Talk:Battle of Nanking/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Battle of Nanking. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Chinese Generals

Would like to know about the chinese military generals involved in this battle, the decisions they made (good or bad) and whether they conducted Scorched Earth policy before this battle.

I think the 116th Division is an error. It was not in China until May 1938. I beleive it must be 114th Division that is shown on the map of the forces approaching from the south with 16th and 9th Divisions.Asiaticus 08:22, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

There is no evidence of '300,000 civilian massacre' This needs to be excluded from the list. Please show the evidence of 300000 civilian massacre if true.

Please see footnotes 29 and 30 and the linked articles on the Nanking Massacre. 300,000 is on the high end of the credible range of estimates of civilian deaths, and I would support replacing that figure in the infobox with a range. --Yaush (talk) 14:13, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

J or K: Nanjing or Nanking

Most of the articles on Wikipedia are titled using Nanking. Most articles I've found say something to the effect of "...Nanking (or Nanjing as it is now known)...". I'm for retitling this (and all related) articles Nanking. Using both results in too many redirects. Thoughts? Drcwright 07:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Approachtonanking.jpg

Image:Approachtonanking.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:07, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe the problem is resolved. The image wasn't linked back to this article. Binksternet (talk) 15:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Chiang Kai-shek's footsteps before battle or during battle

After the shanghai, Chiang got back to the Nanjing. He sticked to the defensive battle of the city. But he escaped from the city before the battle, or during the battle. Could anyone write when and how was it with any sources? --221.187.130.201 (talk) 03:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

title

i think the title needs to be changed. Don't you? 69.226.14.60 (talk) 01:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)timmy

Full name list of Imperial Japanese Army

I agree with Binksternet that the list of commanders provided by Arilang1234 is too long for insertion into this article. In fact, I suspect that it is too long to be inserted in Wikipedia at all, even as a separate article. I would like to know what the lowest level rank is in this list. I could imagine having a list of the top 15 commanders, maybe down to the level of a 1-star general in the U.S. army (brigadier general). --Richard (talk) 15:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think this material can be given its own Wikisource page, but Wikipedia is not a repository. Binksternet (talk) 17:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Evidence of Imperial Japanese Army using chemical warfare on Nanjing: (To be translated, text is in Japanese) 南京作战派遣军（第10军数据不在内）化学炮弹消耗补充量

弾薬交付の件（昭和１２年「陆支机密大日记１２年３册（４册の内）」

陆支机密陆军兵器本厂长ヘ达别纸ノ通上海派遣军ニ补给方取计フヘシ但シ费用ハ临时军事费支辨トシ宰领者トシテ尉官一名宛ヲ附スヘシ尚特ニ机密ノ保持ヲ期スヘシ陆支机密第三六〇号昭和十二年十月二十五日陆支机密副官ヨリ上海派遣军参谋长ヘ通牒别纸ノ通贵军ニ补给セシメラルルニ付依命通牒ス陆支机密第三六〇号昭和十二年十月二十五日

九四式軽迫撃炮　九五式あか弾弾薬筒　二〇、〇〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　一、〇〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）

九四式軽迫撃炮　九五式きい弾弾薬筒　一〇、〇〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　九〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）
四年式十五粍榴弾炮　九三式あか弾　弾筒共　二、七五〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　二〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）
四年式十五粍榴弾炮　九二式きい弾　弾筒共　二、七五〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　二、五〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）

三八式十五粍榴弾炮　九三式あか弾　弾筒共　二、七五〇（交付　十一月一～二日）

三八式十五粍榴弾炮　九二式きい弾　弾筒共　二、七五〇（交付　十一月一～二日）

九三式あか筒　三五、〇〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）

九四式山炮　九二式あか弾弾筒　三、五〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　七、五〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）

三八式野炮　九二式あか弾弾筒　二、五〇〇（交付　十一月一～二日）　一、五〇〇（交付　十一月九～十日）

きい一号　乙　四〇屯（交付　十一月一～二日）　二〇屯（交付　十一月九～十日）

上面是南京,第1次补充的化学弹数量. Arilang ^talk 21:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

More chemical warfare evidence

To be translated: 上海派遣军野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)队本部（２号野戦瓦斯队本部）　森田豊秋歩兵少佐

野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第１中队（甲）　杉村南平歩兵少佐
野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第２中队（甲）　指宿三郎歩兵少佐
野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第５中队（乙）　铃木孙三郎歩兵少尉
野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第１３中队（乙）　古池利弌歩兵中尉
野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第６中队
野戦瓦斯(Chemical gas)第７中队 Arilang ^talk 21:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Poor writing style

The article could seriously use some MAJOR editing and rewriting to make it sound less like an 8th grade history report.

Disambiguation

Is BADLY needed. I was looking for the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Battle_of_Nanking and it took me like five searches. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.77.32.200 (talk) 22:29, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Malicious editing?

After Admiral General Aladeen of Wadiyah announced that the Nationalist government of China would eventually transfer the capital from Nanking to Chungking and its military headquarters would be shifted to the transitional capital of Hankow on November 20, the scale of evacuation became much larger.[8]

isnt this a movie or something — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.126.127.66 (talk) 03:27, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

10,000 Chinese combat fatalities

I'm going to revert the edit just made by Masontao primarily because I doubt the reliability of this Chinese language blog entry which apparently indicates that only 10,000 Chinese died in battle. Although I can't read Chinese, this figure is greatly at variance with every academic source I am aware of. As noted, esteemed military historian Hata Ikuhiko estimated the death toll at 50,000 and the veterans' association Kaikosha put it at 30,000. By contrast, Michael R. Gibson, a scholar using only Chinese sources, put the death toll at 70,000, and Chinese scholar Sun Chai-wei believed that 90,000 Chinese troops died in the battle. These figures are mentioned in the book "Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity" by Masahiro Yamamoto. Yamamoto notes that at the time of the battle, even the Nationalists themselves estimated the number of their troops who perished in the battle at 33,000. The number of 10,000 comes from literally no source at all, neither Japanese nor Chinese and neither contemporary nor modern, with the exception of this one blog entry. I prefer to use the estimates by Hata and Kaikosha because for the time being those are the only sources I can locate in which the same person or group estimated both Chinese troop strength and combat deaths. Given how widely the numbers vary, it's better to use a set of estimates where we know that the troop strength and troop losses are going to line up. If, for instance, we use Kaikosha's figures for military strength and Sun Chai-wei's figures for military losses, we would conclude that the Chinese deployed 60,000 to 70,000 troops, 90,000 of whom died in the battle.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:58, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Battle statistics

Allow me to explain the reason why I think the article is better off without all the extra estimates. First of all, everything in the article is reliably cited. I didn’t bother to repeat all the citations in the infobox, but within the article itself everything is reliably cited.

I wasn’t able to find any published source stating that 6,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in the battle. The highest estimate that the historian Masahiro Yamamoto found in existing records was 1,953 killed in battle and 4,994 wounded.

For the size of the Chinese Army I opted for about 100,000 in the infobox, which I think should just be a brief summary and not a lengthy discussion of this complicated issue. The article itself includes estimates from three very well-regarded scholars, David Askew, Ikuhiko Hata, and Tokuhi Kasahara, who respectively estimate its size at about 80,000, about 100,000, and about 150,000.

As David Askew notes, the size of the Japanese Army which actually fought in the battle was about 50,000. Akira Fujiwara notes that the CCAA as a whole contained roughly 160,000 soldiers so some sources use figures in this range instead, but since most of those 160,000 were in Shanghai rather than Nanking at the time of the battle, Askew’s figure is more relevant.

I don’t think this article on the Battle of Nanking should include any estimate of the death toll for the Nanking Massacre. It’s so controverisal that Wikipedia users end up spending weeks and weeks debating on which range to include. The number of articles on which we have to engage in such long and fruitless debates should be limited to only where it is necessary, and this article doesn’t need it. For the record, Bob Wakabayashi and James Liebold have noted that the scholarly consensus on the death toll is 40,000 to 200,000 but as I said we should leave that dispute for other articles.

The reason why I mentioned the part about burial statistics is that it is relevant to the discussion of mopping-up operations. As Masahiro Yamamoto noted in his widely acclaimed book Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity, the Nanking Massacre included both random murders, as well as an aspect which, at least from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers at the time, was a quasi military aspect. The mopping-up operations that the Japanese Army undertook after December 12 were regarded by the Japanese as a military operation and as part of the battle, but they included many mass executions of unarmed POWs. Here the distinction between “Battle of Nanking” and “Nanking Massacre” is difficult to draw, though as Yamamoto notes, it is clear that the majority of victims of the Nanking Massacre were Chinese POWs slaughtered during the so-called “mopping-up operations.”CurtisNaito (talk) 07:41, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

about Nanking massacre

I cannot understand so many sources about nanking massacre, Why keep only one historian claim like "Though the Japanese also committed random acts of murder, rape, looting, and arson during their occupation of Nanking, military historian Masahiro Yamamoto notes that of the more than 40,000 corpses buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred.". It's violation of the rule of neutrality. I offered the figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East and Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Users: CurtisNaito, you even deleted the figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East which was considered as one of the most important sources. Then this part should line up with primary Nanjing Massacre article which the consensus is from 40,000 to 300,000. Why delete all other sources and simply kept the lowest number.When wiki deal with the conflict between each source, it neutrally keep both claim except fringe. Now please tell me in what a kind of neutrality, the figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East will be deleted? Then in my memory, it had been discussed in a long time discussion about this topic in article Nanking massacre.It had been made a consensus before. If you think you should leave that dispute in other articles, you can just leave a neutral claim "figure is contested, death number from 40,000 to 300,000." However figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East should be kept. This is one of the most important figure. Why do you select use one historian claim to replace figure from International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Then you claim some figure is pro-China seems. In the same theory, some figures can be considered as pro-Japan. "For the size of the Chinese Army I opted for about 100,000 in the infobox, which I think should just be a brief summary and not a lengthy discussion of this complicated issue." Wiki rule neurally keep all claims. You cannot opted some sources in the infobox. As this theory, why do we need to opted 100,000, why don't we selected 50,000. Both of them supported by some sources. When you decide to select something and give up something, you are doing a research in wiki but wiki is not a place for academic research place. This is my sleeping time and I will continue this debate probably on Wednesday. Miracle dream (talk)

What I'm saying is that an estimate for the death toll of the Nanking Massacre should not be included in an article on the Battle of Nanking. The number of articles on which we have to spend weeks and weeks dicussing this unfortunately contentious issue should be limited. A large-scale massacre was perpetrated by the Japanese in Nanking and that's all we need to know in this article. The burial statistics don't represent the full death toll, but they were included to indicate the relative scale of the quasi military aspect of the atrocity, the mopping-up operations in other words. At any rate, some of the information you added does definitely have to be deleted. For instance, you put down a death toll estimate range of 40,000 to 300,000 for the Nanking Massacre, but two of the three sources you cite for that correctly note that the scholarly consensus is 40,000 to 200,000. As Wakabayashi also notes, the estimates of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal are very much out of date and have been supplanted by better and more recent research by scholars. This debate can go on and on, but I don't think that this is the right article for it.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:23, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

When you say "why don't we selected 50,000" for the size of the Nanking Garrison Force, the reason is that many dozens of estimates have been made for its size since the year 1937, but most of them are now out of date as a result of newer scholarship. In 1937 some contemporary sources put the figure at 50,000, but no historian has given a figure that low. For all the figures I used I opted for the latest estimates of historians rather than seventy-year-old estimates made by individual observers.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:34, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

We can continue on Wednesday because I have some time difference with you. Sorry about that but today is really too late for me. I just answer some question. At first, two of my three sources put the number from "40,000 to 200,000" but one of them claim 300,000. Then this is because I want to keep article more simple. If you want, I can add two more source which claim 300,000. Then I think you have noticed that I avoid Chinese sources. If I select Chinese sources, then I can find more than five which claim 300,000.

Then you think International Military Tribunal for the Far East are very much out of date. This theory is totally unacceptable. Hey,this is a history figure. Why do you think old figure should not be accepted. In this theory,Nuremberg trials is out of date so we don't use it as a source for German war crime. Records of the Grand Historian is out of the date so we don't use it as source for Chinese history. Commentarii de Bello Gallico is out of the date so we don't use it as a source of Roman history.

The most confusing thing is you think we should leave the dispute in other articles and keep this article simply but you keep figures like "after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred." This claim is a huge dispute thing. How did you leave dispute by keep this dispute claim. Miracle dream (talk)

Although I disagree that this article should include a death toll estimate for the Nanking Massacre, if it does include it we should stick to the scholarly consensus which is 40,000 to 200,000 as noted by Wakabayashi and Liebold. Some scholars have given estimates much lower than 40,000 and some have given estimates much higher than 200,000, but the overall scholarly consensus is 40,000 to 200,000.

Also, regarding the size of the Nanking Garrison Force, I noticed that you included Fujiwara and Askew's estimates as separate estimates in the infobox, but these estimates are not in conflict. Fujiwara's figure is the total size of the Central China Area Army but Askew's figure is just those who actually fought in the battle. Tien Wen-Wu doesn't appear to say how he might have calculated his figure of 200,000, but Askew explicitly says that it is an exaggeration so for the purpose of this article we might as well leave it out.CurtisNaito (talk) 09:16, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, you say that "Wiki rule neurally keep all claims" for inboxes, but in the infobox we can't really do that. I want to keep this limited to modern, scholarly estimates, not old and outdated numbers, but even among modern estimates there are dozens to choose from. We can't even put all of these estimates into the article itself, let alone the infobox. For the infobox, we should just keep it short and not go into a debate so lengthy that it would not even fit into the article itself. However, one possible compromise I would consider might be to just put "unknown" or "estimates vary" into the infoboxes and leave a selection of actual estimates to the article itself. In the future, a separate article should be created on the Nanking Garrison Force, and we might be able to fit all the various estimates into this article, but in the article on the Battle of Nanking there is only so much space for all these figures and the debate surrounding them.CurtisNaito (talk) 09:51, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I want to add that, while estimating the size of the Nanking Garrison Force is a difficult task due to unreliable statistics on the Chinese side, the size of the Japanese Army is not really in dispute. Just prior to the Battle of Nanking the CCAA had 160,000 troops, of which roughly 50,000 participated in the battle itself. This is not really in dispute among modern scholars. If newer and more reliable sources exist, then there is no reason to resort to using older, dubious figures like those of the IMTFE and Nanking War Crimes Tribunal, let alone Records of the Grand Historian.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:04, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

If you check article Holocaust victims and German war crimes, Nuremberg trials were considered as the major source of them. Nobody will consider it dubious because of out of date. International Military Tribunal for the Far East is the Nuremberg trials for Japanese war crimes. Most of Japanese war crime were judged by International Military Tribunal for the Far East. If we considered International Military Tribunal for the Far East is dubious, then we will overthrow many events and re-write many articles like Bataan Death March, Attack on Pearl Harbor and Manila massacre. Actually there were a long time debate about figure of Nanking massacre which you involved this before [1]. In this discussion, somebody listed lots figures from scholars which offered figures above 300,000. Chinese scholar Sun Zhaiwei, Zhang Lianhong, Taiwanese scholar Lee En-Han, Japanese scholar Yoshida Tak Matsusaka and U.S. scholar Marvin Williamsen, Frank Dorn and Edward L. Dreyer were the ones who offered data 200,000 to 300,000. Some of them even claimed more than 300,000. After this 2 months discussion, the consensus was established (40,000 to 300,000) and you current behavior is a kind of disrupt of consensus.

For the army strength, if you want to keep it more simple. You can simply write like Chinese army from 50,000 to 100,000 not just put 100,000 figure alone. Russo-Japanese War id an example for this. Then you thought there should not be so many estimation in infobox but actually there are tons of article like this. For example, article Battles of Khalkhin Gol put the all of Japanese military record, Soviet claim and Modern western in infobox for Japanese loss figure. Article Korean War also put the Chinese claims and American estimation in the infobox.

The things what I do is to keep all claim of these important sources. The previous article is " estimates ranging from 40,000 to over 300,000" which consist of figures from Japanese sources, American sources and Chinese sources. You rewrote this like " that of the more than 40,000 corpses buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred." Do you think "only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred" is a neutral claim in wiki? Especially, when International Military Tribunal for the Far East claim 20,000 women were raped.

Yeah, some Japanese historian claim the death is less than 40,000 but there are also someone who claimed the death is above 500,000. Recently, I am a little busy so every day I may only reply one or two time. I am very sorry about that but I hope you can understand my case. Miracle dream (talk)21:08, 15 December 2014‎

The debate over the credibility of the estimates put forward by the postwar war crimes tribunals can be included in another article, but if you believe that they are credible, why do you keep on inserting sources into this article which reject their validity? The Wakabayashi source you included provides an extensive rebuttal of the death toll estimates put forward by both tribunals. You cited Tokushi Kasahara for the death toll put forward by the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal but he explains in detail in his book Nankin Jiken why this estimate is clearly wrong. You favor putting Kaikosha's research into the article, but Kaikosha calculated the death toll of the Nanking Massacre at only 30,000. Among independent scholars who have written books or peer-reviewed articles on the massacre and who have explained what data they used to calculate their estimates, almost all of them are today within the 40,000 to 200,000 range. That is the overwhelming scholarly consensus and if any range of figures should be put into the article, that is surely the one. Earlier I had left out the estimate of the massacre's death toll from the article in the hopes of avoiding another lengthy discussion like this, but oh well.CurtisNaito (talk) 23:03, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Until today, I was not really aware of this discussion, though overall, it also was not my intention to really participate in the discussion until being alerted to it and asked for my opinion on the subject on my talk page. The below is essentially copied from my response on my talk page, but with minor edits for location.

