove that the rape, looting and arson were committed by Chinese soldiers, not Japanese soldiers.”

As for McCallum, Minnie Vautrin wrote in her diary that on 24 January, the Reverend was slashed on the neck by Japanese soldiers when he prevented them from raping and looting at the Nanking University Hospital.

Denialists claim that even if this experience of McCallum was truly a rape case, the other rape cases were mostly what the members of the International Committee heard from Chinese people, and their estimation “at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day” was just a baseless rumor. Professors Tadao Takemoto and Yasuo Ohara point out:

«The representatives of the refugee camps of nineteen places established in the Safety Zone were all the Chinese, except Miss Minnie Vautrin. Though those Chinese took charge of the maintenance of public order in these camps, there were some Chinese officers who camouflaged themselves as if they were citizens. And many cases of rape occurred in the 'refugee camps'... After February 1938 when the 'camps' were dissolved, rape was rare. Therefore, we are not able to trust the 'crimes of Japanese soldiers' just as the Chinese representatives of the refugee camps claimed… (The Chinese soldiers hiding in the Safety Zone) camouflaged themselves to create the impression that looting and rapes had been committed by Japanese soldiers, to practice one of a series of Chinese strategies for the purpose of throwing Japanese soldiers into confusion.»

Takemoto and Ohara also claim:

«The Safety Zone was the only place where women stayed in the city of Nanking. And in order to protect foreign rights and interests...the Japanese Army prohibited their soldiers' entry to the Safety Zone and posted guards at every important point... Japanese soldiers were unable to enter the Safety Zone at will, or no one dared to enter there at the risk of being attacked... Those who only got admittance to the Safety Zone were all in all about 1,600 soldiers of the 7th Regiment, the 9th Division, that were in charge of the garrison for the Safety Zone… It must be further pointed out that there existed a significant reason why soldiers were restrained from committing rapes, because if crimes had been disclosed, more than seven years' penal servitude would have been inevitable by the army penal code. They were fully aware of the severe penalties.»

McCallum wrote in his diary on Dec. 31. 1937:

«I must report a good deed done by some Japanese. Recently several very nice Japanese have visited the hospital. We told them of our lack of food supplies for the patients. Today they brought in 100 shing [jin (equivalent to six kilograms)] of beans along with some beef. We have had no meat at the hospital for a month and these gifts were mighty welcome. They asked what else we would like to have.»

Lewis Smythe

Lewis Smythe, a sociology professor at the University of Nanking, initially reported on March 21, "... it is estimated that 10,000 persons were killed inside the walls of Nanking and about 30,000 outside the walls.... These people estimated that of this total about 30 percent were civilians."

Then in the spring of 1938, Smythe conducted a field survey to assess the damages and losses at Nanking and its vicinity under the auspices of the International Relief Committee. His research resulted in civilian victims of 6,600 (2,400 massacred and 4,200 abducted (and mostly missing)) within the city and 26,870 in the vicinity.

Massacre denialists admit that the Japanese military in Nanking executed several thousand hostile Chinese soldiers who had removed insignias and military uniforms to appear as civilians; they had thereby become illegitimate combatants and did not qualify for protection as specified by international convention. Denialists also claim that many of the other Chinese soldiers also descarded their military uniforms when escaping from Nanking, quite a few of them were killed by the Japanese military or the Chinese supervisory unit, and were among those counted by Western observers as civilian victims.

Robert Wilson

On March 7, 1938, Robert O. Wilson, a surgeon at the American-administered University Hospital in the Safety Zone, wrote in a letter to his family, "a conservative estimate of people slaughtered in cold blood is somewhere about 100,000, including of course thousands of soldiers that had thrown down their arms".

Here are two excepts from his letters of 15 and 18 December 1937 to his family :

The slaughter of civilians is appalling. I could go on for pages telling of cases of rape and brutality almost beyond belief. Two bayoneted corpses are the only survivors of seven street cleaners who were sitting in their headquarters when Japanese soldiers came in without warning or reason and killed five of their number and wounded the two that found their way to the hospital.

Let me recount some instances occurring in the last two days. Last night the house of one of the Chinese staff members of the university was broken into and two of the women, his relatives, were raped. Two girls, about 16, were raped to death in one of the refugee camps. In the University Middle School where there are 8,000 people the Japs came in ten times last night, over the wall, stole food, clothing, and raped until they were satisfied. They bayoneted one little boy of eight who have [sic] five bayonet wounds including one that penetrated his stomach, a portion of omentum was outside the abdomen. I think he will live.

Hideaki Kase, a Japanese critic on international politics, and his colleagues point out that Wilson spent most of his days in his hospital, and the atrocities as well as the estimation of victims mentioned in his letters were all hearsays. They claim that Wilson believed the statements that the assailants had been all Japanese. They also argues that the atrocities mentioned in Wilson's letters must include the ones committed by the Chinese soldiers hiding in Nanking for anti-Japanese maneuvering purpose or committed by bad civilians, and that his estimation of victims included the killed Chinese soldiers in mufti, as well as the Chinese soldiers killed by the Chinese supervisory unit.

