The Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre is the representation of the events of the Nanjing Massacre as history, in various languages and cultural contexts, in the years since these events took place. This historiography is disparate and sometimes contested, owing to conflicting currents of Chinese and Japanese nationalist sentiment and national interest, as well as the fog of war.
Japanese-language historiography on the subject has ranged from nationalist-revisionist accounts which completely deny Imperial Japanese culpability in war crimes, to leftist critics of militarism who prefer to center the narrative on the accounts of Chinese survivors of the events. Although Japanese revisionist accounts, which have sometimes arisen in the context of Japanese domestic politics, have been controversial, particularly in China, the Japanese-language historiographical material regarding the massacre has featured much diverse and sophisticated research.[1]
In contrast to the Japanese research that have been ongoing since the late 1950s, Chinese-language research has for a long time been hindered by the limitations on free speech in mainland China, much of the secondary material merely agreed on the government statement of the day, making it difficult to describe the situation as a "debate".[citation needed]
While mainly written by non-academic lay authors, revisionist works of the Nanjing Massacre in Japan have been increasingly vocal in the past years[when?] and have caused international disputes and stoked nationalist tensions. Despite many failed attempts for a collaboration, Japan and China have been unable to agree upon the death toll of the massacre, and the debate remains a cornerstone of the current instability in the far east Asian geopolitics.
Second Sino-Japanese War
During the war, the Japanese Government kept tight control over the news media. As a result, the Japanese public was not aware of the Nanjing Massacre or other war crimes committed by the Japanese military. The Japanese military was, rather, portrayed as a heroic entity. Japanese officials lied about civilian death figures at the time of the Nanjing Massacre, and some Japanese ultranationalists are still deny that the killings occurred.[2][3]
One brief lapse in the Japanese government's control over negative depictions of the war was the fleeting public distribution of Tatsuzō Ishikawa's wartime novel, Living Soldier (Ikiteiru heitai), which depicted the grim and dehumanizing effects of the war. Ishikawa and his publisher tried to satisfy government censors by a deliberate decision to self-censor lines about soldiers "forag[ing] for fresh meat" and "search[ing] for women like dogs chasing a rabbit", while still preserving the overall tone and import of the novel. The novel was published in 1938 but was pulled from circulation within days; Ishikawa was sentenced to a four-month prison term for disturbing "peace and order".[4]
Controversy and confusion over the Nanjing massacre occurred even soon after, in 1943 George Orwell wrote in Looking Back on the Spanish War: "Recently I noticed that the very people who swallowed any and every horror story about the Japanese in Nanking in 1937 refused to believe exactly the same stories about Hong Kong in 1942. There was even a tendency to feel that the Nanking atrocities had become, as it were, retrospectively untrue because the British Government now drew attention to them ... There is not the slightest doubt, for instance, about the behaviour of the Japanese in China ... The raping and butchering in Chinese cities, the tortures in the cellars of the Gestapo, the elderly Jewish professors flung into cesspools, the machine-gunning of refugees along the Spanish roads—they all happened, and they did not happen any the less because The Daily Telegraph has suddenly found out about them when it is five years too late."
It was not until the Tokyo Trial (tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East) and the Nanjing Trial that the truth of the Nanjing Massacre was first revealed to Japanese civilians.[citation needed] The atrocities revealed during the trials shocked Japanese society at the time.[citation needed]
Postwar
In the 1950s, author Yoshie Hotta wrote a series of pieces of historical fiction about the atrocities in Nanjing.
In 1967, Tomio Hora published his seminal account "Nankin Jiken" ("Nanjing Incident") in which he refuted revisionist denial of the massacre. This detailed treatment of the incident was the first meaningful and in-depth description of the massacre in Japanese postwar historiography.[5] Some leftwing Japanese journalists of the decade were inspired by the American war in Vietnam to research the events.[6]
International interest in the Nanjing Massacre waned into near obscurity until 1972, the year China and Japan normalized diplomatic relations. Discussion of wartime atrocities developed considerably in this period. The Chinese government's statements about the events were attacked by Japanese diplomats, because they relied on personal testimonies and anecdotal evidence. Also coming under attack were the burial records and photographs presented in the Tokyo War Crime Court, which were said to be fabrications by the Chinese government, artificially manipulated or incorrectly attributed to the Nanjing Massacre.[7]
During the 1970s, Japanese journalist Katsuichi Honda traveled to China to explore the wartime conduct of the Imperial Army. Based on his research in China, Honda wrote a series of articles for the Asahi Shimbun on atrocities (such as the Nanjing Massacre) committed by Japanese soldiers during Second Sino-Japanese War, called "Chūgoku no Tabi" (中国の旅, "Travels in China").[citation needed] The publication of these articles triggered a vehement response from the Japanese right regarding Imperial Japanese war crimes. Japanese nationalist responses answering this publication included the influential articles of Shichihei Yamamoto, "Reply to Katsuichi Honda",[8] and Akira Suzuki, "The Phantom of The Nanjing Massacre".[9]
In 1965, Japanese-language textbook author Saburō Ienaga sued the Ministry of Education,[10] claiming that the government was unconstitutionally forcing him to alter the contents of his textbook, violating his right to freedom of expression. This case was ultimately decided in the author's favor in 1997.[10]
The way in which the subject is taught in Japanese schools became the center of controversy in the Japanese textbook controversies of 1982 and 1986. The Nanjing Massacre "was still absent from elementary school textbooks [but] junior high school textbooks such as those published by Nihon shoseki and Kyōiku Shuppan in 1975, for instance, mentioned that forty-two thousand Chinese civilians, including women and children, were killed during the Massacre".[attribution needed][11] Two other textbooks mentioned the massacre but the four other textbooks in use in Japan did not mention it all. By 1978 the Ministry of Education removed the number killed out of all text books in use.