As one of the original participants in the original death toll debate, what I recall was that consensus ultimately was either to list a range of 40,000-200,000 as general scholarly consensus, while noting that certain estimates of the death toll reached as high as 300,000, or to have the range be put forward as 40,000 to 300,000, but with notes indicating that estimates over 200,000 had been called into question. In all honesty, it being the case that I participated in the discussion while preparing also for some fairly difficult exams, with at best divided attention, I must confess to not actually remembering the specific details, though I do recall that the (very extensive) discussion had been archived in the Talk:Nanking Massacre page, and that a basic consensus had been achieved (apparently several times) during this time period. Nevertheless, I believe we can all agree that firstly, our estimates definitely ought to be based on the consensus of reputable academics, Chinese, Japanese, Western, or wherever, and that it is within the ability of us as Wikipedians and mature adults to figure out what this consensus is and who is a reputable academic on this subject.

Having said all of that, it may seem (and is my intention) that I come off as non-committal in the above, because honestly, it is really not my wish to regenerate or rejoin what was (as I recall), a very acrimonious debate, and one which I in particular, have no desire to rejoin, having since discovered that I am finding much more joy in editing subjects on Wikipedia which also fall within my sphere of interest but are significantly less controversial and politicized. Nevertheless, it is my hope that everyone participating in these discussions you allude to will be able to resolve their disputes on this subject and other subjects (as I see this is not the only active discussion on this talk page) peaceably and with little acrimony, and I wish everyone good luck in this.Zmflavius (talk) 17:45, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

What I see from the book "China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945" [2]. The figure from Marvin Williamsen is "Trapped Chinese troops were treated with frightening barbarity by their conquerors. As a matter of policy all were tortured and butchered. But soldiers were hardly the only victims of the nearly incredibly cruelty and the vicious, uncontrolled behavior of the Japanese troops. After recounting some, but only some, of the unspeakable horros visited upon the residentes of Nanking in two weeks of outrage. Over 20,000 civilian men of military age had been slaughtered. At least 20,000 young women and girls had been raped, murdered, and then gruesomely mutilated. Over 200,000 civilians,and possibly as many as 300,000, had been senselessly massacred" 03:16, 27 December 2014 Miracle dream (talk)

Compromise proposals

I've been thinking a lot about this issue and considering how we might resolve our differences here. I want to propose the following compromises on the following issues.

KAIKOSHA ESTIMATES=Though I do highly value Kaikosha's path-breaking estimates, the first detailed scholarly estimates of the size of the Nanking Garrison Force ever made, I eventually deleted them because they are controversial among a number of scholars including Masahiro Yamamoto and also Tokushi Kasahara who wrote a lengthy essay rebutting them. Still, these estimates are reliable enough that I think we can re-add them into the body of the article, but not the infobox. Okay?

INFOBOXES=For the infoboxes we will replace the estimate of Chinese troop strength and the estimate of Chinese combat casualties with "estimates vary". People can consult the body of the article to see the range of estimates. The range in the body of the article, though, should only include the estimates of scholars and researchers, not those of single primary sources. I'll re-add Kaikosha's estimates into the article, but the figure of 50,000 is clearly not credible. Okay?

JAPANESE TROOP STRENGTH=In the infobox we should stick with just "c. 50,000" for Japanese troops strength because that is the number that actually fought in the battle. Having said that, I put into the article that the CCAA included "over 160,000" troops (including those in Shanghai) but I noticed that Fujiwara does accept estimates as high as 200,000, so we'll delete Tien-wei Wu's figure, which is refuted by the very article you are sourcing it to, and replace "over 160,000" with "160,000 to 200,000" citing Fujiwara. Okay?

NANKING MASSACRE ESTIMATES=Though I still think that the best way to dodge this issue would be no estimate at all, as an alternative why don't we insert, right after the burial statistics, a sentence stating that most scholars now believe that about 40,000 to 200,000 Chinese were killed during the atrocity. For the purposes of this article on the Battle of Nanking, let's not delve into fringe numbers smaller than 40,000 or larger than 200,000 and let's not delve into the older estimates made by the war crimes tribunals which were vague to begin with and are now widely discredited, including by the very sources you have cited. We can cite Liebold and Wakabayashi as representing the scholarly consensus on the matter. Okay?

I hope that covers all the big issues. Tell me in your response if you agree with anything in a point-by-point manner. I want to first get of the way any areas that we now agree on. If there's anything still left over that we disagree on then we will focus our discussion on just that.CurtisNaito (talk) 21:30, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

1. I agree to put estimation vary in infobox or neutrally put all figures from different sources in the infobox. Can you give me a reason why 50,000 is clearly not credible? Don't make your personal analysis because wiki is not academic seminar. We just need to copy figures from sources. Especially, you thought "only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred" is credible but 50,000 armies of Chinese strength is uncredible. Both were cited from sources written by historian. Then previously, I may agree to delete Tien-wei Wu's figure. But after I check the references, I changed my mind. Based on the references, most of sources (seems more than 10) are from Japanese historians. Only one citation was from Chinese historian. Moreover, when I check the sources, I see it was added in this week which means there is no Chinese source in this article before. It made me feel it is un-neutral. I think we my need to add a little more Chinese source for this. Then you said Fujiwara claim also 160,000 to 200,000 which is closed to the estimation from Tien-wei Wu. Why do you choose to keep citation from Fujiwara while delete figures from Tien-wei Wu. They have nearly same estimation. Especially, this article used too many Japanese sources while ignore all Chinese sources. We should balance the sources. Moreover, it seems Tien is a Tawanese.

2. Then I agree you wrote like Fujiwara estimates "160,000 to 200,000" but to say 50,000 is the figure fought in Nanking, I need more explain. Because the figure "160,000 to 200,000" is cited from Fujiwara and 50,000 fought in Nanking is cited from David Askew. They are two different historians. We can't use army estimation from one historian while claimed only 50,000 of this estimation were in battle based on another historian. It is kind of misuse sources. I think you clearly can write it like"Fujiwara estimates the army is from 160,000 to 200,000 but Askew thought only 50,000 fought in the battle." In the same time, add the figures from Tien-wei Wu.

3. I agree what you said use the range figure to replace currently un-neutral claim. However, the figure should be 40,000 to 300,000. I don't know why we need to discuss this again. The consensus had been made during the 2 months discussion in article Nanking Massacre which you are also involved. If you ignore this consensus and made a debate in another article related that article, it is not constructive for wiki. Do we need to debate every time in different articles when they are some kind of related with the main article Nanking Massacre. Moreover, why can we use some estimations from historians to replace figures from International Military Tribunal for the Far East and Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. You can suspect these figures but wiki is not the place to do academic research. We just need to neutrally write this range. You don't believe figures 200,000 from IMT and 300,000 from NWCT. Actually I also don't believe figures less than 150,000. However, I select neutrally put figure from 40,000 to 150,000 in this range even I don't believe this. Then why I think we should put claim of IMT in this article？ Then reason is the International Military Tribunal for the Fast East is one of the most important event in WW3. Judges from 11 countries make their decisions in this trial. Then this trial lasted about 2 years. We cannot label it as dubious because of some historians' estimation. Then as I said, there are also many historians support figure 300,000. I listed so many historians who supported 300,000 above. To my surprise, you ignore all of them. It seems figures larger than 300,000 is fringe. You give up the figure less than 40,000 while actually I also give up figure 500,000 which is from a document of U.S. government because they are fringe.Miracle dream (talk)20:22, 17 December 2014‎

The reason why a Chinese troop strength of 50,000 should not be in the article is because no historian has ever argued in favor of a number that low. Kaikosha's estimates are the lowest ever made by researchers, and they estimated Chinese troop strength at 60,000 at the lowest. As Askew notes in his essay, a number of contemporary observers in 1937 estimated Chinese troop strength at around 50,000 but these estimates were rebutted decades ago and have been superseded by better research. Askew explains in the very article you cited that no one knows for certain the origin of the contemporary estimates putting the size of the Chinese Army at 50,000 and he discusses in detail how a "micro approach" to calculating the size of the Chinese Army produces a larger figure.

As Askew notes in his essay, the number of Japanese troops who fought in the Battle of Nanking was roughly 50,000. As noted by Fujiwara Akira, 160,000-200,000 is the troop strength of the entire CCAA, which was in charge of occupying all of Central China. Why should we include Japanese soldiers stationed in the coast of Shanghai as part of Japan's troop strength in the Battle of Nanking? Nanking is 300 kilometers from Shanghai and Japanese troops who were 300 kilometers from the battlefield should not be counted as part of Japan's troop strength for the purposes of the infobox. It seems like all Wu Tien-wei did was take the maximum upper bound of Fujiwara's estimate as his number, but even the source you cite says that Wu Tien-wei's number was "magically conjured up". I advocate that we use reliable figures for troop strength, not numbers that were, as the source you yourself cited says, "magically conjured up".

For the Nanking Massacre death toll estimate, we should not include the estimates of the postwar war crimes tribunals. We should stick with reliable estimates and not include estimates which are refuted by the very same sources which you have been inserting into the article. The sentence stating that the "large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men" does not include a comprehensive death toll estimate. Its purpose in the article is to show that most of the victims of the massacre were killed during mopping-up operations. None of the sources currently cited in the article dispute this theory, but the information you have have been adding to the article is disputed by your own citations. If we include a death toll estimate, we should stick with the well-established scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000 which is recognized internationally. Among historians outside of China who have written books or peer-reviewed articles on the massacre, very few have ever put forward an estimate under 40,000 or over 200,000. Scholars like Williamsen and Dreyer have never written more than a paragraph on the Nanking Massacre in their entire lives and the figure of 500,000 from a single German-based diplomatic cable includes deaths in Shanghai and does not clearly refer to massacre victims exclusively. Privately, Chinese historians also acknowledge that the death toll of the massacre was between 40,000 and 150,000.CurtisNaito (talk) 20:59, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

When you said " Chinese historians also acknowledge that the death toll of the massacre was between 40,000 and 150,000," can you add word "some of historians"? Actually from what I mentioned, lots of Chinese historian thought 300,000 death number. Then rarely Chinese historian will put the number to 40,000. I also see source from Japanese historians who claimed the death was 300,000 even 400,000. Based on your theory, I think I can say Japanese historian also acknowledge that the death toll of the massacre was between 300,000 to 400,000. As I said, different historians has different figures, You said some historian put the death toll like this but I have listed more than 5 historian put the death toll up to 300,000. Can you tell me we must ignore these historians who support 300,000 to select someone deny this. We can simply put all these claim. Actually I don't want to debate this thing because it has a consensus from 2 month discussion and you are one of them. When many editors spends lots of time and energy in such a long discussion, you jump to another article related and started a new discussion.Do you think it is a good behavior to do like this? Hence,next time, I jump to a new article,we can discuss again. Then this discussion will never be end. In the discussion above, I saw you ignore this consensus time after time. Can you tell me why do you ignore a consensus before which you involved? For Fujiwara Akira, you can simply wrote like Fujiwara Akira thought entire CCAA but David Askew thought only 50,000 in battle. But as I said, we should fairly add the figures from Tien even you can write someone suspect his figures. Yeah, German-based diplomatic claim 500,000 death. So what? You don't have the right to deny it. We are wiki editor not the professional historian. Even we are the professional historians, we should debate this in academic seminar not in wiki.

Then don't cheat me. The mopping-up operations was added by you. I check the edition history of this article, You wrote this article before and change section from Nanking massacre to mopping-up operations. Now you used the contents you changed as basic theory to support your idea. It is a little hard to accept. Thanks to reminder me this thing. Actually I require to recover this section to the title "Nanking Massacre" like the article before you rewrote.

It seems we reached lots of agreement. I am very happy for this. Miracle dream (talk)23:51, 17 December 2014‎

Well, your English is a little rough so I'm having difficulties understanding some of what you are saying. I can't really respond to your last paragraph because I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Among the many points I've made up to now I suppose that my main assertion is that we should not include figures which are described as nonsense by the sources which we are citing. As just one example, you inserted the figure of 200,000 as the size of the Japanese Army but sourced it to an essay which says that this number was "magically conjured up". This Wikipedia article is just an article on the Battle of Nanking, not on the size of the CCAA or on the Nanking Massacre. Probably all this information can be put somewhere on Wikipedia, but we can't fit into an article on the Battle of Nanking every estimate ever made for these things. Therefore, it's reasonable to stick largely to those estimates that are most widely agreed upon. Surely we can agree that a figure which is, as the source you cited states, "magically conjured up" is not valid for the purposes of this particular article. Even now I still don't understand why you want to include so many figures in this article which are demolished and rejected in no uncertain terms by very same reliable sources that you are citing.CurtisNaito (talk) 00:57, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Nanking Massacre was the direct result of this battle. It must be mentioned in this article, and so is the victim death toll. For the death toll, we should keep it consistent with the consensus achieved in a lengthy discussion in Talk:Nanking Massacre. No need to start another discussion here. --MtBell 07:18, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

If we do include the death toll, it's only natural that we should use the scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000. The proof that this is the scholarly consensus is as follows.

(1.) Bob Tad Wakabayashi wrote a very well-received edited volume in 2007 entitled "The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38" which amalgamated the work of a large number of the leading specialist scholars who have studied the Nanking Massacre. In writing the conclusion of this book, Wakabayashi concludes that 40,000 to 200,000 is the scholarly valid range of estimates. Even though he expresses some personal disagreement with some of the estimates within this range, he still notes that any estimate within this range is at least numerically possible, whereas numbers lower than 40,000 and higher than 200,000 are not humanely possible given the bounds of current evidence.

(2.) In the academic journal Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, James Leibold concurs that 40,000 to 200,000 constitutes "the most careful and thoroughly empirical analysis of the death count to date".

(3.) All Chinese historians who have been interviewed anonymously for their opinion on the death toll of the Nanking Massacre have given the range of 40,000 to 150,000 which is very close to the scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000. In China there is some gap between the public views of historians, which are tightly censored, and their private views. In 2006 when historian Kaz Ross investigated the real opinions of Chinese historians in the city of Nanking on an anonymous basis, all of them gave figures between 40,000 and 150,000.

(4.) Almost all scholars outside of China who have written books or peer-reviewed article on the Nanking Massacre have given figures between 40,000 and 200,000. David Askew, Tokushi Kasahara, Yoshida Yutaka, Jean-Louis Margolin, Masahiro Yamamoto, and Ikuhiko Hata, etc... (all the scholars cited in this article and then some) all give figures within this general range.

(5.) Almost all the individuals cited above who have given figures above or below this range are non-specialists with no particular knowledge of this subject. Yoshida Tak Matsusaka, Marvin Williamsen, and Edward L. Dreyer have never written more than a paragraph about the massacre in their entire careers. Adding all their research together would not fill a single page of text. Furthermore, none of these scholars have ever said how they calculated their figures. An estimate which is not known to be based on any data should not be considered part of the scholarly consensus of specialists. In fact, it seems like many of these scholars merely copied down the verdicts of the post-war war crimes tribunals without analyzing them. Frank Dorn, for example, cites "over 200,000 civilians" most likely from the IMTFE verdict, but in the previous sentence cites "over 20,000 civilian men" directly taken from Bates' testimony at the IMTFE. However, as Masahiro Yamamoto has noted, these two estimates are mutually exclusive because Bates did not accept the validity of the Chongshantang burial records which the IMTFE did include. This sort of copying and pasting from a single primary source is not equivalent to the level of research carried out by the historians who have written books or peer-reviewed articles on the massacre which actually do explain how the death toll was calculated.

There is really no question that 40,000 to 200,000 represents the overwhelming scholarly consensus among Nanking Massacre specialists. 40,000 to 200,000 is a useful range because this range of figures has successfully united almost all specialist scholars in the field, cutting across all ideological and national boundaries. An article on the Battle of Nanking should stick to this consensus and not delve into fringe figures.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:01, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I am not interested in discussing the massacre death toll again since the consensus (40,000-300,000) has already been reached in a discussion early this year in Talk:Nanking Massacre. If you are confident enough to challenge the consensus, please go to Talk:Nanking Massacre and ask some admins to restart the discussion. If you can achieve new consensus, I will be happy to follow. But for now, please respect what the majority in the discussion have agreed on: 40,000-300,000. --MtBell 08:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Looking over that discussion, it doesn't appear to me that that was the consensus at all. When users referred to specialist scholars, the predominance of the 40,000 to 200,000 range was quite clear. What I'm advocating is that we respect what the majority of scholars have to say on the issue.CurtisNaito (talk) 08:52, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Here, you just offered some scholar who supported 200,000 death figure but ignore the historians who supported 300,000 death. I have listed lots of historian above. You even don't want to read these. I have said some scholars like Hora Tomio(over 200,000), Lee En-Han from Taiwan (over 200,000 to over 300,000), Marvin Williamsen (over 200,000 and possible as many as 300,000),Frank Dorn (over 200,000 and possible as many as 300,000), Iris Chang, David B. MacDonald, Japanese historians Honda Katsuichi and Hora Tomio who supported rage up to 300,000. If I don't make a mistake, Japanese historian Fujiwara Akira is also the one who supported the death number should be over 300,000.