John Rabe

Japanese soldiers distributing gifts to Chinese citizens in the Nanking Safety Zone. Photo from North China Daily News, published in China in English on Dec. 24, 1937.

In his diary kept during the aggression to the city and its occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Safety Zone, John Rabe, wrote many comments about Japanese atrocities. For example, on 13 December 1937, he wrote :

«It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction. We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards. The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs. These people had presumably fleeing and were shot from behind. The Japanese march through the city in groups of ten to twenty soldiers and loot the shops (...) I watched with my own eyes as they looted the café of our German baker Herr Kiessling. Hempel's hotel was broken into as well, as almost every shop on Chung Shang and Taiping Road.»

For the 17th December:

« Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital. (...) Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling College Girls alone. You hear nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they're shot. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers.»

While, on the next day of the fall of Nanking, Rabe handed a letter of thanks to the Japanese army commander concerning that the people in the Safety Zone could stay without one fire and were all safe. The following is a part of his letter of thanks.

"Dec. 14, 1937, Dear commander of the Japanese army in Nanking, We appreciate that the artillerymen of your army didn't attack to the Safety Zone. And we hope to contact with you to make a plan to protect general Chinese citizens who are staying in the Safety Zone... We will be pleased to cooperate with you in anyway to protect general citizens in this city. --Chairman of the Nanking International Committee, John H. D. Rabe--"

On 17 December, Rabe however wrote a letter as chairman to Kiyoshi Fukui, second secretary of the Japanese Embassy, in a very different tone. The following is an excerpt  :

«In other words, on the 13th when your troops entered the city, we had nearly all the civilian population gathered in a Zone in which there had been very little destruction by stray shells and no looting by Chinese soldiers even in full retreat. (...) All 27 Occidentals in the city at that time and our Chinese population were totally surprised by the reign of robbery, rapine and kiling initiated by your soldiers on the 14th. All we are asking in our protest is that you restore order among your troops and get the normal life city going as soon as possible. In tha latter process we are glad to cooperate in any way we can. But even last night between 8 and 9 p.m. when five Occidentals members of our staff and Committe toured the Zone to observe conditions, we did not find any single Japanese patrol either in the Zone or at the entrances!»

Having received no answer to his request, Rabe wrote again to Fukui the following day, this time in an even more desperate tone :

«We are sorry to trouble you again but the sufferings and needs of the 200 000 civilians for whom we are trying to care make it urgent that we try to secure action from your military authorities to stop the pressent disorder among Japanese soldiers wandering through the Safety Zone. (...) The second man in our Housing Commission had to see two women in his family at 23 Hankow Road raped last night at supper time by Japanese soldiers. Our associate food commissioner, Mr. Sone, has to convey trucks with rice and leave 2,500 people in families at his Nanking Theological Seminary to look for themselves. Yesterday, in broad daylight, several women at the Seminary were raped right in the middle of a large room filled with men, women, and children! We 22 Occidentals cannot feed 200,000 Chinese civilians and protect them night and day. That is the duty of the Japanese authorities (...)

For the 10th February, Rabe wrote in his diary :

«Fukui, whom I tried to find at the Japanese embassy to no avail all day yesterday, paid a call on me last night. He actually managed to threaten me :"If the newpapers in Shanghai report bad things, you will have the Japanese army against you", he said. (...) In reply to my question as to what I then could say in Shanghai, Fukui said "We leave that to your discretion." My response :"It looks as if you expect me to say something like this to the reporters: The situation in Nanking is improving everyday. Please don't print any more atrocities stories about the vile behavior of Japanese soldiers, because then you'll only be pouring oil on fire of disagreement that already exists between the Japanese and Europeans." "Yes", he said simply beaming, that would be splendid!"

John Rabe gave a series of lectures in Germany after he came back to Berlin on April 15, 1938, in which he said, "We Europeans put the number [of civilian casualties] at about 50,000 to 60,000."

As for Rabe's description about the “looting” by the Japanese soldiers, Professors Tadao Takemoto and Yasuo Ohara point out:

«On entering Nanking, what Japanese troops had to do was to get buildings for quartering. In order to furnish and equip them with daily necessities, officers instructed soldiers to take furniture and the bedding out of the empty houses. When they were put under requisition, certificates for compensation to be made later on were attached. However, the westerners and Chinese, watching what happened in the distance, possibly misunderstood interpreting the activities as the planned looting by Japanese soldiers.»

