The Port Arthur massacre (Chinese: 旅順大屠殺) took place during the First Sino-Japanese War from 21 November 1894 for three days, in the Chinese coastal city of Port Arthur (now Lüshunkou District of Dalian, Liaoning),[1] when advance elements of the First Division of the Japanese Second Army under the command of General Yamaji Motoharu (1841–1897) killed somewhere between 2,600 civilians and 20,000 people including Chinese soldiers, although one eyewitness reporter estimated a total death toll of 60,000, including civilians, soldiers, and residents of the outlying rural district.

Reports of a massacre were first published by the Canadian journalist James Creelman of the New York World, whose account was widely circulated within the United States.

As part of its wartime strategy during the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan had advanced through Korea, engaging Chinese troops at Asan near Seoul and then Pyongyang in September 1894, winning decisive victories on both occasions.

In September the Japanese Navy heavily damaged the Beiyang Fleet at the Battle of the Yalu River,[2] though the Chinese troopships were successful in landing their troops not far from the Sino-Korean border.

After a series of battles on the Liaodong Peninsula the First Division of the Second Army, led by General Yamaji, drew up around Port Arthur in late November.

On 18 November 1894, the Japanese movement down the peninsula was temporarily frustrated and the army returned to find that their abandoned wounded troops had been severely mutilated, with hands and feet cut off.

Cowan described what he saw:[9] Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent by the soldiery in murder and pillage from dawn to dark, in mutilation, in every conceivable kind of nameless atrocity, until the town became a ghastly Inferno to be remembered with a fearsome shudder until one's dying day.

Bodies of men strewed the streets in hundreds, perhaps thousands, for we could not count – some with not a limb unsevered, some with heads hacked, cross-cut, and split lengthwise, some ripped open, not by chance but with careful precision, down and across, disembowelled and dismembered, with occasionally a dagger or bayonet thrust in the private parts.

[12] According to a scouting report sent to Viceroy Li Hongzhang by the local official Liu Hanfang (劉含芳) soon after the massacre, 2,600~2,700 civilians were killed within the city.

"[13] The string of Japanese victories at Pyongyang and then at the Battle of the Yalu River had increased what had until then been only lukewarm Western interest in the war.

On 16 December, the Foreign Ministry released a statement to the press, asserting the atrocities were exaggerations:[17] The Japanese Government desires no concealment of the events at Port Arthur.

On the contrary, it is investigating rigidly for the purpose of fixing the exact responsibility and is taking measures essential to the reputation of the empire. ...

Japanese troops transported with rage at the mutilation of their comrades by the enemy, broke through all restraints ... [and] exasperated by the wholesale attempts [by Chinese soldiers] at escape disguised at citizens, they inflicted vengeance without discrimination. ...

[20] Some questioned Creelman's reliability, and a rumour spread that he left for Shanghai after the fall of Port Arthur to work for the Chinese government.

[23] The pro-Japanese North-China Herald attempted to defend the perpetrators of the massacre by proposing "The circumstances were such as might have taxed the control of any invading force.

These perceptions contributed to anti-Japanese sentiment in North America in the early 20th century, which would continue through World War II.