However, it's not the point. The thing is you cannot simply dismiss a consensus from 2 month long discussion which you involved before. It violated the discussion rule of wiki. We have spend 2 month to discussed in such a topic. We cannot spend whole of our life in this topic. This is not the academic seminar. As I said before, I personally don't believe the figure below the 150,000. However, some historians offer this figure so I neurally put 40,000 to 150,000 in this range even I don't believe it. It doesn't matter what I think. Miracle dream (talk) 03:44, 19 December 2014

Well the reason why I didn't want a death toll estimate in the article was to avoid this debate. However, if we do include a death toll estimate in the article I'm worried that this debate will keep on reoccurring like it is now. If we do include a death toll estimate though, I'd say that we stick to the overwhelming scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000. You are mistaken about Hora Tomio, Honda Katsuichi, and Akira Fujiwara. All of those scholars advocate figures of 200,000 or less. Marvin Williamsen and Frank Dorn have done no research on this subject to speak of, and David B. MacDonald has never put forward his own estimate of the death toll. I know you have strong personal views on this subject, but so often you are misquoting scholars or citing sources which refute the figures you want to use. It's important that we treat all the sources with care and consideration, and, as I indicated earlier, when looking at the most recent scholarship of specialists, there is an overwhelming consensus for the range of 40,000 to 200,000. The broadest possible range, including all estimates even by non-specialist scholars, would go from zero to eleven million, but for the purposes of this article narrowing it down to the scholarly consensus is the best policy.CurtisNaito (talk) 04:36, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I dread having this contentious debate yet again. and yet ... ten months is long enough to rethink the consensus, particularly since I'm vinding CurtisNaito's arguments rather persuasive. I think I supported 40,000-300,000 in the earlier debate; I am now persuaded otherwise. So I think the argument that the consensus is established and cannot now be challeged carries very little weight with me at this point. --Yaush (talk) 18:12, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

@Miracle dream: Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. One does not need CurtisNaito's permission to edit this article, not to mention the undeniable fact that there is the consensus. The death toll of victims is important to this article as it measures the scale of Japanese atrocities which were the consequence of the battle started by Japanese. Not hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed soldiers were massacred by Japanese troops in Nanking and during their march to the city. Such facts must be clearly stated in this article. --MtBell 16:36, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I think it's unlikely that that language will be inserted into the article because it's simply too far out of step with the views of scholars. It's important that Wikipedia be based primarily on the views of scholars and not the personal opinions of users. As I said, I had not favored including a range of estimates at all because I'm certain that including such contentious figures in the article will end up forcing us to have this debate again and again. You say that you are "not interested in discussing the massacre death toll" but in that case you should support my position of not putting one in. Otherwise, not only will we probably be discussing this for weeks more now, but who knows how many more times this will rebound on us? If we do include a range of estimates though, it's natural that we should include the range which is widely agreed upon by scholars, 40,000 to 200,000. Maybe not quite all Wikipedians are convinced of what the vast majority of scholars are already convinced of, but at least for an article on the Battle of Nanking, there is no consensus to put a set of Nanking Massacre statistics into the article which have been refuted by the scholarly community.CurtisNaito (talk) 18:22, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's "unlikely". It's just because you are uncapable of writing the atrocities. So, make way for others. I will add contents , with sources, about the atrocites committed by Japanese troops during their march and the so called "operations". As I said, I am not interested in wasting time of discussing the death toll again and again because it has already been thoroughly discussed with a consensus achieved. And, I am not going to discuss with you about the necessity, either. Just to inform you that. --MtBell 18:55, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

There still exists the problem of undue weight issues though. This is already a fairly lengthy article on the Battle of Nanking, and it's not clear how much information on the Nanking Massacre we can fit into it. This article is already almost as long as the article on the Battle of Guadalcanal, despite the fact that that battle was much longer and more strategically significant. The massacre is already covered in this article, and is covered in much greater detail in other articles, so we do need to decide where to put a cap on the amount of Nanking Massacre material we put into an article on the Battle of Nanking. Also, the tone you're taking regarding discussions is very wrong. You can't say that you want to include contentious material in the article and then say that "I am not going to discuss with you about the necessity". Either you don't want to insert contentious material and you don't want to discuss it, or you do want to insert contentious material and you do want to discuss it. CurtisNaito (talk) 19:04, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

CurtisNaito, I am a little surprised. I thought you should trust the my neutral attitude. It seems you did not trust me. Then I reply case by case. For Marvin Williamsen, I simply give the link I am reading [3] "over 200,000, and possibly as many as 300,000, had been senselessly massacred". The translation version from Hora Tomio is "不下于二十万人", safely translated to "no less than 200,000". It means 200,000 is the lower bound which did not have much difference with "over than 200,000" I cited. David B. MacDonald cited many figures from different scholar. The figure he used from 42,000 to over 350,000. However, he really claimed that figure between 42,000 and 100,000 is rather low and most put the death toll considerably higher. From your theory, based on David B. MacDonald we should delete figure from 42,000 to 100,000. Then don't tell me who did research and who cited others' figure. It is the original research from wiki editor. It is not our works. Wiki just need the publication as the source for citation except fringe. It doesn't matter how the author do his research. We are not historians and wiki is not the academic seminar. Even we are historians, we should debate in some academic conference not in wiki. When you said some scholar did research and some didn't, you were doing original research here which is the violation of wiki rule. Moreover, have you done some research before? Do you know research should include lots of paper review, survey and paper citation. Did you see any academic paper without any citation before? In common case, the citation author used is something he agreed with except he wanted to debate with this citation. It is really funny that Amateur people in wiki think he is better than professional scholar in paper review. CurtisNaito,I know you have strong personal views on this subject, but so often you are misquoting scholars or citing sources which refute the figures you want to use. You should believe scholar read the historian publication in a rigorous attitude not just want to find some figures he favor like you. CurtisNaito, it seems the difference between you and me is: I personally don't believe figure below 150,000 but I neutrally accept these figures from 40,000 to 150,000 following the neutrality rule of wiki and you personally don't believe figures from 200,000 to 300,000 and you will never accept these figures. If we do include a death toll estimate though, I'd say that we stick to the overwhelming scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 300,000.

I'm worried that this debate will keep on reoccurring like it is now so I will use the previous discussion consensus to edit this article. By this way, I will solve all dispute. I will think about some way following the 2 month discussion consensus. Miracle dream (talk)

You haven't demonstrated any scholarly consensus. It doesn't demonstrate a scholarly consensus to haphazardly put together the estimates of people who have never written more than a sentence on the massacre in their whole careers and who have never bothered to reveal how their numbers were calculated. Of the individuals you just cited only one, Hora Tomio, has ever actually written a book or article on the massacre which states its base sources. Hora Tomio wrote in his own book "南京大虐殺決定版" that the death toll was 200,000, but as he himself and Takashi Yoshida have noted, this estimate includes all soldiers killed in combat, not just massacre victims. Hora Tomio has noted, like most of your other sources, that the estimates of the postwar war crimes trials were exaggerations. The scholarly consensus in both China and internationally was clearly put forward by Bob Tad Wakabayashi, Kaz Ross, and other specialist scholars as being 40,000 to 150,000/200,000. Just extending the range of the top estimates to 300,000 doesn't make sense. If you really do insist on an extended range, maybe we should extend the top estimate to 300,000 and lower the bottom estimate to 10,000. A comprehensive survey of the Nanking Massacre undertaken by Shokun magazine identified numerous Japanese researchers who put the number of victims at 10,000. While they may be fringe, they are no more fringe than those who advocate numbers higher than 200,000. Just randomly modifying the top figure of the scholarly consensus is not feasible for this article, and there is no consensus among users to do that.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:56, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Concur. The current range of 40,000 to 200,000 should remain. --Yaush (talk) 04:12, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I guess I'll add that to the article. It's not in there now. I cleaned-up this article several months ago because it had a "citation needed" tag and needed to be trimmed somewhat. At the time I deleted any specific estimate of the death toll because I thought that by doing so I could avoid having another debate like this one on the precise range of estimates to use. As you can see I failed. However, since most people seem to want to have an estimate I think, as you indicate, there is a good case, from my post here to use the scholarly consensus of 40,000 to 200,000 massacre victims. I'll add that and see how it goes.CurtisNaito (talk) 04:22, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Oppose. According to the discussion in Talk:Nanking_Massacre/Archive_8, the consensus is 40K to 300K. If anyone wants to challenge the consensus, please go to that talk page and ask to start a new discussion. --MtBell 05:31, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Oppose. At first, there was a consensus from a 2 month long discussion which you involved. You cannot dismiss this consensus before. Then the source you offered doesn't demonstrate a scholarly consensus. I have listed lots of source which claimed the figure 300,000. Hence, the previous consensus is more suitable for all of these sources. Miracle dream (talk) 19:51, 22 December 2014‎

Concur with Curtis Naito and Yaush.TH1980 (talk) 21:40, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Bombing

A user recently inserted a comment into the article that the Japanese made "900 sorties" over Nanking, but that could be misinterpreted. Though the source does day that 900 aircraft participated in attacks on Nanking, a "sortie" can also refer to a mission involving several aircraft. In his previous sentence, Kasahara states that the Japanese air force attacked Nanking 50 times. Therefore, by some definitions one can say that "50 sorties" were made (involving 900 aircraft). However, that is only one set of estimates. Kasahara actually gives several sets of estimates and does not say which ones are most reliable. Text was also inserted which says that the Japanese were "aiming at both military targets and civilian facilities", but it might be more accurate to say "military and government facilities". Apart from government facilities, Kasahara notes in his 1997 book Nankin Jiken that the Japanese were not deliberately targeting civilian facilities. The Japanese were telling their flyers that it didn't matter whether or not they hit their targets square on, so it was common that purely civilian targets were hit, though Kasahara does not say that they were being aimed at. I'd rather limit how much we talk about the bombing though, because that started long before the Battle of Nanking and long before the Japanese were contemplating marching on Nanking. In some ways it might be better defined as a part of the Battle of Shanghai.CurtisNaito (talk) 13:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Find a dictionary, CurtisNaito. A "sortie" means a flight of a single aircraft in a military operation. I am really curious how 900 sorties in 110 days could be "non-stopping" and "continually obstructing" Chinese preparation for war. Could you stop blustering for Japanese imperialism?

Japanese aircrafts bombed hospitals, schools, densely populated areas and refugee camps. My university was also bombed with 8 250-kg bombs. This is history. Live with it. Your edit is reverted. --MtBell 14:48, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

MtBell, please keep it civil. We can still find a consensus on this. I thought that by some definitions "sortie" involves more than one aircraft because Wikipedia says that a sortie may involve "one or more aircraft". Still, whether or not that's true, we'll just change it to use the word "aircraft" so it's more clear. I've been trying to stick with the wording of the sources here, and Kasahara simply does not say that the Japanese were aiming at civilian facilities, except for government ones. I'll change "aiming" to "hitting" to make the text fit the source better. Kasahara does describe the bombing as being "nonstop", but upon re-reading it, Kasahara does not specify to what extent the raids obstructed defense preparations, so we'll leave that part out.

Furthermore, I've already explained why we shouldn't include the Nanking Massacre estimates of the postwar war crimes trials. Two of the sources you cited for the death toll estimates have explicitly refuted their validity. For the purpose of this article, we should stick with reliable figures, not widely disputed ones. There is clearly no consensus for a death toll range of 40,000 to 300,000, but if consensus can be built to it, I'm now open to the possibility of an extended scholarly consensus which increases the top figure to 300,000 and lowers the bottom figure to 10,000. That would be the scholarly consensus, plus higher and lower fringe figures.CurtisNaito (talk) 15:08, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

1) A single military aircraft can carry out several sorties. For example, Japan's 2nd United Air Force Unit launched 289 sorties between September 19th and 25th, with 72 aircrafts not 289 aircrafts as your understanding.

2) I don't think schools and hospitals are government facilities.

3) For the estimated range of the massacre victims, I am following the consensus achieved in the main article. Respect it, unless you manage to reach a new one. --MtBell 15:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

As I said though, I wanted to stick with the wording of the original sources. In the original version of Kasahara's book he states that 900 aircraft participated in some way or another in the bombing. He does not say that there were 900 sorties. Kasahara explains in a few paragraphs in Nankin Jiken that purely civilian facilities were not specifically targeted, but they were hit because the Japanese Air Force was instructing their flyers that they did not always have to score direct hits on their targets. On the death toll of the massacre, we'll need a consensus for that. Right now not even a bare majority on the talk page agree with you. We are just going to have to keep talking about it until we can come to an agreement.CurtisNaito (talk) 16:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

You made me laugh, CurtisNaito. You are misrepresenting the sources, AGAIN. This evening, I will translate what Kasahara really wrote in his book. Now you still have time to withdraw your LIE. --MtBell 16:15, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

In the original source he says "参加延機数は九00余機". The total number of aircraft that participated was over 900. Could it be that the Chinese version says something different? Even if so, we should stick to the original.CurtisNaito (talk) 16:26, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

That was "more than 900 sorties". Do you have any idea of the Japanese air force strength in battle? This evening I will list details of all Japanese air force units involved in the Battle of Shanghai and Nanking. --MtBell 16:55, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

The point is that I translated it correctly. Whether Kasahara is right or not is another story. I wouldn't be surprised if the statistic was an exaggeration as the Japanese military was often very boastful of their achievements. Even so, Kasahara doesn't say that it is an exaggeration so we shouldn't say that either. The exact same source says that the Japanese made fifty attacks on Nanking, so if we at least agree on that, then let's just put "fifty attacks" in instead and forget about the 900 whatevers.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:02, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

For the statistics, what I cited is Zhang's Nanjing Massacre: a complete history, not Kasahara's book. I will check whether Zhang's book quoted documents from China or Japan. --MtBell 17:12, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

You also cited Kasahara's book, which I have read, and the statistics cited above do come from Japanese sources. In fact, as Kasahara notes, they were the official figures calculated by the Japanese military. If Zhang did his own calculations and came up with something different, we could try including both sets of figures, but I'm hesitant to do that. If this is an area where historians disagree, then for this article we should leave out the controversy. Most of the bombing took place between August 15 and December 1, before the Battle of Nanking in other words. It's okay to mention the bombing briefly, but delving into historical controversies about competing statistics is beyond the scope of an article which is actually about the Battle of Nanking, not the bombing of Nanking. Maybe we should just put "fifty attacks" into the article, unless you know of a source which disputes that number also.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:20, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

I cited Kasahara's book as a source to the Japanese deliberate bombing to civilian facilities. However, it's good to know that you have realized that the Japanese authority tended to exagerate their strength. So forget about your "non-stopping" air raids and "inexorable" advances. --MtBell 17:30, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

It's well known that the Japanese side exaggerated any victories they achieved while the Chinese side tried to downplay any losses they incurred. A mention of that has already been noted in the article for some time now. When possible, I generally favor estimates calculated by modern scholars, rather than ones quoted from primary sources. The wording which I used for the article though, reflected the wording and tone of the sources. As I said before, Wikipedia should be based on scholarly sources rather than personal opinions.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good. But "non-stopping air raids continuously obstructed Chinese preparation" is merely your own invention and misrepresentation of Kasahara's book. Stick to the sources next time. Remember that someone here has access to the sources. --MtBell 17:55, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Kasahara notes that there was a raid about every two days, though at their peak the Japanese were bombing three times per night. I guess you have no objection to instead writing that the Japanese made fifty aerial attacks on Nanking, per the source cited?CurtisNaito (talk) 18:00, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Japanese air units available to the battle

1st United Air Group 第1聯合航空隊(木更津航空隊、鹿屋航空隊)：中攻38，鑑戰12
2nd United Air Group 第2聯合航空隊(第12、13、21、22航空隊)：鑑戰24，鑑爆30，鑑攻12，水偵12
第23航空隊：水偵12

Total: 140 military aircrafts. What CurtisNaito asserts "900 aircraft participated in attacks on Nanking" is impossible. --MtBell 22:59, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, we'll leave that out then. It was not in the article at the time you posted this message. Maybe the Navy was exaggerating, or maybe Kasahara misinterpreted the statement, or maybe they were including Army planes as well or something. Whatever the case may be, we can leave that and other disputed statistics out of the article.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Japanese air attacks on civilians and civilian facilities

CurtisNaito asserts that "Kasahara notes in his 1997 book Nankin Jiken that the Japanese were not deliberately targeting civilian facilities". Let's see what Kasahara really have written in his book:

"... airfields, factories, railways, bridges, government administrations, the Central University, the Central Hospital, power plants, water plants and even the densely populated Xinjiekou all became attacking targets."
"... the Central Hospital was also a target... Japanese aircrafts bombed the hospital, totally ignoring the huge red cross painted on the roof."
"On August 26, the British Ambassador to China, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, was machine-gunned by Japanese aircrafts in his car which was then flying British flags." (firing "undeliberately" with machine guns?)
"The Japanese (air) forces also targeted on hospitals accomodating injured soldiers."