Massacre denialists also point out that John Rabe was a German, and Germany in those days was a supporter for the Chinese Nationalists Party. Chiang Kai-shek’s military was being trained by German advisers, and Rabe himself was an adviser for the Nationalists Party (The year 1937 was before the conclusion of the alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan). Rabe was the head of the Nanking branch office of Siemens AG which had sold antiaircraft guns to the Chinese Nationalists Party, and Rabe, an arms merchant, had gained great profit from it. Since Germany's connection with the Chinese Nationalists Party was the source of his great income, he did not want Germany to part from the Party and shake hands with Japan. Denialists claim that it was very natural for Rabe to report only atrocities of the Japanese.

According to Professor Higashinakano, from Dec. 12 Rabe had secretly sheltered two Chinese colonels, Long and Zhou, who did an anti-Japanese maneuvers in the Safety Zone. This conduct of Rabe was a violation of the agreement with the Japanese army as for the neutrality of the Safety Zone. And Rabe wrote in his diary on Feb. 22, 1938, that he had been sheltering another Chinese officer Wang also. Denialists claim that those who should take responsibility of the confusion in the Safety Zone are Rabe and other Committee members, because they violated the neutrality and sheltered the Chinese soldiers.

Denialists claim that Rabe did not distinguish true "civilians" from Chinese soldiers in mufti, ordinary clothes. Rabe reported the Chinese “civilians” who had been shot from behind by the Japanese; however, according to denialists, the Japanese soldiers were sweeping the Chinese soldiers in mufti, and the “civilian casualties” in Rabe’s reports included such Chinese soldiers, as well as the Chinese soldiers in mufti killed by the Chinese supervisory unit.

Masaaki Tanaka, ex-secretary of General Iwane Matsui, claims that there are many contradictions in the descriptions of Rabe. For instance, according to him, on Dec. 9, General Matsui ordered a cease-fire, distributed to the city the handbills of surrender recommendation, and waited till the noon of Dec. 10 for the answer. Tanaka thus points out, "Rabe wrote in his diary that the combat was continuing and Rabe did not mention anything about the cease-fire nor the handbills." Rabe wrote that he saw here and there "dead women who were rammed canes in their vaginas"; however, according to Tanaka, such a killing practice was Chinese, not Japanese.

James McCallum wrote in his diary on Dec. 29, 1937, "We have had some very pleasant Japanese who have treated us with courtesy and respect. Occasionally have I seen a Japanese helping some Chinese, or picking up a Chinese baby to play with it." Tanaka claims that Rabe, however, did not write any such things, and he only wrote that the Safety Zone had been like a hell full of fire and rape everyday.. Tanaka thus argues that Rabe’s descriptions are not reliable. Tanaka writes, “Rabe’s descriptions were very biased fishy stories. I think I can understand the reason why Adolf Hitler did not trust his report, but rather imprisoned him.”

Higashinakano argues that, on Jan. 8, 1938, James McCallum wrote that he had heard a Chinese refugee testify, “I can prove that the rape, looting and arson were committed by Chinese soldiers, not Japanese soldiers,” and Rabe however described in his report as if all of the rape, looting and arson had been committed only by Japanese soldiers. Higashinakano thus claims that Rabe’s report was a similar-natured one to the anti-Japanese maneuvering of the Chinese officers he had sheltered.

Rabe wrote in his diary on Dec. 17, “Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling College Girls alone”; however, Higashinakano points out that Professor Minnie Vautrin at Ginling College later wrote an article entitled “Abundant Life Together With Them at the Refugee Camp” for the July-August 1938 issue of the Chinese Recorder magazine, but in the article was no description about the “100 girls raped.” Higashinakano claims that the “100 girls were raped at Ginling College alone” and the “1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped” were both false rumors which he heard perhaps from the Chinese officers he sheltered.

Higashikano chooses however to omit that Vautrin herself wrote in her diary that she had to go to the Japanese embassy repeatedly from December 18 to January 13 to get proclamations to prohibit Japanese soldiers from committing crimes at Gingling because the soldiers tore the documents up before taking women away. He never mentions that Vautrin also wrote in her diary on 16 December : «Oh God, control the cruel beastliness of the Japanese soldiers in Nanking tonight (....)» and on the 19th :«In my wrath, I wished I had the power to smite them for their dastardly work. How ashamed women of Japan would be if they knew these tales of horror.»

Denialists point out that these cases mentioned in Vautrin’s writings were mostly what she heard from Chinese people. According to denialists, in cases that the hiding Chinese soldiers committed atrocities in Nanking, they intimidated the victims to lie that the assailants were Japanese.

P. Scharfienberg, the secretary general of the German Embassy to China, who returned to Nanking on January 9, 1937, tried to investigate by himself the fact about the alleged Japanese atrocities mentioned in the reports of Rabe and other Committee members. Scharfienberg wrote to the German Embassy at Hankow on February 10:

«Rabe is still actively trying to counter the bloody excesses of Japanese looters, which have unfortunately increased of late. To my mind, this should not concern us Germans, particularly since one can clearly see that the Chinese, once left to depend solely on the Japanese, immediately fraternize. And as for all these excesses, one hears only one side of it, after all.»

