Nanjing Massacre denial
Most historians accept the findings of the Tokyo tribunal with respect to the scope and nature of the atrocities which were committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after the Battle of Nanjing.
[7][8][9][10] Some Japanese journalists and social scientists, such as Tomio Hora and Katsuichi Honda, have played prominent roles in countering Nanjing Massacre denialism in the decades after the killings.
Nonetheless, denialist accounts, such as those of Shūdō Higashinakano, have often created controversy in the global media, particularly in China and other East Asian nations.
Takashi Yoshida describes the Japanese debate over the Nanjing Massacre as "crystalliz[ing] a much larger conflict over what should constitute the ideal perception of the nation: Japan, as a nation, acknowledges its past and apologizes for its wartime wrongdoings; or ... stands firm against foreign pressures and teaches Japanese youth about the benevolent and courageous martyrs who fought a just war to save Asia from Western aggression.
[15] David Askew, an associate professor of law at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, characterizes the Nanjing Massacre as having "emerged as a fundamental keystone in the construction of the modern Chinese national identity".
According to Askew, "a refusal to accept the 'orthodox' position on Nanjing can be construed as an attempt to deny the Chinese nation a legitimate voice in international society".
[15] Former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui had, on numerous occasions, claimed that the Nanjing Massacre was purely propaganda perpetrated by the Chinese communists and which could be placed into the same category as "fictitious history".
[18] Masaaki Tanaka, a denialist, engaged in academic misconduct to support his claim that the massacre was a fabrication and death tolls were low.
[21][full citation needed] The common revisionist viewpoint, made by denialists such as Higashinakano Shudo, is that the geographical area of the incident should be limited to the few square kilometers of the city, and they typically estimate the population to be about 200,000–250,000.
[27]This interpretation of events questions the true number of victims killed in Nanjing and avoids directly stating the culpability of Japanese soldiers for the atrocities.
The remainder of the Ministry's stance reiterates the lengths to which Japan has so far apologized for the war actions, including in statements from several prime ministers.
However, most mainstream historians counter that it is well known that the Naikaku Jōhōkyoku (Cabinet Information Bureau), a consortium of military, politicians and professionals created in 1936 as a "committee" and upgraded to a "division" in 1937, applied censorship of all the media of the Shōwa regime and that this office held a policing authority over the realm of publishing.
[28] From 1938, the print media "would come to realize that their survival depended upon taking cues from the Cabinet Information Bureau and its flagship publication, Shashin shūhō, designers of the 'look' of the soldier, and the 'look' of the war".
The book sold more than half a million copies when it was first published in the US, and according to The New York Times, received general critical acclaim.
[35] The Wall Street Journal wrote that it was the "first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city", and that Chang "skillfully excavated from oblivion the terrible events that took place".
One depicts the Chinese as helpless victims of brutal Japanese imperialism in the winter of 1937–38, while the other depicts the gullible Japanese, innocent in the ways of the world, as victims of Chinese machinations and propaganda in the post-war era.Japanese affirmationists not only accept the validity of these tribunals and their findings, but also assert that Japan must stop denying the past and come to terms with Japan's responsibility for the war of aggression against its Asian neighbors.
[42] The most extreme denialists, by and large, reject the findings of the tribunals as a kind of "victor's justice" in which only the winning side's version of events are accepted.
Described within Japan as the Illusion School (maboroshi-ha), they deny the massacre and argue that only a few POWs and civilians were killed by the Japanese military in Nanjing.
For example, according to historian Akira Fujiwara, on August 6, 1937, deputy minister of Military of Japan notified Japanese troops in Shanghai of the army's proposition to remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners.
During the massacre, Japanese troops in fact embarked on a determined search for former soldiers, in which thousands of young men were captured, most of whom were killed.
[48] F. Tillman Durdin and Archibald Steele, American news correspondents, reported that they had seen bodies of killed Chinese soldiers forming mounds six feet high at Nanjing's Yijiang Gate in the north.
Two days later, in his report to the New York Times, he stated that the alleys and street were filled with civilian bodies, including women and children.
The occurrence of rape during the massacre is testified to by John Rabe, elected leader of the Nanjing Safety Zone, who writes: Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house.
[50]Minnie Vautrin, a professor at Ginling College, wrote in her diary on that day, "Oh God, control the cruel beastliness of the Japanese soldiers in Nanking tonight", and on the 19th, "In my wrath, I wished I had the power to smite them for their dastardly work.
Xia Shuqin, a woman testifying that she had been a massacre victim, sued Higashinakano for defamation for a claim made in a book written in 1998 that the murder of her family had been performed by Chinese, rather than Japanese, soldiers.
On 5 February 2009, the Japanese Supreme Court ordered Higashinakano and the publisher, Tendensha, to pay 4 million yen in damages to Xia.
He alleged that the Tokyo Tribunal was "victor's justice" and not a fair trial; that there were 2000 deaths for the entirety of the massacre; and that many civilians were killed by the Chinese military.
[9][10] The Japanese Wikipedia editor and academic Sae Kitamura [ja] agreed that revisionism was an issue, but corrected some technical aspects of Sato's arguments.