According to Kasahara's book, it's quite clear that civilian facilities were purposely bombed by Japanese. --MtBell 23:39, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

You're not reading the same version of the book as I am apparently. I have a 1997 edition of the Japanese version in front of me and, for starters, it doesn't mention the Knatchbull-Hugessen incident anywhere, or at least not in the first 140 pages. Secondly, the word "target" which you keep on repeating is in most cases not present in the copy I'm reading. It says that bombs were dropped ("陸用爆弾が投下され") but if you read on page 34 Kasahara notes that the basic situation was that the air forces of Japan did not care whether or not they hit their targets directly, which is why purely civilian structures were destroyed. I'm curious if you're reading a different edition. The Chinese edition maybe? Because I can't understand, for instance, where you read about the Knatchbull-Hugessen incident which does not appear to be in the book. Kasahara noted in his book Nankin Jiken to Nihongun that his books are sometimes manipulated and censured during the translation process into Chinese so that may be a factor. At any rate, you still have no reason to switch the Nanking Massacre death toll estimates with a version that is not in accordance with either scholarly consensus or the consensus of users. Going against consensus like that makes it unlikely that the article will remain stable.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

In case you want to know the wording used by Kasahara, he says that the attitude of the Japanese air force was 誤爆をしてかまわない(we don't care if accidental bombings happen). I think for this article we can just say that the Japanese "hit" military and civilian facilities. If there is a scholarly debate on the extent to which it is deliberate, then we can leave that to a future article on the Bombing of Nanking. I know that there's room elsewhere on Wikipedia to deal with this, but for the purpose of an article on the Battle of Nanking we should use neutral language that accurately summarizes our sources.

I also want to say that it's important to assume good faith in negotiations. You said earlier that my description of "China's defense preparations were, however, continually obstructed by nonstop Japanese air raids" was "your own invention", but that wasn't really a fair statement. Kasahara repeatedly notes that the Japanese air force was launching daily or near daily wave attacks on Nanking and on the same pages that that he mentions this (page 33 for example) he also notes that the attacks targeted Nanking's defenses. I was fine with deleting that statement since Kasahara does not say to what extent the defense preparations were actually "obstructed" by the nonstop Japanese attacks that targeted them, but the statement was hardly an invention. If you think that I ever misinterpreted in this article anything Kasahara has written, then you're probably just reading some other version of what Kasahara wrote, maybe a poor Chinese translation or something. Some of the things you quoted in the last paragraph don't seem to be in the Japanese original at all.

Incidentally though, it's concerning that we are spending this much space in the Battle of Nanking talk page discussing the bombing of Nanking, which largely occurred BEFORE the battle, and the Nanking Massacre, which largely occurred AFTER the battle. We've said very little about the actual Battle of Nanking which is the topic I would rather have this article focused on.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:54, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I am wondering when you would admit that I am citing in my edits Kasahara's another related book One hundred days in the Nanking Safety Zone. It's clearly another book as the information I provided in the reflist, and you should not attack its reliability by "poor translation" or something else. Anyway, I can understand why you want to delete the content about Japan's deliberate attack on civilians and hospitals. Such dark history may be too hard for you, but including these historical facts is a must to achieve a balanced article required by NPOV, regardless of your personal emotions or beliefs. This is history.

I have my own plan of re-organizing contents including the air raids, the evacuation, Japan's devastating march, etc. The air raids were part of the military actions by Japan and also a reason of Nanking's evacuation. Japan's march from Shanghai to Nanking was so brutal because of Japan's poor supply organization. Killing, raping and looting along Japan's march was the prelude to the Nanking Massacre. They should be part of the article. I hope you can be patient, stop attacking my every edit and wait for some time until you have good reasons. That would save a lot of time and reduce meaningless debates. ---MtBell 09:42, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

You said in your last post you were quoting Kasahara's 1997 book Nankin Jiken. But at any rate, my main interest here is ensuring that due weight is given to the material most pertinent to the article's subject, the Battle of Nanking. MtBell, you're talking about how "Such dark history may be too hard for you" but when I cleaned up this article, I not only trimmed the section on the bombing of Nanking, but also the section on the scorched earth tactics employed by the Chinese Army. That section used to be five paragraphs long. The older version of this article said that the Chinese "were determined to turn every Chinese national and every piece of their soil into ash... They incinerated nearly all of the Xiaguan district. Targets within and outside of the city walls—such as military barracks, private homes, the aforementioned Chinese Ministry of Communication, forests and even entire villages—were burnt to cinders". I shortened this to one sentence.

I did not delete that because "Such dark history may be too hard". I am not an apologist for the atrocities and war crimes of the Chinese Army and I don't think that you are just because you don't seem to want to reinsert this information. However, this article, which focuses heavily on the actual fighting, the battle in other words, did not have room for five paragraphs condemning China's ruthless scorching of Chinese homes and people. The scorched earth policy reached its peak on December 7 and is therefore more relevant to the actual Battle of Nanking than the bombing which started back on August 15 or the massacres which took place after December 13. However, it was simply too much to cover in this already long article.

In the long run I would like to see an article on the Bombing of Nanking covering all this data. I would also like to see an article on the scorched earth policies employed by the Chinese military. Of course, there already is an article on the Nanking Massacre, which is actually the best place for a lot of the material you want to add. For the purpose of this article both of those subjects need to be kept relatively brief to leave room for the actual battle. This battle lasted only thirteen days, but the main body of the article is getting close to being as long as the article on the Battle of Guadalcanal, which lasted over six months!! For instance, the unreliable estimates made by the postwar war crimes tribunals definitely do not belong in this article as they have been supplanted by more recent, scholarly estimates, something acknowledged by the very same sources you cited in the article. There's a place on Wikipedia for the older, now discredited estimates, but it is not here. I think I'm being reasonable in saying that we can't stuff this article full of too much extra material on Chinese war crimes. And likewise, we can't stuff it too full with extra material on Japanese war crimes.CurtisNaito (talk) 14:09, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Burial records: 40K is not the total of all buried corpses

According to the source cited by CurtisNaito, 40K is only the portion that the Red Swastika had buried. CurtisNaito should not misuse this number as the total of all buried corpses. Please note that even the source admits that there were other burial teams.

The Red Cross Society of Nanking kept their daily and monthly burial records from January to May, in which the corposes buried totaled more than 22K.
Detailed records of the Red Swastika and the Red Cross show that their burial works only covered the western half of the walled city and its direct vicinity near the Yangtse River outside the west walls. Newly discovered official burial requests for corpses in the eastern half of the city were all sent from the district administrations to Chongshantang, which reported around 100K corpses buried in the eastern half and adjacent rural areas.
Another charity organizaiton, Tongshantang, also reported more than 7 thousand buried according to their team leaders' testimony, covering the vicinity ouside the South Gate.
The Bureau of Burial Works (Daizangju) reported more than 10 thousand buried.
Other charity organizations were also involved in burial works: Shun'an Charity, around 1500; Mingde Charity, more than 700; Guangli Charity Society, around 3 thousand.

In summary, 40K is neither the total of all buried corpses nor can be served as an estimate of all victims. This burial statistic is incomplete and is unnecessary in the article, since the total estimate of all victims is already given. --MtBell 01:56, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I think that part should remain. To quote the book, "It is thus doubtful that the Red Swastika statistics contain only its own data... Based on these analyses, one may conclude that the Red Swastika Society’s document describes the bulk of the burial activities in Nanking. It also reveals that the vast majority of victims were men, and that women and children accounted for only 129 of over 40,000 corpses. The predominance of men suggests that the majority of the victims in Nanking died in military-related situations, that is, either in combat or by execution." Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi in his edited volume "The Nanking Atrocity" and David Askew in his detailed essay "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing" both concur with Yamamoto's assessment. According to Askew, "virtually all primary sources agree that a single organization, the Red Swastika Society, was responsible for burials." CurtisNaito (talk) 02:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I divided your comments into several parts to which I will answer one by one. Let us focus on the burial records and resolve this problem first.

Please provide the context of the point of views you quoted from works by Yamamoto, Wakabayashi and Askew. For now I don't see how they draw to the conclusion or make the assumption that "the Red Swastika Society’s document describes the bulk of the burial activities", and "a single organization, the Red Swastika Society, was responsible for burials". These asserts contradict to what I have read. Please list documents as evidences on which these asserts are based. I hope Yamamoto, Wakabayashi or Askew didn't make their assumptions simply by guessing. --MtBell 08:47, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Each of them cites their own evidence. All three of these individuals are specialist scholars who have devoted entire books and peer-reviewed article exclusively to these subjects and they are the kind of scholars that the article should give priority to. For all the extensive data they provide, I think you'll just have to read them, especially Askew's essay which is VERY detailed, but I'll try to summarize the gist of what they are saying and the sources they use. Yamamoto notes, for instance, that discrepancies exist between contemporary data on the Red Swastika Society's burials while they were taking place and the Society's final tallies which were much larger. Yamamoto notes that if the Red Swastika Society's burial stats and the Red Cross Society's burial stats were added together, it would come close to filing the gap. Miner Searle Bates estimated the death toll of the Nanking Massacre at 40,000 based apparently off analysis of burial statistics made by the Red Swastika Society, but he explicitly wrote that their statistics came from multiple organizations, not one. Askew uses a variety primary sources, all of which emphasized the leading role played by the Red Swastika Society in doing burial work, and concludes and all the other organizations, including the Red Cross Society, were subcontracting with the Red Swastika Society and that is why their burial statistics were all included together. Therefore adding the Red Swastika Society's stats with any of the other stats, such as those of the Red Cross Society, is actually double-counting. Between Askew and Yamamoto, Askew is a bit more strident in insisting that everything was done by the Red Swastika Society, whereas Yamamoto just concludes that they did the "bulk" of the burials. All three sources concur that the Chongshantang's burial statistics were fabricated. The Chongshantang claimed to have buried three times the number of corpses that the Red Swastika Society buried, though no contemporary eyewitnesses ever saw the men of the Chongshantang doing a significant number of burials. Askew notes that one of the very few contemporary documents that actually does mention the Chongshantang says that it was NOT involved in burial work! In other words, the Red Swastika Society was the main organization doing burials, and it added into its own statistics the statistics of its subcontractors and other associate groups. If the books you've been reading don't even mention this research, I would suspect those books are very badly out of date. Although the works of Yamamoto, Wakabayashi, and Askew are quite new, most of the basic information on which they are based has been around since the 1980's.CurtisNaito (talk) 09:43, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Askew's description of the Red Swastika as "the only organization involved in burial works" is not worth of refuting. Even the other two scholars, as what you mentioned, admit that there were other organizations burying corpses in Nanking. Askew was just playing the old tune of the delialists which collapsed long before.

"Yamamoto notes, for instance, that discrepancies exist between contemporary data on the Red Swastika Society's burials while they were taking place and the Society's final tallies which were much larger."

Having checked the daily burial records quoted in Xianwen Zhang's Nanking Massacre: a complete history published in 2012, I don't see any discrepancy. The records were in great details. Not only were the number of corpses processed each day recorded, but also reported locations where the corpses were found as well as tomb sites. The records were created in 1938, dating from January to October, totaled 43071 bodies. The "discrepancy" noted by Yamamoto is simply because he cited an incomplete record which was created in March, lacking the stats in the following 7 months. Furthermore, Yamamoto quoted Bate's letter written in March that Bates estimated 10K victims insdie the walled city by burial records from organizatioins involved. However, this is a strong evidence against Yamamoto's claim. Bates' letter showed that the Red Swastika was not, the primary orgnization burying corpses inside the walled city (as what Yamamoto claimed), for Zhang's book cited the Red Swastika's burial count within the walled city was only 1793 by March, a figure far less than the total 10K reported by Bates in the same month.

"Yamamoto notes that if the Red Swastika Society's burial stats and the Red Cross Society's burial stats were added together, it would come close to filing the gap."

Yamamoto has mistaken coincidence for logical reasoning. It is an apparent logical error. And, as explained above, there was no gap between the stats at all.

"Askew ... concludes and all the other organizations, including the Red Cross Society, were subcontracting with the Red Swastika Society... "

Though Askew's "conclusion" is as biased and unreliable as the denialists', I'd like to cite Zhang's book to refute it in details, with daily burial records of the Red Cross and the Red Swastika. The daily records of the Red Cross total 22691, while the Red Swastika's amount to 43071. Noting that the geographical regions of the corpses found by the two organizations did not overlap at all, one must admit that the claim by Askew and Yamamoto, that the corpose count of the Red Cross was part of the Red Swastika's, is incorrect and absolutely impossible. Since the complete records are too lengthy, I only quote their records in February 1938.

Red Swastika	Corpses buried	Locations where coprses were collected	Red Cross (Team A)	Corpses buried	Locations where coprses were collected
			Feb. 1	38	龙江桥
Feb. 2	19	汉中路	Feb. 2	210	护城河
			Feb. 3	161	和平门
			Feb. 4	165	三水桥
			Feb. 5	145	四所
Feb. 6	49	龙蟠里	Feb. 6	91	煤炭港
Feb. 7	149、843	西仓、水西门	Feb. 7	43	三岔河
Feb. 8	457	上新河	Feb. 8	105	和平门车站
Feb. 9	125、85、185、186	水西门外大街等处	Feb. 9	68	扬子江边
			Feb. 10	39	下关热河路
Feb. 11	20、272、34	上海路、水西门	Feb. 11	33	三叉河
Feb. 12	1191	渡固里	Feb. 12	69	龙江桥
			Feb. 13	31	电灯厂
Feb. 14	109、82、328	古林寺、棒球场、中央监狱	Feb. 14	59	大同面厂
Feb. 15	81	观音庵	Feb. 15	37	护城河
Feb. 16	244	凤凰西街	Feb. 16	54	铁路桥
			Feb. 17	31	扬子江边
Feb. 18	1123、38	汉中门外河边、上新河	Feb. 18	29	下关天保路
Feb. 19	672、524	金陵大学、鱼雷营	Feb. 19	45	和平门
Feb. 20	154、30、197	东门街、西康路、龙池庵、鱼雷营	Feb. 20	64	旱西门
Feb. 21	226、5000、147、115、217、151	鱼雷营、幕府山旁、草鞋峡、上新河	Feb. 21	32	下关和记
Feb. 22	151、300	鱼雷营	Feb. 22	21	扬子江边
Feb. 23	106	城内	Feb. 23	27	龙江桥
Feb. 24	85	下关各处	Feb. 24	7	下关惠民桥
Feb. 25	1903、194	幕府山旁、煤炭港	Feb. 25	22	下关新民门
			Feb. 26	36	龙江桥
Feb. 27	337、591	三牌楼、上元门内	Feb. 27	27	龙江桥
Feb. 28	87	三牌楼	Feb. 28	39	大同面厂

I keep the Chinese names of the places so that you can search by Google maps and have a visual impression of the different coverage of the two organizations. --MtBell 12:33, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

None of those authors is a denialist in any way. Askew shows that primary sources of the time acknowledge the Red Swastika Society as playing the central role in the burial effort. Large-scale burials efforts would not likely have been possible without the backing of the Japanese, and the Japanese were supporting only the Red Swastika Society. The Japanese were making notes on the Society's burial efforts and, as Yamamoto notes, the statistics which the Red Swastika Society finally unveiled after the war were different in key ways. Askew includes in his book the breakdown of the statistics of the burial organizations, but he notes that the final tallies recorded by the organizations were often modified much later. The daily breakdowns seem to not have been actually recorded on the days the burials took place. For instance, the Red Cross Society claimed to have buried many thousands of individuals just outside the walls of Nanking at the end of December and beginning of January, but both Japanese documents and testimony of Chinese burial workers reveal that no burials were undertaken outside the walls until January 21 1938. Bates based his estimate solely off the Red Swastika data, but Yamamoto notes that he fully acknowledged at the same time that their data included burials by other organizations. The conclusion of Askew and Yamamoto is that the Red Cross data was part of the Red Swastika's Society's final burial tallies.