F. Tillman Durdin and Archibald Steele

F. Tillman Durdin and Archibald Steele, American news correspondents, reported that they had seen on 15 December a lot of bodies of killed Chinese soldiers forming a small mound six feet high at the Nanking Yijiang gate in the north. Durdin, who was working for the New York Times, made a tour of Nanjing before his departure from the city. He heard waves of machine-gun fire and witnessed the Japanese soldiers gun down some two hundred Chinese within ten minutes. On 18 December 1937, in his report to the New York Times, he stated that the alleys and street were filled with civilian bodies, including women and children.

According to Professor Tokushi Kasahara, a massacre affirmationist, when he interviewed Durdin on Aug. 14, 1987, Durdin mentioned that “the mound of the bodies” which he witnessed had been formed before the Japanese military reached there, and the Chinese soldiers had been killed not by the Japanese military, saying, “The bodies were Chinese soldiers who tried to escape... I think that the mound of the bodies had been formed before the Japanese military occupied there. In that area was no combat of the Japanese military;” however, on 18 May 1992, Durdin held a news conference in New York during which he repudiated the Japanese media's distortion of his report on the Nanking massacre.

According to Higashinakano and his colleagues, the bodies witnessed by Durdin and Steele had been killed by the Chinese supervisory unit who had been waiting behind to kill Chinese soldiers trying to escape from the battlefield.

Professor Bunyu Ko estimated that throughout the Sino-Japanese war the victims killed by such Chinese supervisory units had been more than those killed by the Japanese military.

Massacre denialists claim that the killings of “some two hundred Chinese” which Durdin witnessed were the execution of Chinese soldiers in mufti, ordinary clothes. It was done openly because, denialists claim, it was a legitimate execution and there was no problem even if other people happened to see it.

While, Durdin’s article “the alleys and street were filled with civilian bodies, including women and children” was, denialists claim, not what he had witnessed, because he wrote the ariticle as what he had been told by a Westerner. Denialists claim that Durdin's article was written according to the information of the memo which Miner Bates had handed him when Durdin had left Nanking on Dec. 15, because Bates wrote in his letter on Apr. 12, 1938, that he had given information of the incidents of Nanking to correspondents including Durdin on Dec. 15. And denialists claim that the information of Bates was also only a hearsay or a misconception, because Bates could not prove the massacre of civilians when he was required proof from Consul John M. Allison.

Contemporary accounts in the press

Western press

In a report of the Rekishi Kento Iinkai, a history committee created in 1993 by the Liberal Democratic Party that has concluded in 1995 that the Greater East Asia War was not an invasive but a self-defensive war and that refuted the existence of the Nanking massacre , Professor Kazuo Sato at Aoyama-gakuin University in Tokyo points out that the day when the Japanese troops entered Nanking on Dec. 13, 1937, more than 100 press reporters and photographers entered there together with them, and the press corps were not only from Japan, but also from European and American press organizations, including Reuters and AP.

Professor Sato claims in this report that none of the press corps reported the occurrence of a massacre of several hundred thousand people. Paramount News, American newsreels, also made films of reporting the Japanese occupation in Nanking, but they did not report the occurrence of such a massacre.

However, on 18 December 1937, the New York Times published an article with the caption "Butchery Marked Capture of Nanking - All Captives Slain."

The same day, the London Times published an article under the title "Terror in Nanking - Looting and Murder - The Conqueror's Brutality"

On December 28th, a Shanghai newspaper carried another London Times report on the Nanjing Massacre:"Streets were covered with the innocent citizens remains. At the city gate along the Yangtze River dead bodies were piled up to a meter high. Trucks and other vehicles were running over the bodies."

On 10 January 1938, Life magazine published in the United States a group of pictures titled "The camera overseas : the Japanese conqueror brings a week of hell to China." (The pictures are analyzed in the "Analysis of photographic evidence" section below)

Shōwa regime Censorship

See also : Censorship in the Empire of Japan

Massacre denialists claim that the news published in the Japanese media and newspapers were "true" and "reliable" stories. Massacre affirmationists, however, counter that it is well-known that the Naikaku Johōkyoku (Cabinet Information Bureau), a consortium of military, politicians and professionals created in 1936 as a "committee" and upgraded to a "division" in 1937, applied censorship of all the media of the Shōwa regime and that this office held a policing authoring over the realm of publishing. Therefore, the Naikaku Johōkyoku's activities were proscriptive as well as prescriptive. Besides issuing detailed guidelines to publishers, it made suggestions that were all but commands. From 1938, printed medias «would come to realize that their survival depended upon taking cues from the Cabinet Information Bureau and its flagship publication, Shashin shūhō, designers of the "look" of the soldier, and the "look" of the war.»