Having said that, why don't we just add "by the Red Swastika Society" after "buried"? Can we agree on that?CurtisNaito (talk) 13:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

(I would agree. That sounds like a fair compromise.)TH1980 (talk) 08:01, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

But while the Red Swastika Society figures include almost all the burials, they don't represent the full death toll because they don't include destroyed corpses and, as far as broad-range massacre victims go, they don't include victims in the remote rural areas. In order to ensure readers aren't confused, I've agreed to put a death toll estimate alongside this information ... CurtisNaito (talk) 02:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

describing atrocities related to the battle only

Concerning the statement about the burial statistics, basically I didn't want the section on the Nanking Massacre to be nothing more than a summary of that article. I wanted to focus primarily on the components of the massacre which were related in some way to military activity. Most the sources I consulted for this article seem to agree that a majority if not a very large majority of the victims of the atrocity were POWs and suspected POWs. Many of these individuals were rounded up during the mopping-up operations that took place after the battle and massacred. The way the mopping-up operations were undertaken was linked directly to the outcome of the battle, in which the Chinese Army did not surrender or retreat, but rather, the Army basically just collapsed, with the former troops throwing away their uniforms and going into hiding. This demonstrates the linkages that existed between the Battle of Nanking and the Nanking Massacre.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

about the consensus

...but we should use the consensus of 40,000 to 200,000. Most of the people we've consulted so far at least disagree that the alleged consensus of 40,000 to 300,000 currently exists, and in fact Zmflavius and myself don't seem to think such a consensus ever existed.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

but we should use the consensus of 40,000 to 300,000. in fact Zmflavius never deny the consensus before, however, he said he did not want to join this debate again. I know you consulted Yaush, but he did not deny consensus existed before but after 10 months, he started to rethink this problem. Then in my memory,there are 10 users in that discussion,However, I knew you think such a consensus ever existed. Miracle dream (talk)

Death toll

What I see from the book "China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945" [4]. The figure from Marvin Williamsen is "Trapped Chinese troops were treated with frightening barbarity by their conquerors. As a matter of policy all were tortured and butchered. But soldiers were hardly the only victims of the nearly incredibly cruelty and the vicious, uncontrolled behavior of the Japanese troops. After recounting some, but only some, of the unspeakable horros visited upon the residentes of Nanking in two weeks of outrage. Over 20,000 civilian men of military age had been slaughtered. At least 20,000 young women and girls had been raped, murdered, and then gruesomely mutilated. Over 200,000 civilians,and possibly as many as 300,000, had been senselessly massacred" 03:16, 27 December 2014 Miracle dream (talk)

It's clear how poor those statistics are though. They are actually from Frank Dorn, not Marvin Williamsen. Dorn wrote his book back in 1974 before very much research had been done on the massacre. His entire book has no sources and no citations and he never states how his figures were calculated or what data his estimates were based off. My suspicion is that he took his numbers from the verdict of the IMTFE, but he was fairly careless in the way he recorded his data. He gives "over 200,000 civilians" as the death toll of the massacre, without providing a citation but most likely from the IMTFE verdict. However, in the previous sentence of his book he says the Japanese killed "over 20,000 civilian men" a statement which seems to be taken directly taken from Miner Searle Bates' testimony at the IMTFE. However these two estimates are mutually exclusive because, as David Askew made very clear in his article "The Scale of Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing", Bates did not accept the validity of the Chongshantang burial records which the IMTFE did include. It's like I said before, for the purposes of this article we should focus on up-to-date and reliable estimates. Information by specialist scholars who have stated how they calculated their data is ideal. Dorn was a military office. He was not a historian at all, much less a historian of the Nanking Massacre. His estimates are of completely unknown origins and are clearly not reliable.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:40, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Really, It's clear those statistics are very poor because you think they are poor. Even Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen are history scholar and have professional experience in this area. They are still poor because you think they are poor,right? Marvin Williamsen cited this figures in his publication. It would be really silly to say that it's excellent for a Wikipedia editor to read some sources from some publications or judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and write his own description of it or simply deny it, but that it's impossibly bad to have actual professionals read and research and write a description of it. Amateurs are not always better than professionals, especially when it comes to evaluating something technical. As I said, Marvin Williamsen has professional experience in this area and he is a professor and scholar. When he cited something, that means he agree with this except he want to debate with this. It is impossible bad to say some professors read and research some sources and cited materials. Also, this sources has been published. In wiki rule, if there is a reliable publication, we should neutrally cited each of them. I said before, I personally suspect the figures from 40,000 to 150,000 but I can accept it because I always try to follow the wiki rule. However, you will never accept figures you suspected even they are from some publication of professional scholars. This is a kind of un-neural attitude in wiki or we can call it as personal interest. Now in this case, you are one of amateurs here but Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen are professional scholar. As I said, amateurs are not always better than professionals, and actually in common cases, amateurs are much worse than professional scholar. Do you know why I use figures from these two professors? It is because they are Americans. Actually whenever I use figures from Chinese scholars, you always simply ignore them while I always accepted figures from Japanese scholars. It is really unfair.

Then it seems you always forgot an important wiki principle here. That is wiki is not the place for academic seminar. Nobody can do original research here and every figures should be neutrally cited from publication. Hence, when the sources are publications from some famous professional scholars, it simply follow the rule of wiki. When you deny the figures from professional scholars' publication by some of your opinion, it is simply a kind of original research.

Then it is very silly to simply deny figures from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal by 1 or 2 week discussion among the wiki amateurs. As I said, it is another kind of original research. Expecially, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East spent two years by 11 countries to investigate the rape and massacre.

It is really funny to deny the sources from 1974. By this theory, after 10 years, we should delete all contents of wiki because we should consider all of these sources are out of date. Can you imagine to deny the figures from Nuremberg trials when we research Holocaust? Do you know Commentarii de Bello Gallico and Records of the Grand Historian were even used today as the primary sources for history research. They were written in 2000 years ago. Did you see any scholar deny them because they are all out of date?

By the way, there is another funny thing here. We cannot use figures from Chinese or Taiwanese scholars. We cannot even use figures from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal which were two of the most important event in WW2. However, we can use any figures from Japanese scholars. In this discussion, it seems we should not use every sources which supported or cited from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal but we should use any sources which deny them. It is a really "neural" way to cite sources.

Hence, all questions I need to ask are "Is the book a publication from scholars","are Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen professional scholar?", "Did Marvin Williamsen use this figure in his publication?"07:28, 27 December 2014‎ Miracle dream (talk)

Claims based off evidence are more valid than claims based off nothing. Dorn provided no citations for his estimates and did not say how he calculated them. The same is true of the Christian Science Monitor article. Probably these two sources just copied their estimates from the postwar war crimes trials, but they could have just as easily invented them out of thin air. A claim which has no evidence to back it up is NOT equivalent to the thorough research done by Nanking Massacre specialists like Wakabayashi. Wakabayashi provides extensive details on the burial data, eyewitness accounts, and Japanese military records that he used to determine the empirically valid range of figures. This is clearly a superior estimate. No wonder Leibold called it "the most careful and thoroughly empirical analysis of the death count to date". Furthermore, we shouldn't say that "40,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians" were massacred, firstly because only one of the three sources you cite indicates only civilians. Wakabayashi and Leibold include the separate category of POWs in their range, and the Christian Science Monitor article just says "Chinese", not civilians specifically. But at any rate, it's not appropriate to take the carefully calculated range of estimates made in 2008 by a specialist scholar (Wakabayashi's 40,000 to 200,000) and then simply tack onto it the mysteriously calculated figure of 300,000 dredged up from an old 1974 book without any citations and a short newspaper article also without any sources. It's not hard to see which works here ought to be considered more reliable by Wikipedia standards, and it's an inappropriate synthesis to simply combine together a reliable estimate with an unreliable one and then somehow title them the "most reliable sources". Given how many recent and high-quality estimates have been made in recent decades for the death toll of the Nanking Massacre, there is simply no imaginable reason why, for this article, we should use clearly discredited estimates like those of the postwar war crimes tribunals. Some of the very same sources you have cited, including Kasahara and Wakabayashi, have strongly called into question their conclusions. If you believe so strongly that the IMTFE made a highly reliable estimate of the massacre, it only shows that you have not yet read the sources you are citing in the article. If you just read these sources, you can see that my questioning of the estimates of the tribunals is not original research, but rather the latest research of modern scholars. Between Records of the Grand Historian, and a more recent history book by, say, John Fairbank, obviously Wikipedians would favor the more recent research. Between citing the Bible, and citing a more recent history book by, say, Bart Ehrman, obviously Wikipedians would favor Ehrman. You say that Records of the Grand Historian is a great primary source, but you must remember that Wikipedia is not supposed to be based off primary sources. If nothing had been written on the Nanking Massacre since the 1940's, then of course the postwar war crime trials would be the best sources to cite, but why cite such old sources which are so widely criticized when more recent and more widely acclaimed scholarship does in fact exist? As Wikipedians, we do have to analyze sources for reliability, and not just include every published source equally. Published sources written by credentialed scholars have put the death toll of the Nanking Massacre between zero at minimum and ten million at maximum, but even if a small number of non-specialist historians put an estimate into a book, that does not automatically make that estimate equally valid to every other estimate in existence. If we are not allowed to analyze sources for reliability, then we would be required to write in zero to ten million as the correct range of estimates. However, if we take a look at recent scholarship by specialist historians, research which we can believe based on EVIDENCE rather than pure faith, then the range of 40,000 to 200,000 stated by Wakayabashi emerges as the overwhelmingly dominant set of figures.CurtisNaito (talk) 07:42, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

No, totally wrong. Between Records of the Grand Historian, and a more recent history book by, say, John Fairbank, obviously Wikipedians will neurally cite both even they have some of conflict. This is the rule of wiki which required every editor neurally cited each other. Then every scholar who want to research Chinese history will read and research the book Records of the Grand Historian but not all scholar will cite sources from John Fairbank. It is because the book written in that time will more easily get the concurrent information. For example, we record something happened today will be more accuracy than something happened in 20 years ago. This is the history not engineering technical problem. Even history professional scholar will not say something like sources from John Fairbank is more accuracy Records of the Grand Historian. When you said something like this, you just prove you are one of the amateurs. I know you don't believe Bible, However I don't want to talk much about Bible because it involved some religious problem.

"Claims based off evidence are more valid than claims based off nothing" No, there are two problem here. The first is actually claims based off investigation is the most valid. Why every scholar need to research International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal? It is simply because they used more than two years to investigate this thing.

The second is what I said It would be really silly to say that it's excellent for a Wikipedia editor to read some sources from some publications or judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and write his own description of it or simply deny it, but that it's impossibly bad to have actual professionals read and research and write a description of it. When a professional scholar cited sources or claims, they do research here. Now what you do here is you ignore the sources from professional scholars by your own standard but it is not the wiki standard. Some scholar based on their own research to write a professional claims. Then we use our amateurs analysis to deny the summary from professional scholar.

Whatever you think, Wakayabashi is also one of huge numbers of scholars. It just like Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen are two of scholars in this area. We can neutrally cite all of materials from them. I find some figures from previously discussion.

On December 13, 1937, the Japanese troop entered Nanjing, beginning a six-week bloodbath in which an estimated 300,000 Chienese civilians were killed.[footnote]Official PRC histography has placed the number of death at around 300,000 (some even take this number as conservative and place the number close to 450,000). Some Japanese revisionists claim as few as 5,000 died; others claim the entire incident was a fabrication. Most Western scholars accepted the 300,000 death toll.[/footnote]--Michael Berry, A History of Pain, Columbia University Press, 2013 (isbn:9780231512008)

Well, in that case, what you do think about actually including a death toll estimate range of zero to ten million in the article? I have citations from published sources for both of those figures.

Concerning Hora Tomio, his own books mention the death toll of 200,000 but that includes Chinese soldiers killed in action. For an English-language source, see Takashi Yoshida's The Making of the Rape of Nanking, which says "Hora estimated that some 100,000 combatants were killed while fighting and that 100,000 civilians were killed during and after the battle."

Concerning Barry, he provides no citation for his claim, which does include one clear factual error anyway. If you read Jonathan Spence's book The Search for Modern China, he does NOT estimate the death toll of the massacre at 50,000. What he says is that contemporary sources put the figure at 40,000. I would guess he was probably referring to Miner Searle Bates and Lewis Smythe. Spence never said that he agreed with that figure. But at any rate, if we utilize your policy of accepting all sources equally, the correct range based on Berry would be zero to 450,000. Would you be alright with using zero to 450,000 as the appropriate range for this article?CurtisNaito (talk) 08:24, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't accept the claim that Dorn or the IMTFE constitute serious scholarship on the death toll at Nanking. I have a copy of Dorn's The Sino-Japanes War, 1937-41 and it is full of unsubstantiated opinion coming from an obviously jaundiced observer. Dorn was a staff officer in CBI during the Second World War; he was not a trained historian. IMTFE was far too close to the events in question, and, frankly, far from impartial -- I emphasize that this is no denial of the Japanese pattern of war criminality; the destruction of the Japanese Empire was a blessing to mankind. Nor am I impressed with the repeated appeal to a consensus from ten months ago in a different article, particularly since I was part of that consensus but have since been persuaded by CurtisNaito otherwise.

If we are going to give a range of casualty figures in this article, they should be a range casualty figures that the best scholarship place in the realm of the possible, and it seems clear to me now that 40,000-200,000 is that range. Figures as high as 300,000 or as low as 10,000 are of historiographic interest only and, while they might be discussed on that basis on the Rape of Nanking article, they have no place here. --Yaush (talk) 16:43, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if you have ever examined how the 40K estimate was made. That is really the historiographical one, forged to meet the demand of the Japanese conservatives. They confine the duration to the shortest, the geographical range to the smallest (walled city), and exclude all POW and most male civilian deaths as "legitimate execution". --MtBell 19:39, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

"Hisoriographical." I don't think that word means what you think it means. But, whatever. What you you think is the lowest credible casualty number? And based on what sources? --Yaush (talk) 19:52, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I guess you mean "historiographical"?--MtBell 20:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

It's true that 40,000 is on the low end of mainstream estimates, but I think Wakabayashi made a reasonable choice in including it as the lower bound. The estimate was made by Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata. As noted in this website, Hata's geographical definition of the atrocity is identical to that of the IMTFE. Today many if not most historians use a wider definition that the IMTFE. According to Hata's own book (and also in English in Takashi Yoshida's book The Making of the "Rape of Nanking" and Daqing Yang's essay A Sino-Japanese Controversy), Hata includes the deaths of all unarmed POWs and male civilians in his estimate. What he controversially doesn't include are Chinese soldiers killed on the battlefield in combat-related situations. For instance, the Chinese soldiers who swam across the Yangtze River to escape the Japanese were fired upon and killed by them. Many if not most historians consider this part of the massacre, but Hata doesn't because the killings took place on the battlefield. According to Bob Tad Wakabayashi "Hata's narrower contours produce a lower, yet still academically tenable, victim toll of over 40,000." Some scholars have a good opinion of Hata's research on the massacre though. Marius Jansen called Hata's work "the most reasonable of many Japanese studies" on the massacre. Joshua A. Fogel said the book was "still an authority in the field". David Askew called it "the best introductory work on the Nanjing Incident in any language".CurtisNaito (talk) 20:10, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Yaush I cited publication from Marvin Williamsen and Frank Dorn. You want some good scholar in this area. Actually Marvin Williamsen is Chairperson of the Department of Interdiscipline Studies of Appalachian State University teaching Chinese history and military history, researching direction on US military attachés in China. Frank Dorn is Military attaché in China during the Sino-Japanese War, member of the "last ditchers club" and witness of the massacre, writer and researcher of Chinese wartime history. Then Edward L. Dreyer, who is the professor of history at the University of Miami, claimed "at least 200,000, possibly 300,000"in his book China at War 1901–1949. Lee En-Han, who is Professor at Taiwan University, Singapore University, fellow of the Institute of Modern History and Academia Sinica, claimed from over 200,000 to over 300,000 and over 300,000 is the most reliable estimate in his publication. Zhang Lianhong,Professor at Nanjing Normal University, claimed 300,000. There are so many reputable scholar from different places agree such a range. We had better not ignore all of them. Miracle dream (talk)
However, user CN, I am a little interesting in what you said before. Can you give me a link of Jonathan Spence's book? Don't tell me you can find Jonathan Spence's book. If I can find it, I will not require you to offer the link or picture of it. Last time, I find the figure from Hora Tomio's book which is "over 200,000". You said I was wrong. I came back to check the sources and found it really claimed "over 200,000". It seems you were wrong. Then did you feel some problem here? You asked me to read Takashi Yoshida's The Making of the Rape of Nanking. There are two problem here. At first, I have read the book from Hora Tomio. Why should I read someone cited his work? Then you said his own books mention the death toll of 200,000 but never mentioned how many death in battle. How did Takashi Yoshida get the 100,000 in battle?
Then another interesting thing is to use 0-10 millions. You can try but please give me the source link and tell me the author. I need to see the original sources and who claimed 0. Because Michael Berry claimed Some Japanese revisionists claim as few as 5,000 died; others claim the entire incident was a fabrication. If we used the work from Michael Berry as the source citation, he claimed this is from Japanese revisionists. We should word-for-word cited that it is from Japanese revisionists.Miracle dream (talk)
The most interesting thing here is when users in this discussion required the sources has some citation and evidence offered, they all ignored International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal which not only has citation but also spent more than two years to do the investigation and collected many materials. I was very confuse. If investigation is the most important thing, then International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal is the best sources for this figures. But users try to deny these by some research from parts of scholar. Based on wiki neutral attitude, we should neutrally cited both of these sources (opposite and support) except these sources are fringe theory. However, it is really hard to believe International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal should be considered as the fringe theory. When lots of scholars research the investigation from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, we deny these two by "our wiki academic seminar". It seems we are not editor in wiki but some of reputable professor in this area. Actually based on wiki rule, even we are professors, we should not do research in wiki. We just need to cited publish from scholars. Wiki tried to forbid original research based on rule. I always see someone forget this principle in discussion. Miracle dream (talk)
Wait, I check the judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East [5]. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East claimed "the total number of civilians and prisoners of war ordered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. That these estimates are not exaggerated". I was wrong. Actually International Military Tribunal of the Far East did not claim the death is 200,000 but over 200,000 21:47, 27 December 2014‎ Miracle dream (talk)

Edward L. Dreyer has never written more than a paragraph on the massacre in his whole career and he did not say what data he used to calculate his estimate. Marvin Williamsen has not even written a sentence of his own on the death toll. He just quoted Frank Dorn but Dorn himself did not say where he got his figures from. I doubt Dorn was an eyewitness to the massacre. He didn't say that he was in his book and he was working in Beijing at the time Nanking fell. Lee En-Han is a genuine scholar of the Nanking Massacre who gives an estimate higher than 200,000 but I acknowledged before that estimates above 200,000 and below 40,000 do exist, they just aren't, as Wakabayashi said, "empirically verifiable [and] scholarly valid" and therefore don't belong in an article on the Battle of Nanking, as opposed to the massacre. In Japan historian Takeshi Hara continues to produce many detailed peer-reviewed articles on the Nanking Massacre, but he estimates the death toll at 20,000 to 30,000. As I said, there are some historians outside the range, but we don't need to concern ourselves with the minority for the purposes of this article. If you read Hora Tomio's book, Kindai Senshi no Nazo, you can clearly see he estimates the death toll at 200,000 including various combat deaths. That's exactly what I said before. No Japanese scholar who has studied the Nanking Massacre puts forward a death toll estimate over 200,000. There are some credentialed historians like Shudo Higashinakano who give estimates as low as zero, but as I said, we don't need to delve into fringe figures in this article.