Article 12 of the censorship guideline for newspapers issued on September 1937 stated that any news article or photograph "unfavorable" to the Imperial Army was subject to a gag. Article 14 prohibited any "photographs of atrocities" but endorsed reports about the "cruelty of the Chinese" soldiers and civilians.

Tokushi Kasahara of Tsuru University asserts, "Some deniers argue that Nanjing was much more peaceful than we generally think. They always show some photographs with Nanjing refugees selling some food in the streets or Chinese people smiling in the camps. They are forgetting about Japanese propaganda. The Imperial Army imposed strict censorship. Any photographs with dead bodies couldn't get through. So photographers had to remove all the bodies before taking pictures os streets and buildings in the city (...) Even if the photos were not staged, the refugees had no choice but to fawn on the Japanese soldiers. Acting otherwise meant their deaths..."

Testimonies of Japanese reporters

Due to censorship, none of the hundred Japanese reporter in Nanking when the city was captured wrote anything unfavorable to their countrymen. In 1956, however, Masatake Imai, correspondent for the Tokyo Asahi who reported only about the "majestic and soul-stirring ceremony" of the triumphal entry of the Imperial Army, revealed he witnessed a mass execution of 400 to 500 Chinese men near Tokyo Asahi's office. "I wish I could wriet about it", told his colleague Nakamura. "Someday, we will, but not for the time being. But we sure saw it", he answered.

Shigeharu Matsumoto, the Shanghai bureau Chief of Domei News Agency, wrote that the Japanese reporters he interviewed all told him they saw between 2,000 and 3,000 corpses around Xiaguan area and one, Yuji Maeda, saw recruits executing Chinese POWs with bayonet.

Jiro Suzuki, a correspondent for the Tokyo Nichi Nichi, wrote "When I went back to the Zhongshan Gate, I saw for the first time an unearthly, brutal massacre. On the top of the wall, about 25 meters high, the prisoners of war were rounded up in a line. They were being stabbed by bayonets and shoved away off the wall. A number of Japanese soldiers polished their bayonets, shouted to themselves pnce and thrust their bayonets in the chest or back of POWs."

Massacre denialists claim that what these reporters witnessed were the execution not of POWs, but of the illegitimate combatants who were arrested in the course of the “mop-up” operation and found hiding weapons, etc.. It is a fact that the Japanese military executed several thousand such illegitimate and rebellious combatants; however, denialists claim that such execution was thought to be legitimate in the international law.

Kenichi Ara has published a compilation of testimonies by Japanese press reporters, soldiers and diplomats who experienced Nanking during the Japanese occupation. In these testimonies, nobody testified that there had been a massacre of citizens. Yoshio Kanazawa, a photographer of the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun newspaper, testified, "I entered Nanking with the Japanese army and walked around in the city at random everyday, but I have never seen any massacre nor heard it from soldiers or my colleagues. It is impossible for me to say that there was a massacre. Of course, I saw many corpses, but they were those killed in battle.”

During the Japanese occupation of Nanking, Kannosuke Mitoma, a press reporter, had worked as the head of the Nanking branch office, and in those days his daughter had attended the Japanese elementary school in Nanking from the first grade to the fifth. She testified, " I used to play with neighboring Chinese children in Nanking, but I have never heard even a rumor of the massacre."

Treatment in the Japanese press

Source: Asahi Shimbun Dec. 18, 1937 - (right) Japanese soldiers buying from a Chinese; (center top) Chinese farmers who returned to Nanking cultivating their fields; (center bottom) Chinese citizens returning to Nanking; (left) Street barbershop, Chinese adults and children smiling and wearing armbands of the flag of Japan

At the time of the Japanese occupation of Nanking, a major Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported about Nanking with many photos. For example, five days after the fall of Nanking, the newspaper published an article titled, "Nanking in Restoring Peace" which provided photographs and journalists' accounts of how peace had been restored to Nanking.

In one of the photos, some Japanese soldiers are buying something from a Chinese without carrying their guns. In another photo, Chinese farmers who returned to Nanking are cultivating their fields. In the other photos, many Chinese citizens are returning to Nanking carrying bags in a crowd, some citizens have a street barbershop and the Chinese adults and children around it are all smiling, wearing armbands of the flag of Japan.

Eight days after the fall of Nanking, the Asahi Shimbun followed up with an article entitled "Kindnesses to Yesterday's Enemy." In one of the photos, Chinese soldiers are receiving medical treatment by Japanese army surgeons. In another photo, Chinese soldiers are receiving food from a Japanese soldier. In other photos, Japanese soldiers are buying at a Chinese shop, a Japanese officer is talking with a Chinese leader facing each other across a table, and Chinese citizens relaxing in the city of Nanking.

• 
  Source: Asahi Shinbun Dec. 21, 1937 - (right top) «Chinese soldiers under medical treatment»; (left top) «Chinese soldiers receiving food from a Japanese»; (center) «Japanese soldiers buying at a Chinese shop»; (right bottom) «Chief Yamada talking with a Chinese leader»; (left bottom) «Chinese citizens relaxing in Nanking city».
• 
  Source: North China Daily News (British newspaper published in China in English) Dec. 18, 1937 - «Chinese people sick or wounded in a hospital in Nanking and Japanese medics nursing them.»
• 
  Photo published in Asahi-ban Shina-jihen Gahō (China Incident Pictorial) with the caption «Japanese soldiers nursing Chinese wounded soldiers.» Photo taken in Nanking on Dec. 20, 1937
• 
  Picture published in Asahigurafu described as «Japanese medics giving treatments to Chinese children in Nanking for plague prevention.» Photo taken on Dec. 20, 1937

Subsequent articles published in the Asahi Shimbun and the other Japanese newspapers contain similar content and uniformly report that peace and order had returned to Nanking. The British newspaper North China Daily News, published in China in English, also carried similar photos and articles about Nanking in those days. Massacre denialists argue that the source of these photos is unimpeachable and that they provide an accurate depiction of the everyday life of the Chinese people in Nanking, only a few days after the Japanese conquest of Nanking, and that notwithstanding the censorship in Japan, these are pictures of a city without massacre.

Documentary film "Nanking"

The Japanese news media also made a documentary movie named "Nanking" that recorded Nanking just after its fall. The film covers various scenes inside and outside the walls of Nanking during Dec. 14, 1937 – Jan. 4, 1938, and was first released in 1938. For many years the film had been thought to be lost, but later was found in Beijing in 1995, although it is said that it lacks a part for about 10 minutes.

• The scene of the Chinese refugees and Nanking Safety Zone　at Youtube
• The scene that the Japanese soldiers distributing the certificates to the Chinese citizens at Youtube
• The scene that the Japanese soldiers preparing the new year 1938 and the Chinese children celebrating the new year's day　at Youtube

Massacre denialists claim that the city of Nanking recorded in the movie is far different from a city under massacre.
Nanking at IMDb

Analysis of photographic evidence

Joshua Fogel credits Ikuhiko Hata with being "largely responsible for discrediting virtually every one of the photographs that adorn the pages of Iris Chang's book", although Hata himself only claimed to have discredited 11 of the 40-odd photographs. Robert Entenmann comments, "Hata claims that eleven photographs in Chang's book are 'fakes, forgeries, and composites,' although he succeeds in demonstrating that with only two." Shudo Higashinakano, Susumu Kobayashi and Shinjiro Fukunaga analyzed the photographic evidence supporting the allegations of the Nanking Massacre. After a detailed analysis of the photographic evidence, they concluded that "all the photographs are montages, staged, or falsely captioned." They asserted that most of the photographic evidence "cannot constitute viable evidence of the alleged atrocities in Nanking".

Massacre denialists challenge the authenticity of photos alleged to be “evidences of the Nanking Massacre”. For instance, one of the photos shows many lying dead bodies, which denialists claim are the bodies of soldiers killed in battle. In another photo, a man in Japanese military uniform is swinging a sword down on the neck of a Chinese to execute him. Japanese denialists argue this was staged by the Chinese as there are distinctions in Chinese and Japanese styles of swinging a sword and the style depicted is Chinese. In another photo, the direction of a man's shadow is different from the others, which leads denialists to conclude the photo was a composite of multiple photos.

Higashinakano argues that these photos are the result of the effort by the Chinese Nationalist Party propaganda bureau to disseminate its own photographs all over the world under the names of foreign journalists, and to enlist the support of the United States for their war against Japan, as mentioned in the confession of Theodore H. White, an adviser to the propaganda bureau; “It was considered necessary to lie to it [the United States], to deceive it, to do anything to persuade America . . . That was the only strategy of the Chinese government . . .” (In Search of History: A Personal Adventure)