Concerning Jonathan Spence, in his book he says "The female rape victims, many of whom died after repeated assaults, were estimated by foreign observers at 20,000; the fugitive soldiers killed were estimated at 30,000; murdered civilians at 12,000." The total is 42,000 NOT 50,000. However, Spence doesn't say that these are the definitive statistics. He just says that this was the judgment of foreign observers.

Also, the IMTFE gave many estimates for the death toll of the massacre, not just one. In their verdict against Iwane Matsui the IMTFE said the death toll was "upwards of 100,000". The IMTFE did not make a single estimate of the death toll and, as other scholars like Wakabayashi have mentioned, did not really do a good job making any of its estimates. This is the conclusion of modern scholars, not the original research of Wikipedia users.CurtisNaito (talk) 22:28, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

All editors involved are hereby warned that any further contentious edits to the disputed sections, without reaching consensus on the talk page, may result in immediate blocks with no notice. Please, continue the discussion on the talk page and do not perform any further reverts. This does not mean that no blocks will be given for behavior already exhibited; that is up to administrator discretion. Involved editors include, but are not limited to, Miracle dream, MtBell, Curtis Naito, and TH1980. Other editors may face the same sanctions if they come to participate in the warring. Jsharpminor (talk) 00:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Would there be a way to list the death toll like follows:

Country A cites the death toll as 10 As killed indiscriminately. Country B cites the death toll as 8 As killed, all of whom were soldiers.

To acknowledge the difference of opinion and let it stand there? Jsharpminor (talk) 00:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I just wonder how International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal will be considered? The previous one involved 11 countries and spent 2 years to do the investigation. It claimed over 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war were killed in this event. It also claimed more than 20,000 women were raped. If you check the judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East, you will see judge from Australia, Canada, France, India, United State and United Kingdom joined in this judgement. Miracle dream (talk)

I'm not sure such a structure could be used because as far as I know China is the only country with an official position, stating a death toll of roughly 300,000. However, as I noted above, scholars of the Nanking Massacre both in China and outside China strongly dispute the validity of this estimate. The range of 40,000 to 200,000 represents the scholarly consensus, as I noted in this post among other posts.

On the other hand, I now leaning towards dramatically changing the statement "military historian Masahiro Yamamoto notes that of the more than 40,000 corpses buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred." The statement was widely misunderstood. Yamamoto was not saying that over 40,000 people were killed in the atrocity, he was saying that of the corpses successfully buried in the city the large majority were adult men. This statistical evidence suggests that the majority of the victims of the atrocity were POWs and suspected former soldiers massacred during Japanese mopping-up operations after the Battle of Nanking. That was the only point I was trying to make. However, because the statement has been so widely misunderstood, perhaps we should instead just say "military historian Masahiro Yamamoto believes that the large majority of the victims of the atrocity were former soldiers and suspected former soldiers massacred during the mopping-up operations." This makes the same point without going into the misunderstood statistics that Yamamoto used to prove his claim.CurtisNaito (talk) 01:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I have already proved that the 40K burial record did not cover all corpses in Nanking. However, I agree that the majority of buried bodies belonged to male Chinese adults and I can add Chinese sources for this. But I insist not including Yamamoto's incomplete burial statistic as it is quite misleading. And I don't agree CurtisNaito's intention of reducing the scale of individual civilians murdered in the Massacre. --MtBell 02:45, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I just wonder how International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal will be considered? The previous one involved 11 countries and spent 2 years to do the investigation. It claimed over 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war were killed in this event. It also claimed more than 20,000 women were raped. If you check the judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East, you will see judge from Australia, Canada, France, India, United State and United Kingdom joined in this judgement. Whatever it is really confused to ignore the International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal but wrote something like "notes that of the more than 40,000 corpses buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred." based on the estimation from one Japanese historian Masahiro Yamamoto. We can keep the claim from Masahiro Yamamoto but we should neutrally contain the figures from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. This is the neutral attitude of wiki. Miracle dream (talk)

When I use the figures from Marvin Williamsen and Frank Dorn. It is still reject by users. They are two American professor. Then I am also confused why figures from China should be reject but all sources from Japan should be accepted. I don't know what the Chinese government did before but Chinese scholar is a scholar not the government. Moreover, I used lots of figures from Taiwanese scholar but you also reject. Taiwan does not belong to the Chinese government, Ok?

Moreover, when you say something bad from Chinese government and some bad attitude from Chinese government, then based on this you reject every sources from China. However,you forgot one important thing. Japan is the only country which has some scholar who deny the Nanking Massacre. Only Japanese scholars claimed that Nanking Massacre never happened. Only Japanese scholar claimed this event was a fabrication. However, we accept the sources from Japanese scholar even there are some Japanese scholar claim nobody died in Nanking. You say Chinese government is unbelievable and then you reject every Chinese scholar. Is it the fair way to deal with this? Miracle dream (talk)

The problem with using the estimates of the IMTFE and the Nanking War Crimes Tribunal is that they are now very out-of-date and have been supplanted with better scholarship. Bob Tad Wakabayashi, among others, explains in detail in his edited volume "The Nanking Atrocity" that the estimates of these trials were made in a highly flawed manner. This is only an article on the Battle of Nanking, not the Nanking Massacre, so for this article we should just stick to the basic scholarly consensus and not use outdated figures from the 1940's. One problem with the range of 40,000 to 300,000 is that it is basically synthesis. The source citing Wakabayashi clearly states that "an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000." Miracle Dream then took a simple newspaper article and a quotation from an old 1974 book by a military officer named Frank Dorn, both of which gave figures between 200,000 and 300,000 and he amalgamated the reliable estimate range with the two less reliable ones. Among scholars who are specialists in the Nanking Massacre, almost all estimates are between 40,000 and 200,000.CurtisNaito (talk) 01:15, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that is the problem. We accept the estimation from Japanese scholars even we know many Japanese scholars claimed this event was a fabrication. We never say all Japanese scholar is unreliable because of this problem. However, the most funny thing is you really reject all Chinese scholars. Moreover, you really reject the International Military Tribunal of the Far East because some Japanese historians deny it. Once again, you reject the figures from reliable sources by your own analysis. I told you many times wiki is not the places for academic seminar and you are not the professor in this area. Actually, what you reject is from the scholar or professor from United State, Taiwan, China and Singapore.It would be really silly to say that it's excellent for a Wikipedia editor to read some sources from some publications or judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and write his own description of it or simply deny it, but that it's impossibly bad to have actual professionals read and research and write a description of it.

The most important thing is you deny figures from International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal which claimed 20,000 young women were raped. But you really wrote something like " around Nanking after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred" by one estimation from one Japanese scholar Masahiro Yamamoto. It seems Japanese scholar is the God. When Japanese scholar deny International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, then these two are totally unbelievable. When Japanese scholar said only 129 women and Children in this event, then it is simply the truth. When Japanese scholar deny the figures from Chinese scholar. then Chinese sources are all garbage. Even many Japanese scholar considered the Nanking Massacre never happened. It also doesn't matter.Miracle dream (talk)

I did not reject the research of Chinese historians, but I did point out that due to lack of academic freedom scholars living in China are greatly constrained in what they can say. It is a fact, as pointed out in Wakabayashi's book, that historical literature published in China is censored to ensure estimates lower than 300,000 are not publicized. In 2006 Kaz Ross anonymously interviewed a number of university researchers in the city of Nanking to learn their private views on the death toll of the Nanking Massacre. He found that Chinese historians favor estimates between 40,000 and 150,000 for the death toll of the massacre, but they feared that speaking out openly "would be detrimental to their careers." I think Wakabayashi and other leading scholars do respect the private opinions of Chinese scholars, but it's natural to be suspicious of their public views which are tightly controlled by their own government.CurtisNaito (talk) 01:33, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Kaz Ross? She is not even a historian! Her so called "anonymous interview" is totally unverifiable, which makes her publication quite suspicious and unreliable with respect to any acamedic standard. I don't understand why you cite such a fringing POV of a small patato. --MtBell 02:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Kaz Ross is a professor of Asian Studies specializing in China. She had no choice but to use anonymous interviews. The people she interviewed said that they would be punished if they spoke out openly. It is a fact, as noted in Wakabayashi's edited volume, that historical scholarship in China is subject to censorship if it puts forward a number lower than 300,000. Kaz Ross is the only historian I know who has taken the time to interview China's scholarly community in an anonymous manner so that they can speak their minds freely. When not constrained by government censorship, the scholars of China said that the death toll was between 40,000 and 150,000. Ross' finding were published following peer review and there is no reason to doubt them.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

First, Ross is only a lecturer in University of Tasmania, whose research interests have nothing to do with historical studies. Second, her ASAA paper is unverifiable which contradicts WP:RS. --MtBell 02:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Ross is a PhD holding professor specializing in Asian Studies. Her essay was peer reviewed and there is no question whatsoever that it is a reliable source. If you really think it isn't reliable, take it to the reliable sources noticeboard. But what are the odds the reliable sources noticeboard would reject a peer-reviewed paper by a credentialed scholar? The only way your claim could have credibility is if you found another reliable source saying that Ross' paper is wrong.CurtisNaito (talk) 02:55, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Ross is a lecturer with little renown in Nanjing Massacre studies. Her research interests are "postcolonial studies, feminist theory and psychoanalysis" (see her profile [6]). I have asked Prof. Zhang Lianhong, dean of the Nanjing Massacre Research Center of Nanjing Normal University, about the situation of Ross's visit in June 2006 as described in her paper. Prof. Zhang clarified that: "in my memory, Ross is a teacher who studies culture not history. When she came to Nanjing, I asked a graduate student accompanying her to visit the Memorial Hall. Then we had a very brief talk in the afternoon. Because she doesn't speak Chinese and I am not good at English, we didn't have any in-depth discussion." Ross's fabrication meets your needs well in belittling academic reputation of Chinese scholars and downscaling the Japanese atrocities in the Massacre, that is the very reason why you insist citing this nonsense. --MtBell 09:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Ross' "main research interest is China" and her article on the Nanking Massacre was peer-reviewed. You can't use your own unpublished interview to refute a published, peer-reviewed journal article. As I said, if Ross really is an unreliable source then you should be able to take it to the reliable sources noticeboard and then have it removed. Until then, your claim that Ross engaged in fabrication has no validity by Wikipedia standards.CurtisNaito (talk) 11:15, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@Jsharpminor: I hope you can read CurtisNaio's comments about Ross. This is his typical way undermining the discussion by playing double standards. He attacks all Chinese publications as unreliable while values Ross's paper so high though it is a proven fabrication (or at least misrepresentation). Zhang's clarification has proved that Ross's POV is unreliable, and I believe CurtisNaito's inclusion of her POV violates WP:NPOV for it is a view "of tiny minorities" and "should not be included at all". If CurtisNaito continues his games playing double standards and citing sources selectively for his prejudiced opinions, I don't think this discussion will produce any positive result.--MtBell 12:18, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Jsharpminor is probably aware that you can't use an unpublished interview conducted by a Wikipedia user to rebut the peer-reviewed paper of a credentialed specialist scholar. At any rate, your interview only involved one person, though Ross spent two days interviewing various historians, and your interview was not conducted anonymously, which is problematic because an interview which is not anonymous says nothing about a Chinese historian's private views. Ross has revealed what Chinese historians actually believe privately, as opposed to what they are required to say publicly, and their honest opinions should be represented on Wikipedia. Ultimately though, if you truly believe that you've made a legitimate case against this article's validity, then take it to the reliable source noticeboard and we'll find out for certain.CurtisNaito (talk) 12:33, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

WP:NPOV#Due and undue weight: "Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all." I don't think you would be OK violating the Wikipedia policy. --MtBell 13:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The results of an unpublished interview with a single person could be regarded as the view of a tiny minority, but the same cannot be said for a series of interviews done by a scholar and reviewed by her peers.CurtisNaito (talk) 13:13, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Absurd. I didn't ask to insert any private interview. However, it is YOU CurtisNaito who cited a disproved interview and fringing POV and use it as an excuse to exclude any peer-reviewed publication by Chinese scholars. How shameless. --MtBell 14:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That's not how Wikipedia works though. You have to cite a reliable source saying that Kaz Ross' study was biased, and a reliable source saying that the interviews were disproved. You've backed up your opinion with only one source so far, a single non-anonymous interview with a single Chinese historian which you conducted yourself and have never published. That is not a reliable enough of a source to refute Kaz Ross's peer-reviewed study.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:21, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Precisely, that's how you are playing double standards. --MtBell 02:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Why can't you just include claim made by this historian and other claims? Wikipedia accepts including different people's views if there are reliable references. --Carrotkit (talk) 17:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

In Kaz Ross' peer-reviewed study we have a very reliable source stating that Chinese historians favor death toll estimates between 40,000 and 150,000. This is not actually an article on the Nanking Massacre specifically, so we don't have space to include every death toll estimate between zero and ten million. However, if the estimates of Chinese historians are noteworthy, we might be able to fit in 40,000 to 150,000 as a separate range, either in the main body or maybe a footnote. Increasingly I'm thinking that we might need to footnote here to include less reliable estimates so that they don't clutter up the main text. The slightly wider range of 40,000 to 200,000 is widely agreed to be "the most careful and thoroughly empirical analysis of the death count to date".CurtisNaito (talk) 17:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I always remain calm and polite in heated discussion, but your words do really make me furious. I am living in Hong Kong, China. When news reports and newspaper talk about the death toll of this battle, they always say "300000 Chinese were murdered". And the Chinese President Xi Jinping always says "300000 Chinese were murdered". In all the museums of history in China, the death tolls of this battle on the display boards are always 300000. I can understand others saying that "some historians say that it was 45000-200000", but your words "Chinese historians favor death toll estimates between 40,000 and 150,000" are TOTALLY NONSENSE. I don't believe that my nation has so many traitors! --Carrotkit (talk) 01:50, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It's not about traitors, Carrotkit. Professor Zhang has clarified that no one got interviewed by Ross in Nanjing. --MtBell 02:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. When there is contradiction between two reference OR there is a reliable source claiming that another one is wrong, Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia which stands neutral in all controversial matters, should offers the readers claims from both sides. Why can't you, CurtisNaito, include the claim by Ross, and notice the readers that some other historians disagree with Ross, having their own claims? Wikipedia doesn't really offer fact but what it offers is information. My English is very poor but I do hope that you can understand what I'm trying to say. --Carrotkit (talk) 03:05, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

In fact Ross is the only person who claims that Chinese scholars favor 40K-150K. That is to say, a fringing view, which should not be included at all according to WP:NPOV. --MtBell 03:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

So far no reliable source has been cited of anyone disagreeing with Ross. An unpublished interview conducted by a Wikipedia user simply can't be taken into account on Wikipedia because it falls under the category of original research. Ross' peer-reviewed study is for our purposes a definitive source of information, at least until a real reliable source can be found to rebut it.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:08, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I simply can't understand why do you say "no reliable source". --Carrotkit (talk) 03:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Ross' goal in her investigation was to determine the private views of Chinese historians. What she discovered through her interviews was that Chinese historians estimate the death toll at 40,000 to 150,000 but are afraid of saying so openly due to possible repercussions for their careers if they do.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:22, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Stop your lies. Ross never did such interviews in Nanjing. --MtBell 03:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

How a lair, I mean Ross. I don't mind she having other claims regarding the death toll, but what she attempts to do is to prove that Chinese historians are all traitors. As a Chinese, I do never believe your nonsense claim that "Chinese historians privately think that the death toll is not 300000". It's nothing more than a joke. --Carrotkit (talk) 05:04, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, as I said, if you really believe so strongly that Ross was lying, then try taking the article to the reliable sources noticeboard. Personally, I don't see how you can destroy the reputation of a peer-reviewed study with nothing more than one unpublished interview which you conducted yourself. If there was any good reason at all to believe that Ross was not trustworthy, then her article would not have passed peer review.CurtisNaito (talk) 05:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Have you read Mtbell's words? Ross has never done a such research. Even if she has, the "research" is nothing more than a lie built on Chinese people's pain. --Carrotkit (talk) 07:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

That is another kind of system bias. You firstly claim lack of academic freedom scholars living in China, then how did you accept the Chinese sources? Even wiki did not have any rule claim China lack academic freedom. Also wiki never claimed Chinese sources are unreliable. You invented a new rule here that is China has no academic freedom so we should suspect every Chinese sources. However, Japanese sources are all reliable even many Japanese scholars deny Nanking Massacre and claimed it was a fabrication. Japan also has the same problem. For example, there are many Right-wing revisionists which was even mentioned by other scholars' publication. Japan is also the only country which has Right-wing revisionists who deny this event. Even though, we never reject Japanese sources. Then it seems you considered Wakayabashi as the only truth. You use every sources from him and trust every sentences from him. Moreover, you reject very sources from any scholars which Wakayabashi disagreed with. I also used many sources from American, Taiwanese and Chinese scholars but you simply considered Wakayabashi as the only truth.You always deny the International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. However, I wonder whether you believe Nuremberg trials when you read something about Holocaust. Nuremberg trials is the same as International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal.Nuremberg trials happened in 1940s which is also out of date by your theory. By your theory, we should consider Nuremberg trials as unreliable. Miracle dream (talk)

Allow me to suggest that you list this discussion at WP:3O or WP:DRN. Jsharpminor (talk) 01:29, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Which one is preferable?CurtisNaito (talk) 01:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd start at WP:3O. Jsharpminor (talk) 03:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