• 
  This photo was published with three others in the China Weekly Review, on 22 October 1938, with the following caption : "A Japanese officer surveys the results of brutal butchery of Chinese civilians by Nipponese troops at Hsuchow." One of the other photos was "a grotesque exhibition of Chinese skulls, placed by playful Japanese soldiers at Nanking." Denialists point out that the alleged Japanese soldier standing by wears the military uniform with a turned-down collar with class badges on it and that this style was not introduced until after the uniform revision on June 1, 1938. Denialists also assert that the photo does not tell how they were killed, in massacre or in battle, and also point out that there were many Chinese soldiers in mufti.
• 
  Design of Japanese Army uniforms, before and after the June 1, 1938 revision.
• 
  In the fall of 1937, the Associated Press (AP) distributed this photo as a Japanese soldier using a Chinese national as a guinea pig for bayonet practice. Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" carries the same kind of photos as Japanese atrocities. However, according to Higashinakano and his colleagues, the soldier wears a turned-down collared uniform, but no Japanese soldier wore it at that time, so he is not a Japanese soldier and the January 1939 issue of Lowdown, an American magazine, commented on these photos that this had been in fact a Chinese communist torturing a Chinese prisoner. However, affirmationists points out that similar practices were usual in the Imperial Japanese Army as testified by Prince Mikasa, who denounced this practice while he was a staff officer in Nanjing and Tominaga Shōzō, a veteran officer.
• 
  This photo is supposed to depict a Japanese sailor after beheading. Denialists allege that this was a prearranged pose set up by the Chinese for propaganda purpose.
• This photo was published by the American Pictorial Review under the caption : "Jap militarists commit bestial atrocities and terrify Chinese into submission".[211] Denialists assert that these are not Japanese soldiers as the color of the true Japanese military gaiters were similar to their uniform, whereas the gaiters in the photo are rather white, which was the color of the Chinese military gaiters. Professor Higashinakano concludes that this was a composite of plural photos.[212]
  This photo was published by the American Pictorial Review under the caption : "Jap militarists commit bestial atrocities and terrify Chinese into submission". Denialists assert that these are not Japanese soldiers as the color of the true Japanese military gaiters were similar to their uniform, whereas the gaiters in the photo are rather white, which was the color of the Chinese military gaiters. Professor Higashinakano concludes that this was a composite of plural photos.
• 
  Purported evidence of Japanese public execution in Nanking. However, denialists claim that the surrounding people wear summer clothes. So, this photo is no related with the Japanese occupation of Nanking which took place in winter. There was no custom of public execution in Japan after the 1870's, but was in China still in 1930's. Denialists allege that this was a prearranged pose set up by the Chinese for propaganda purpose.
• 
  This photo was used as the scene of a Japanese soldier executing a Chinese. This man with the sword appears in other photos which denialists also claim are forged. Denialists claim his one-handed sword swing is not Japanese.
• This photo is used as purported evidence of Nanking Massacre victims, but denialists point out that there was no such custom of gibbeted heads among the Japanese after the 1870's. Among the Chinese this custom persisted in the 1930's; for example, there was a case of gibbeted heads in the French Concession in Shanghai on February 12, 1938. Denialists allege that these were the heads of bandits or political criminals killed in Chinese civil war. [213]
  This photo is used as purported evidence of Nanking Massacre victims, but denialists point out that there was no such custom of gibbeted heads among the Japanese after the 1870's. Among the Chinese this custom persisted in the 1930's; for example, there was a case of gibbeted heads in the French Concession in Shanghai on February 12, 1938. Denialists allege that these were the heads of bandits or political criminals killed in Chinese civil war.
• Purported evidence of infant victims of "Nanking Massacre". Denialists claim that it was not taken in Nanking; they argue that there was no custom of slaughtering infants even of enemy throughout Japanese history while it frequently appeared in Chinese chronicles. Denialists suggests that this photo is in fact a picture of victims of Chinese civil war.[214]
  Purported evidence of infant victims of "Nanking Massacre". Denialists claim that it was not taken in Nanking; they argue that there was no custom of slaughtering infants even of enemy throughout Japanese history while it frequently appeared in Chinese chronicles. Denialists suggests that this photo is in fact a picture of victims of Chinese civil war.
• 
  This photo of a gibbeted head appeared in Life magazine on Jan. 10, 1938. The caption wrote that he was of an anti-Japanese Chinese man and placed there on "Dec. 14, just before the fall of Nanking." However, Dec. 14 was not "before the fall of Nanking." The caption gave the readers an impression that the Japanese military were responsible for this atrocity, but denialists claim that in China there were a lot of cases of gibbeted heads killed by personal hatred or civil war, and there was no positive proof that the Japanese were responsible for these acts.<ref name=PhotographicEvidence151-156>
• 
  Photo showing the body of a woman profaned in a similar way to the teenager described in case 5 of John Magee's movie. Denialists however claim that the photo has no reliable information about the killer and its authentication.
• 
  Photo also from Life magazine on Jan. 10, 1938, explained as a Chinese man carrying his son who had been wounded in Japanese bombing, and taken on Dec. 6, 1937, seven days before the fall of Nanking. The movie Battle of China used this photo as depicting an event after Dec. 13.
• This photo first appeared in Life magazine on Feb. 21, 1938. But if we look at it closer, on the man’s vest, in its white part, is written the word “CHANSHI” (meaning good deeds), which was clearly different from the “卍” mark of the Chinese “burial teams” who worked for the burial of those who had died in battle of Nanking, being requested by the Japanese army. The burial was done in winter. However, the people in the photo do not look like wearing winter clothes. Denialists claim that this photo has nothing to do with Nanking after the Japanese occupation.[215]
  This photo first appeared in Life magazine on Feb. 21, 1938. But if we look at it closer, on the man’s vest, in its white part, is written the word “CHANSHI” (meaning good deeds), which was clearly different from the “卍” mark of the Chinese “burial teams” who worked for the burial of those who had died in battle of Nanking, being requested by the Japanese army. The burial was done in winter. However, the people in the photo do not look like wearing winter clothes. Denialists claim that this photo has nothing to do with Nanking after the Japanese occupation.
• The Japanese newspaper article on Dec. 13, 1937, reads "'Incredible Record' (in the Contest to Cut Down 100 People) — Mukai 106–105 Noda: Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings,". This photo was part of a series published by two Japanese newspapers as part of a staged contest, the contest to kill 100 people using a sword, to boost public support for the war. [216]
  The Japanese newspaper article on Dec. 13, 1937, reads "'Incredible Record' (in the Contest to Cut Down 100 People) — Mukai 106–105 Noda: Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings,". This photo was part of a series published by two Japanese newspapers as part of a staged contest, the contest to kill 100 people using a sword, to boost public support for the war.
• 
  Photo taken by H.S. Wang, a Chinese American photographer, in the ruins of Shanghai and first appeared in Life magazine on Oct. 4, 1937. This became one of the most influential photos to stir up anti-Japanese feeling in the USA, and is still used to show “Japanese atrocities.” Later, a correspondent of Chicago Tribune News Service presented other photos taken at the same hour and same place, and he showed evidence that this had been a staged photo of the baby brought there by the photographer to appear as a dramatic scene.