As a Chinese Wikipedian who loves his country and observes WP:NPOV, I strongly disagree deleting any claims made by both sides. We can add a note to tell the readers that the death troll is in controversy, but NOT deleting any claims. Sorry for my poor English, but I must voice my opinion for my Chinese fellows and the objectivity of Wikipedia! --Carrotkit (talk) 12:30, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

As I think,The total of 300,000 is WP:RELIABLE because it's confirmed on Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal ,though the other total is also WP:RELIABLE by other research. But for WP:NPOV ,They also need to show out. We can say that "Someone think it's 300,000 but it's other total", But we can't say "it's only other total and no 300,000.". We can't remove the description of "300,000".--Cwek (talk) 12:56, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually not only from Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. I cited figures from two American scholars Frank Dorn and Marvin Williamsen (see book [7]). This book claimed "Trapped Chinese troops were treated with frightening barbarity by their conquerors. As a matter of policy all were tortured and butchered. But soldiers were hardly the only victims of the nearly incredibly cruelty and the vicious, uncontrolled behavior of the Japanese troops. After recounting some, but only some, of the unspeakable horros visited upon the residentes of Nanking in two weeks of outrage. Over 20,000 civilian men of military age had been slaughtered. At least 20,000 young women and girls had been raped, murdered, and then gruesomely mutilated. Over 200,000 civilians,and possibly as many as 300,000, had been senselessly massacred" That means figure 300,000 not only supported by Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal but also supported by some American historian. However, they are all rejected by user: CurtisNaito. This is the judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East [8]. If you read this, you can see the judgement put the death toll over 200,000 not up to 200,000. I copy the judgement from International Military Tribunal of the Far East here:" its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. That these estimates are not exaggerated" That means the estimation number by IMTFE is larger than 200,000. 21:09, 28 December 2014‎ Miracle dream (talk)

Yaush and I have already explained in some detail that those estimates are not reliable for the purposes of this article. An outdated estimate of unknown origin should not be put on the same level as the modern-day research of leading scholars. Not only should we downplay unreliable estimates higher than 200,000, but also unreliable estimates lower than 40,000. Both sides are outside the mainstream scholarly consensus. Inserting the range of 40,000 to 300,000 is an inappropriate synthesis of the scholarly consensus combined with unreliable numbers rejected by that scholarly consensus. Also, as I said before, both postwar war crimes trials gave multiple estimates of the death toll. For instance in a separate estimate the International Military Tribunal of the Far East stated that the death toll of the massacre was "upwards of 100,000".CurtisNaito (talk) 21:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I have already explained you have system bias to deny all sources you disagree. I also explained in detail you violate the wiki neutrality rule to ignore some reliable sources. I also explained these sources from some professors from some universities of U.S., Taiwan, Singapore and China. However, you considered them all garbage.Then I asked you whether Nuremberg trials is unreliable because it is out of date which happened even earlier than IMTFE and Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. You never answered this questions,OK? I guess you don't want to deny Nuremberg trials for Holocaust research. Moreover, it is not the problem 200,000 or 300,000. Actually what you want to write in this article, just like current version, is "40,000 corpses buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city only 129 were women or children which suggests that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred." based on one Japanese scholar's estimation. This is what you rewrote this article and the only thing you want to keep while denying all sources you dislike. 20:05, 29 December 2014‎ Miracle dream (talk)

It's legitimate to call into question the reliability of a source if it provides no evidence for its claims. It's also legitimate to call into question the reliability of a source if other reliable sources explicitly rebut it. The statement about 40,000 corpses was reliably cited and at the time you provided no source rebutting it. By contrast, the very same sources you were putting into the article provided a detailed rebuttal of the death toll estimates made by the postwar war crimes trials.

Again for the Nuremberg trials, whether one cites them or not on Wikipedia depends on whether or not scholars have deemed their specific conclusions reliable or not. The sources you were citing clearly refuted the conclusions of the IMTFE and Nanking War Crimes Tribunal and for this reason it didn't make sense to include them in an article on the Battle of Nanking, which should stick to less controversial facts and not delve into Nanking Massacre numbers refuted by the very same sources cited in the article. At any rate, Wikipedia tends to prefer citing scholarship rather than primary source documents like trial transcripts. Wikipedia's article on the Holocaust, for instance, cites the transcripts of the Nuremburg Trials only once. Instead of trial transcripts, that article mainly uses modern scholarship. This article is not even about the Nanking Massacre, so here there's even less reason to resort to primary sources. For this article, we have every reason to stick to modern scholarship.CurtisNaito (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

We can use some researchs to doubt the conclusion of Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, but We must have no opinion on the description of Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal if it's RELIABLE.--Cwek (talk) 13:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

REMINDER: Please note that for WP:3O, one of the requirements is that only two editors are involved. In this case, I can see more than two editors having disputes. Therefore, we should consider WP:DRN if needed. Thank you. --Good afternoon (talk) 03:46, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

My suggestion to resolve the dispute after reading this article and related Nanking_Massacre#Death_toll_estimates is this:

The death toll section of this article should be a summary of the main article Nanking_Massacre. There is no point to reinvent the wheel.
The section in Nanking_Massacre should give readers the answers to the following questions:
- What are the different ways that death is counted?
- What are the sources used?
- What are the range of estimates produced based on the first two?
- What is the major point of contention above?
- What is the majority view of scholars? How many minority views are worth mentioning?

IMO the current section falls short in terms of answering these. David Askew uses a table to more or less answer these questions. I think that is a good starting point. Better sources are of course welcome.

If editors can cite reliable sources to answer the above, I think we are closer to consensus. Keep in mind that the way to deal with controversy in Wikipedia articles is to cite reliable sources to describe it, not to take a stand and say "this is true, all else is false" unless you can cite source to show that's the majority view of scholars, which AFAIK is not the case here. --Happyseeu (talk) 21:26, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I understand your points, but I wonder how much space you think that this article should have on Nanking Massacre death toll estimates. When I first edited this article I thought for a moment that as long as the massacre was described generally, no specific death toll estimate was necessary. Apparently, a death toll estimate is necessary, but how much space do you think we should insert on estimates for the purposes of an article on the Battle of Nanking? It seems like you want to cover an awful lot of ground. If it gets too lengthy, I would seriously consider a footnote. We could certainly insert some sort of table like the one David Askew uses, but we surely shouldn't use the exact same table. Askew's table actually has a section in it called "Illusion school". The illusion school are Nanking Massacre deniers and their opinions are surely not valid for the purposes of this article. If we follow your suggestion, could we maybe just use the two latter columns of the table. For the record, leading scholars of the Nanking Massacre have said "an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000." Another scholar concluded that this represents "the most careful and thoroughly empirical analysis of the death count to date". If we put in more estimates than just this range, maybe we should put it in a footnote.CurtisNaito (talk) 21:40, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think you miss one of my points. Let me rephrase my suggestion: first rewrite the section in Nanking Massacre to cover the points I mentioned. After consensus is reached on that one, we have a common ground for discussion, and we can discuss what would be an adequate summary of it in this article. A bonus is to create consistency between these two articles, except the former has more details for interested readers.

I agree with you that Illusion School should be excluded in the table. --Happyseeu (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, I started off the section by noting the ways in which the Nanking Massacre intersected with the Battle of Nanking, the military-style operations in other words. I suppose that after this we can include an extended discussion of the death toll estimate if necessary. I don't think we should focus on only summarizing the text from the other article because it contains a fair amount of uncited text, and some outright factual inaccuracies. As just two examples, there is no historian named Hiroshi Yoshida and Hora Tomio estimated the death toll of the massacre at 200,000 not 50,000 to 100,000. But at any rate, how about, "Using burial data, eyewitness accounts, and Japanese military records modern historians have concluded that "an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000" Chinese massacre victims including both POWs and civilians. However, estimates can vary widely depending on how the scope of the massacre is defined, and some sources have put forward both higher and lower estimates." Should we also include Askew's table? We could tack on a footnote with additional estimates if necessary.CurtisNaito (talk) 22:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you that the section in Nanking Massacre is problematic, therefore I said "rewrite" to improve it first. After it's improved and agreed upon, we have a solid common ground.

Including a modified Askew's table would be a good idea, especially if "majority view of scholars" can't be established.

If you want to write only 40k-200k, you need to cite reliable source to demonstrate that is the majority view of scholars, which you haven't done. Showing it's widely cited would be even more convincing. Concluding what's the scholarly majority view on your own and write only that constitutes WP:OR.

I think the problem of insisting on using body count is it's a lower bound (thus under-estimate), as body thrown into river, burned etc. can't be counted accurately, and not every burial ground can be dug up and counted later for death on such a large scale. Counting change in civilian population during war is impractical. Counting the death toll of civilians massacred in wars is in general problematic, two other examples are death during Pol Pot rule and Siege of Changchun, which also produced widely ranging estimates on death tolls. But that's just my common sense 2 cents. --Happyseeu (talk) 17:40, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

We don't need to re-write the whole section. You said that the problem with it is that it doesn't answer your questions ranging from "What are the different ways that death is counted?" to "What is the majority view of scholars? How many minority views are worth mentioning?" However, all of those questions only deal with one facet of the massacre, the death toll. Most of the section can stay as it is because it deals with other issues apart from the death toll. The focus of the section should naturally be on those aspects of the massacre which were directly related to the battle. In 2007 Bob Tad Wakabayashi wrote a very well-received edited volume entitled "The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38" which amalgamated the work of a large number of the leading specialist scholars who have studied the Nanking Massacre. In writing the conclusion of this book, Wakabayashi states that 40,000 to 200,000 civilians and POWs massacred is the scholarly valid range of estimates. Even though he expresses some personal disagreement with some of the estimates within this range, he still notes that any estimate within this range is at least numerically possible. To quote Wakabayashi: "an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000." Reviewers of the work agreed that this represented the most accurate range of figures. It's true that making such estimates is problematic, the wideness of the range itself is testament to that. However, I think a neutral and accurate wording would be "Using burial data, eyewitness accounts, and Japanese military records modern historians have concluded that "an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000" Chinese massacre victims including both POWs and civilians. However, estimates can vary widely depending on how the scope of the massacre is defined, and some sources have put forward both higher and lower estimates." We can add on Askew's table too if you want.CurtisNaito (talk) 18:07, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

This seems very sensible to me. --Yaush (talk) 21:58, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I did a little Googling and found two New York Times articles [9], [10]. The first one cited 150k as the lower bound, the 2010 article cited 200k as lower bound, and 40k is not mentioned by either. So I'm doubtful. I think using 150k as lower bound makes sense based on NYT.

If you claim Bob Tad Wakabayashi is widely cited, please show the evidence, otherwise this is WP:OR. How many scholars cited him? How many foreign media cited him?

Alternatively, let me ask some basic questions: Who are the most frequently cited authors on this? How frequent are they cited? Answering these will demonstrate you have done your independent research, and you have picked the best sources that should be included in Wikipedia (so that "best" is not just your opinion, which is what you have done so far). This is how an independent research treatise would write about prior art. It's OK if you don't know these, but then you probably should let other, more knowledgeable editors write this part. --Happyseeu (talk) 22:35, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I think what we should be looking for is the quality of the source, not the frequency with which it is cited. New York Times articles, even if they are frequently cited, should not be considered on the same level as research by leading historians. Wakabayashi is a historian who has written many peer-reviewed essays on the Nanking Massacre and was the editor of "The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38". One of your New York Times articles was anonymously written, so there is no way of knowing whether the author is qualified to say anything about the Nanking Massacre. The other article was written by Stephen Holden, an music and film critic. Who is a better source for information on the Nanking Massacre, leading historian and Nanking Massacre specialist Wakabayashi or else film critic Stephen Holden? I would say that no matter how many times Holden is cited, Wakabayashi is still a superior source.

Apart from his own credentials, there are two main things that give Wakabayashi's numbers credibility. Firstly, Wakabayashi's volume is an amalgamation of the work of leading scholars which started with a major academic seminar on the subject sponsored by York University. Among the scholars who participated in Wakabayashi's project include Fujiwara Akira, Tokushi Kasahara, David Askew, Timothy Brook, and Joshusa Fogel. Thus the research of many of the world's leading Nanking Massacre specialists united to establish this volume's conclusion. Secondly, I am not aware of any academic journal which gave this book a bad review. One reviewer in the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies singled out the death toll range of 40,000 to 200,000 as constituting "the most careful and thoroughly empirical analysis of the death count to date". As I said, Wakabayashi does not necessarily agree with all the numbers put forward within that range, but he notes that based on all the evidence currently compiled, this is the scholarly valid range.

Finally, Wakabayashi uses Ikuhiko Hata's estimate of 40,000 as his lower bound, which he calls a "lower, yet still academically tenable, victim toll of over 40,000." The fact that estimates this low are still "academically tenable" is demonstrated by the positive reception that academia has given Hata's research on the subject. Hata's book proposing a death toll of 40,000 was praised by expert Nanking Massacre historian Daqing Yang for its impartiality. Marius Jansen called Hata's work "the most reasonable of many Japanese studies" on the massacre. Joshua A. Fogel said the book was "still an authority in the field" in 2003 and David Askew called it "the best introductory work on the Nanjing Incident in any language". You yourself, Happyseeu, were proposing using in this article a table of estimates complied by David Askew which, in the right two columns of the lower half of the table, gives the range of 20,000 to 200,000 massacre victims, which is quite close to Wakabayashi's 40,000 to 200,000 range.

Because this is not an article on the Nanking Massacre, but rather on the Battle of Nanking, for the massacre we should stick primarily with the latest and best research of scholars. The range of 40,000 to 200,000 has been given a stamp of approval by leading historians and not just a film critic from the New York Times. Therefore one possible wording we can use is "Using burial data, eyewitness accounts, and Japanese military records modern historians have concluded that "an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000" Chinese massacre victims including both POWs and civilians. However, estimates can vary widely depending on how the scope of the massacre is defined, and some sources have put forward both higher and lower estimates."CurtisNaito (talk) 23:13, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

To give you a few examples of the reception Wakabayashi's volume received in academic journals, The Journal of Japanese Studies called it "an outstanding contribution to furthering our understanding and conversation about one of the most controversial episodes in the twentieth century", Pacific Affairs called it, "a timely, valuable addition", the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies said, Wakabayashi's volume is "based on new research findings, and... deserves to be read widely", and Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society called it "essential reading". What I'm saying is that, when we have a book like this, why would we ever need to resort to citing a New York Times article by a film critic?CurtisNaito (talk) 23:54, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

The above is better than before. However, I'm expecting something similar to a weighted Arts and Humanities Citation Index to show what's the best source(s) on this (weight will take into account the reputation the journal where it's published). What you have demonstrated is the source is reliable. I think the dispute is whether that's better than other sources. I'll leave it to the more knowledgeable editors on better sources, and simply point out the issue.

I also think you can't avoid getting a consensus on rewriting the relevant part in Nanking Massacre. --Happyseeu (talk) 22:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I want to point out a serious problem with the statement "Today historians estimate that roughly 40,000 to 200,000 Chinese POWs and civilians were massacred". Simply putting forward a range of 40k-200k is uninformative to the reader, because the numbers vary by five times, which is a lot. When the numbers vary by a lot, a range without proper explanation leaves the reader wondering, and probably leads to the impression "nobody really knows", which I don't think is the case here. Let me use an example to illustrate: suppose someone asks you: what do you think is the annual income of your friend John Doe? If you answer "40-50k" US$ or "160k-200k" US$, that sounds you have a pretty good idea; however, if you answer "40k-200k" US$, it's reasonable to conclude "you are clueless and simply make up some numbers". However, if you say "he probably makes 160k-200k when he was VP of a XYZ company, and 40-50k after he lost his job." A proper explanation would make all the difference. An alternative to a single range is to describe the distribution of estimates: e.g. John Doe etc. estimates is 40-50k, while most others' estimate is 150k-200k (the number of ranges depend on the actual distribution). The 3rd alternative is a table as discussed before. The current way of simply putting forth 40k-200k w/o explanation is the worst possible way to describe death toll. --Happyseeu (talk) 15:44, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

"Nobody really knows" is, unfortunately, probably pretty accurate. CurtisNaito quotes scholarship that makes a pretty good case it can't be less than 40,000, but almost certainly is not more than around 200,000. That really is about the best we can do. --Yaush (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I think that describing "the distribution of estimates" would probably take up too much space in the article to be feasible, though if we needed to put it in, I guess it could fit in a footnote. Some estimates by specialist scholars include Akira Fujiwara(200,000), Tokushi Kasahara(170,000-160,000), Katsuichi Honda(just over 100,000), Yoshida Yutaka(just over 100,000), Jean-Louis Margolin(90,000-50,000), Ikuhiko Hata(40,000), and David Askew(roughly 40,000). It's true that there are some bona fide specialist researchers who give higher and lower estimates including Yoshiaki Itakura(19,000-13,000), Takeshi Hara(30,000-20,000), and Wu Tien-wei(at least 340,000), however, on the basis of Wakabayashi and other sources it appears that these individuals are the minority. One could argue that "a range of 40k-200k is uninformative to the reader", but we should be thankful that Wakabayashi and his collaborators narrowed it down even that much. Otherwise, we would have to use an even wider range of estimates.CurtisNaito (talk) 18:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

A user uninvolved in this dispute, Biblioworm, suggests that we say "Today, historians estimate that roughly 40,000 to 200,000 Chinese POWs and civilians were massacred by the Japanese in the entire Nanking Special Administrative District, although 300,000 is also a somewhat common estimate among scholars. Other less common scholarly estimates range from as low as 10,000 to as high as 400,000. However, some have said that the 40-200,000 estimate is the one most likely to be accurate." This was a proposal for compromise put forward by a neutral observer so I'm willing to go with it.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:27, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

One option we could go with is the last compromise put forward in the dispute resolution noticeboard, "Today, historians estimate that roughly 40,000 to 200,000 Chinese POWs and civilians were massacred by the Japanese in the entire Nanking Special Administrative District, although 300,000 is also a somewhat common estimate among scholars. Other less common scholarly estimates range from as low as 10,000 to as high as 400,000. However, some have said that the 40-200,000 estimate is the one most likely to be accurate."

Yaush has indicated that he supports "Using burial data, eyewitness accounts, and Japanese military records modern historians have concluded that "an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000" Chinese massacre victims including both POWs and civilians. However, estimates can vary widely depending on how the scope of the massacre is defined, and some sources have put forward both higher and lower estimates."

A third possibility would be to put into the article "Estimates of the death toll vary.", followed by a footnote including maybe twenty or thirty different estimates.CurtisNaito (talk) 21:09, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Support: By using burial data, eyewitness accounts, and Japanese military records modern historians have concluded that "an empirically verifiable, scholarly valid victimization range is from over 40,000 to under 200,000" Chinese massacre victims including both POWs and civilians. However, estimates can vary widely depending on how the scope of the massacre is defined, and some sources have put forward both higher and lower estimates. I think listing a 40,000-200,000 figure is a good compromise, though individuals sources citing specific figures should be mentioned as a way of helping establish this wide ranging figure.TH1980 (talk) 21:14, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

For this figure range, the most extreme compromise case I thought is from as low as 100,000 and as high as 400,000. It means the extreme upper bound is 400,000 and the extreme lower bound is 100,000. I prefer to the range from 100,000 to over 300,000. However, I can also accept the range from 100,000 to 400,000. For high school or university test book, I am sorry the book name is "Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past" which mentioned Nanking Massacre. I am pretty sure the figure used in this book is 400,000. The amazon link of this book is here[20]. This book was picked as the best book of 2014 in Amazon and used as textbook in hundreds or thousands university or high school. ‎ However, I thought we can simply write estimation vary or delete all contents of this part.It seems this is not core problem for this article. 22:20, 3 February 2015‎ Miracle dream (talk)

So you're okay with just writing "Estimates of the death toll vary." I would support that. However, I don't think we can take a textbook by a non-specialist covering all world history which you are only "pretty sure" uses 400,000, and then somehow turn that into the range of 100,000 to 400,000 which is supported by precisely zero scholars. The books which I cited were written by experts in the Nanking Massacre and are surely superior to sources written by individuals with no specific credentials on the subject.CurtisNaito (talk) 22:58, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, actually I am ok with simply "Estimates of the death toll vary" without figure.However, we should delete "Though the Japanese also committed random acts of murder, rape, looting, and arson during their occupation of Nanking, military historian Masahiro Yamamoto notes that very few of the corpses buried in and around Nanking after the fall of the city were women or children, suggesting that the large majority of the victims of the massacre were adult Chinese men taken by the Japanese as former soldiers and massacred." This sentence is totally difference with International Military Tribunal of the Far East . I think we can make agreement with this and wait other opinions.01:19, 22 February 2015‎ Miracle dream (talk)

No, I disagree that we should delete that sentence. Masahiro Yamamoto's book was very well received by scholars and I don't know of any other scholar who would seriously dispute that statement. It's not true that it contradicts the IMTFE. The IMTFE used the burial statistics of the Red Swastika Society, which only included 129 women and children out of 40,000 burials. The only other burial statistics that the IMTFE used were those of the Chongshantang, which are now known to have been forged, though even these records confirm what Yamamoto said.CurtisNaito (talk) 01:39, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Tang quote taken from Japanese-language source

@CurtisNaito: @TH1980: I don't have the energy to argue this point further, especially as past experience across multiple articles has taught me that neither of you would listen and I would be wasting my time.

Canvassing other users who you know will agree with you for tendentious, battle-ground reasons rather than any particular concern for the content dispute in question, and who you also know to be prone to edit-warring, is wrong. Even if said users have made a few minor edits to (entirely separate portions of) the page before, and even if the canvassing is done out in the open; it's different when I ask User:Nishidani for advice, since he almost never agrees with me on article content, so my doing so could not reasonably be interpreted as an attempt to gain the upper hand in an edit war. Nishidani is also a respected user with a long and storied edit history, who is almost never absent from the project for months on end, so it's not like when I ping him he suddenly emerges from a long wikibreak solely to edit-war.

Anyway, as I said, I don't have the energy to argue further that an English or Chinese source is needed, even though I am still unconvinced that a triple-translated quote (originally uttered in Chinese before appearing in Japanese in our cited source and then being translated into English by a Wikipedia editor, presented inline as though the exact words of the Chinese who uttered it) is unbecoming of a GA-class article. I am willing to drop the argument, however, if the footnote in question is edited to read

"Quoted (in Japanese) in [SOURCE]; translated into English for Wikipedia."

I would do this myself but I have not read the source in question and cannot verify it. CurtisNaito, given that you recently stated on ANI that you were this article's primary author, is it safe to assume you checked the source? If so, was the quote in Japanese? If so, did you translate it yourself? If the answer to all of these questions is "yes", would you be averse to implementing my proposed wording? If not, why not?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:08, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Alright, I will add in the text from the Japanese-language book. There is no Wikipedia rule which says that translations are only allowed from the original language though, so the previous comment you put into the article was unnecessary and not productive, especially since you did not even open a discussion on the talk page before adding it.CurtisNaito (talk) 03:14, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

There most certainly is a "Wikipedia rule" (it's called a policy; please stop using incorrect/misleading terminology) that says not to use Wikipedians' translations when published ones are available. While it is not explicitly stated in said policy, the fact that a Wikipedia editor's translation of an intermediary translation is worse still than a Wikipedia editor's translation of the actual quote is common sense, and is something people who study translation studies in reputable universities learn on Day One. What if the quote had been not in Chinese but in English? Or even French or German? Would you still be in favour of preserving a translation from Japanese rather than the original quote or a direct translation in those cases?

But it's a moot point, since you translation of the Japanese quotation you provided is accurate, and I already said I'd drop the other issue about the comment qnd the "better source needed" template. (Why don't you join me in dropping it?) The bigger issue now is that your edit didn't do what I asked. Any reader of the article who doesn't read either Japanese or Chinese (i.e., likely over 90% of English Wikipedia's readership) will be misled into thinking the "Asian" quotation provided in the footnote is the original Chinese uttered by Tang. You need to write, in English, that the source you are translating quotes Tang in Japanese translation.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:47, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

It isn't explicitly stated in policy because it is NOT a policy in any way, nor was it necessary. There is no reason to believe that the quote was an inaccurate rendition of the original, so the comment was never constructive. Although it's safe to assume that the original quote was translated from Chinese, the book did not say what language it was in originally and did not specify that it was a translation. Still, I'll add in some clarification.CurtisNaito (talk) 10:32, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Curtis, ALL translations are inaccurate, insofar as they represent a person's words ina completely different way of encoding the world from what the person actually said. This is a basic fact of translation. If not, anyone who knows both Japanese and Mandarin could easily figure out Tang's exact words in Chinese, with the exact Chinese grammatical forms he used, by simply translating the Japanese you quoted back into Chinese. You and I both know that, since there are multiple ways of translating any Chinese text into Japanese, and vice versa, while this is theoretically possible it is highly unlikely. There are also multiple ways of translating every possible Japanese text into English.

To give just one example from the text we are discussing, the very first word, hongun, could mean "our army", or it could mean "our main army", or it could mean "the main army", among countless other variation involving pronouns, determiners, and different translations of gun ("the main force", "the main body of soldiers", etc.). I think the assumption you made that "our army" is the best translation is probably accurate, hence why I didn't criticize you on this point, but according to most of the dictionaries I have checked "main army" is actually a more common usage in modern Japanese.

Now, what if you had decided to go with the other translation of "our main army" (the implication that other forces under Tang's command will do something else), but the original Chinese had not been ambiguous and had clearly said "our army"? In this case Kasahara (? I don't even remember which author it was anymore, only that he wrote in Japanese) would have translated unambiguous Chinese to ambiguous Japanese, and you would have translated the ambiguous Japanese to say something unambiguous in English, and unambiguously different from what the actual Tang quote was.

Can you still not see why this is a problem?

As for the latter half of your comment implying that we should entertain the possibility that Tang spoke in Japanese with his fellow Chinese: what evidence do you have for this, other than the fact that your Japanese source doesn't specifically say it is giving a translation? It sounds utterly ridiculous to me, but I'm not an expert on 1930s China, so...?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

It's not likely to have been "main army", as the Nanking Garrison Force was the only army involved in this confrontation on the Chinese side. It still doesn't appear that you had any actual reason to believe that the translation was problematic. Like I said, there is no Wikipedia rule like the one you described above, and reinserting that sort of comment directly into the article without discussion was inappropriate. At any rate, I think this matter is now resolved with the text currently used in the article.CurtisNaito (talk) 12:46, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Curtis, can you really not understand what I am saying when I say I don't think "main army" was what was meant? I only used it as an example. Every single word of the Japanese quote you provided could have theoretically translated any of a multitude of Chinese words, and in turn could have been translated by any of a large number of English words; if you can't see why I would feel uncomfortable presenting your original translation of Kasahara's original (?) translation as though they were the words actually spoken by Tang, then it can't be helped. It is Wikipedia policy to replace original Wikipedia translations with those of published sources where possible.

I would wonder, given that our article at present emphasizes the irony of Tang supposedly promising to defend the city to the bitter end before retreating (the sentence currently referenced 70-a), and this emphasis is attributed to Kasahara, who presumably also emphasized it, why the quote would never have appeared in an English-language publication other than Wikipedia, if such is indeed the case -- if not, why are we even quoting it, because that would mean Kasahara is the only scholar who has ever drawn this ironic connection? If you don't know whether the quote has ever appeared in English or Chinese before, then ... well, even if there is no direct violation of policy taking place, no rational Wikipedian would disagree that an English or Chinese source would be better for an English translation of a Chinese quote than a Japanese source would; tagging allows for future editors to come along and improve the article; if you think that there is no room for improvement, how do you justify saying your own translation of a Japanese translation of the original quote is superior to either a published scholar's translation of the original quote or a Wikipedian's translation of the original quote? If you agree with me and probably the vast majority of Wikipedians that even if there is no serious problem that needs immediate attention, there is certainly room for improvement, why is tagging the ref inappropriate?

Additionally, I would ask you to kindly stop using the phrase "Wikipedia rule"; Wikipedia has guidelines, policies, essays, and the consensus of editors on any particular point -- "rules" is an imprecise term and strongly implies that you do not know the difference between policy, guideline, essay and consensus. And no, you are wrong; the policy page to which I linked clearly states "Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations. [...] In articles, the original text is usually included with the translated text when translated by Wikipedians, and the translating editor is usually not cited." In this case, us not having the original text, but only a translation into an unrelated and syntactically/lexically very different language, is clearly a problem.

If you don't see the problem with any of this ... well, I am reminded strongly of the time you attributed to the seventh-century BCE Emperor Jimmu a quotation that was actually made up in the early part of the twentieth century, and makes me wonder what other "quotes" you have provided elsewhere on this project that are actually translations of translations of translations of translations where you have not actually checked the original to see if the words you are putting in people's mouths are anything close to what they actually said. At least with these modern figures there were likely stenographers and even sometimes video or audio recordings so that exact quotes can actually be attributed to these people without the inherent problem that no one will ever know if they said those words. But that just means we should try to verify that we are as close to the original as possible; it doesn't mean that if we are quoting someone who spoke a foreign language we happen not to know we should find a translation into a foreign language we do know, translate that into English, and call it a day. There is always room for improvement on Wikipedia, and tagging something that needs improvement is the first step; adding a brief comment explaining what improvement should be made is polite and convenient for later editors (my signing with my username and the date serves the same purpose); writing it on the talk page -- especially when 90% of talk page discussion on pages like this is wasted energy that leads nowhere -- is nowhere near as helpful, and writing the reason in an edit summary is pretty pointless too because people who see the tag and want to fix the problem will not know where to look, and people who are randomly reading edit summaries might not be inclined to fix the problem.

Your attitude to the problem, on the other hand, seems to be that if I want a problem with this article fixed I should first ask for your opinion on the matter (who else would have responded if I had posted on this talk page first?), and if you are inclined to fix the problem it will be fixed; otherwise (if you don't recognize the problem) then it shall not be fixed. The ANI post that drew my attention to this page in the first place would seem to support this as well. If what seems to be the case here actually is the case, I highly urge you to familiarize yourself with WP:OWN.

126.0.96.220 (talk) 15:22, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Incidentally, the Jimmu quotation you are referring to was a quote of his taken directly, almost word-for-word, from the Nihon Shoki, and thus hardly relevant here. However, in this case you were inserting an overly long comment directly into the article, based purely on your own personal preferences without any valid reason based on Wikipedia rules (or whatever you prefer to call them). The rules on comments explicitly say to only use them "judiciously" "where this is more convenient than raising the matter on the talk page", and yet you continued to insert it even when it was indicated to you that a talk page discussion was more suitable. There were others who reverted you, so I think you were the only one here who believed that a comment of that sort was the sensible procedure. It was not particularly constructive and I don't think that it would have been appropriate in any article. Every source I read and every source cited in the article noted the fact that Tang and Chiang initially indicated (publicly at any rate) that they would defend Nanking to the last man. However, the particular order handed down on December 10 was only mentioned word-for-word in Kasahara's book.CurtisNaito (talk) 15:40, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

You are lying, of course; it was amply demonstrated to you that of the four Chinese characters in question the third didn't appear at all and the fourth was separated from the first and second by an entirely different clause than the absent third character; that's 50% of the "quotation" that was not attributed by any ancient text to the emperor (re-checked here). Additionally, even if it had been attributed by an ancient text written centuries after his death to him, Wikipedia is not written for a readership who know how to do proper historiography -- if we attribute a quote to him, it needs to be a quote that readers would not be wrong in assuming he actually said. (Since he probably never existed, every quote should be given in the context "Text X attributes [quote] to him".) Which conveniently, and in a manner I only noticed while re-reading my own comment post-hoc, ties into the problem facing the present article...

If Kasahara's book is the only one you have checked that attributes specific wording to Tang, and you have checked a large number of sources that one would imagine would quote him directly, then we have a problem: it's just as easy to assume Kasahara was giving a paraphrase of what Tang probably said, or what he might have said as to assume he provided a direct translation of a quotation that was attributed to him by an earlier primary source, especially if you have checked multiple sources that all conveniently fail to give this quotation. Does Kasahara say where he got it?

Anyway, Curtis, could I ask -- did you even read my comment before posting the above response, or did you pick out random snippets to respond to and ignore the rest? I ask because my comment was long -- close to 1,000 words -- and in only 18 minutes you apparently had time to notice it, read through it, and compose your own response of 200 words. If you aren't actually reading through my comments before responding, I would ask that you start doing so. It's highly disrespectful to other Wikipedians to expect them -- indeed, forcefully demand them, as you did above -- to engage you in discussion on the talk page if you are not actually to going to read what they write for you.

126.0.96.220 (talk) 16:06, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, "There were others who reverted you, so I think you were the only one here who believed that a comment of that sort was the sensible procedure."? Seriously? Dude, seriously? You canvassed another user who has a history of arguing with me over petty nonsense, and doesn't know that using a talk page is better than edit-warring, and lo-and-behold within a few hours of you canvassing them they make their first edit to Wikipedia in a week, and it's a revert of me. That is "others who reverted me"? That's only one person, which makes it grammatically incorrect to says "others", but ... seriously ... 126.0.96.220 (talk) 16:14, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

By the way, what did you mean by "related matter"? Related to what? What exactly were you implying? 126.0.96.220 (talk) 16:17, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I read what you wrote and responded to every point relating to article content. If you didn't understand me then I don't think I'm to blame for that. Incidentally, Hakko Ichiu was commonly spelled "八紘為宇" and the original text included the line "八紘而為宇". Both versions mean the same thing in English. This was a fairly clear-cut issue and I don't know why you keep on flogging it.

Concerning Kasahara and his book, you're engaging in too much original research here. It's not our place to try to discredit quotes based on any dubious and vague accusations we can think up in our minds. If a reliable source says that the quotation is incorrect, we can include that point of view as well, but it's waste of time to try to quibble with and to make our own theories about the accuracy of statements written by leading historians in published works of history.CurtisNaito (talk) 17:09, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Gents: I completely agree with CurtisNaito about the Hakko Ichiu issue, but I can't understand why you two keep bringing it up. You two need to disengage here, because this argument is going nowhere.TH1980 (talk) 17:24, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

You might be right about that. I think that the content-related issues have already been dealt with.CurtisNaito (talk) 21:02, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

No, it has not been dealt with; I proposed a compromise because I'm genuinely sick of having to explain things to the two of you when you never listen. But my initial concern (that a source in English or Chinese would be better) has not been met, and the reason for that is that neither of you understand my concern, and no matter how hard I try to explain it you don't seem to be listening. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:54, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

This is an archive of past discussions about Battle of Nanking. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1