Iris Chang's book

Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking, was instrumental in bringing the Nanking Massacre to wider public attention in the English-speaking world, and garnered Chang much acclaim. It is often seized upon by massacre denialists as representative of works which support the alleged fabrication. The many criticisms of the book made by historians who do not deny the massacre are then used by denialists as further evidence of the shoddy scholarship supporting the alleged fabrication. Some of this criticism follows.

Criticism by non-denialists

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.

Criticism by denialists

"Japanese soldiers escorting Chinese farmers from their fields to home at Shengjiaqiao village, Paoshan Prefecture, Jiangsu Province" taken by Kumazaki Tamaki on October 14, 1937., published on weekly magazine Asahi Graph Nov. 10, 1937. Many of the people in the photo are smiling. However, Iris Chang runs this photo with the caption: "The Japanese rounded up thousands of women. Most of them were gang raped or forced into military prostitution."

In Japan, Nobukatsu Fujioka, a professor at Takushoku University, once mentioned, “Many translated books are published in Japan but Iris Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” is not published. Because, it has so many mistakes that no publisher could handle it. The photos are all false, and not a single picture was an evidence of the ‘Nanking Massacre.’ Not only that, her description about Japanese history is filled with absurd mistakes. For instance, she wrote that the Japanese military strength before the end of the Edo era (1603 -1867) had not exceeded the level of sword, bow and arrow (Japan was in fact the biggest producer of guns in the world already in the 16th century). More than 100 such rudimentary mistakes were found in the book, and even if the book is to be published in Japan, no Japanese people could bear reading it. A left-wing publishing company tried to publish it annotating notes of translator, but she refused it, saying, “How impertinent.” Sad to say, the Americans trust such a book and are making a movie based on it.” (Later, another publisher published the book translated by a Chinese in 2007 in Japan.)

Shoichi Watanabe, a professor emeritus at Sophia University, mentioned, “Before the US-Japan war, a false document called Tanaka Memorial was made in China. This was a purported Japanese strategic planning document, in which Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka laid out for Emperor Hirohito a strategy to take over the world. The American President Roosevelt, senators and congressmen read this forgery, and believed the lie that Japan had a malicious intention to take over Asia and the world. That became a cause for the US-Japan war. It is said that after reading it, Roosevelt decided to defeat Japan entirely. Iris Chang’s ‘The Rape of Nanking,’ a best seller in the USA, is the same. If we leave this fiction as it is, it will certainly give a bad influence to the US-Japan relation.”

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)
• Suzuki, Akira (April 1972). "The Phantom of The Nanjing Massacre". Every Gentlemen.
• Tanaka, Massaki (1984). Fabrication of Nanjing Massacre. Nihon Kyobun Sha.
• The Truth about Nanjing (2007) Directed by Satoru Mizushima.

External links

• Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre
• THE NANKING MASSACRE: Fact Versus Fiction
• Site denying Nanking Massacre
• Refutation by Tanaka Masaaki
• Research Institute of Propaganda Photos (Machine translation of Japanese site)
• Template:Jp icon (Author ja:東中野修道/小林進/福永慎次郎) 南京事件「証拠写真」を検証する ~ Nanking Massacre's "Photo": Verification of Credibility~ ja:草思社 ISBN 4794213816

See also

• Holocaust denial
• Historiography of the Nanking Massacre
• Alleged fabrication of the Nanking Massacre

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)