In 1982, the Ministry of Education embarked on a campaign to reframe the presentation of the history of World War II in history textbooks. History textbooks were reworded to describe the Sino-Japanese War as "advancing in and out of China" instead of "aggression" which was deemed to be a more pejorative term. The Nanjing Massacre was characterized as a minor incident which was sparked by the frustration of Japanese soldiers at meeting strong resistance from the Chinese Army. These moves sparked strong protests from other Asian countries.
In the 1990s, the stance of the Japanese government began to change as three consecutive prime ministers sought reconciliation with other Asian countries by acknowledging Japan's responsibility for the war.[12]
Immediately after taking office in 1993, Hosokawa Morihiro, prime minister of the first non-Liberal Democratic Party government, characterized Japan's expansion through Asia in the 1930s and 1940s as an "aggressive war". Hosokawa's two successors, Hata Tsutomu and Murayama Tomiichi made similar statements.[12] For example, Murayama Tomiichi expressed "deep remorse" for Japan's colonial rule and aggression.[13]
During this period, officially endorsed school textbooks were rewritten to reflect this changed perspective on Japan's responsibility for the war. For example, of the seven history books approved in 1997 for use in junior high schools, six cited a figure of 200,000 as the number of people killed by the Japanese military during the capture of Nanjing; four of those books also mentioned the higher Chinese estimate of 300,000 casualties.[13]
Besides total denial, another line of Japanese thought insisted that the scale of the Nanjing Massacre had been exaggerated by the Chinese. This view was expounded by Ikuhiko Hata in his book Nanjing Incident.[14] Hata asserted that the number of victims in the Massacre was 38,000–42,000. He argued that only Chinese POWs and civilians, and not Chinese soldiers killed in action on the battlefield, should be counted as victims of the massacre.[15]
1980s
Chinese interest in the history of the massacre further developed in the 1980s. Research of burial records and documents, as well as interviews, confirmed a figure of 300,000 dead Chinese in the course of the massacre, thus corroborating the findings of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
In Japan, a variety of new evidence was published, including the private journals of commanding Japanese generals as well as those of many ordinary soldiers. Official military records of a number of the Japanese units involved also became available. In addition, a number of Japanese veterans began openly to admit to having committed or witnessed atrocities in the Nanjing area. Iris Chang mentioned important research was made out of the academic community by freelancers and reporters. She cited the works of Ono Kenji, a chemical factory worker[16] who, from 1988 to 1994, visited 600 households, interviewed 200 persons, photocopied 20 notebooks, and conducted 7 video interviews. Some of his researches were published in Shūkan Kin'yōbi and were saluted as the first work on Nanjing Massacre solely based on Japanese sources. In 1996, he coedited a book on the subject,[17] "living under the constant shadow of possible Japanese retaliation".[18]
Masaaki Tanaka's book "Fabrication of Nanjing Massacre" not only denied the Nanjing Massacre but laid the blame for the Sino-Japanese war on the Chinese Government.[19]
In September 1986, the Japanese education minister, Fujio Masayuki, dismissed the Nanjing massacre as "just a part of war".[20]
As far as Japanese academics are concerned, the controversy over the occurrence of atrocities ended in the early '90s. Both sides accept that atrocities did occur; however, disagreement exists over the actual numbers. The debate is focused on the questions of whether to include archival or anecdotal evidence, what time period to use in defining the massacre, and what geographical area to use in defining the massacre.
Chinese historical studies
In a 1990 paper entitled The Nanking Massacre and the Nanking Population, Sun Zhai-wei of the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences estimated the total number of people killed at 377,400, combining Chinese burial records and estimates totaling 150,000 given by Japanese Imperial Army major Ohta Hisao in a confessional report about the Japanese army's disposal efforts of dead bodies.[22]
Denial by Japanese government officials
A number of Japanese cabinet ministers, as well as some high-ranking politicians, have made comments denying the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army in World War II. Among these were General Nagano Shigeto, a World War II veteran and a former chief of staff of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force who was appointed justice minister in spring of 1994. Shigeto told a Japanese newspaper that "the Nanjing Massacre and the rest was a fabrication".[23]
In an interview with Playboy magazine, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said, "People say that the Japanese made a holocaust but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie."[24] Some subsequently resigned after protests from China and South Korea.
On November 10, 1990, during a protest by Chinese Americans against the Japanese actions on the island of Diao-Yu-Tai, the Deputy Japanese Consul in Houston asserted that "the Nanjing Massacre never occurred".
In response to these and similar incidents, a number of Japanese journalists and historians formed the Nankin Jiken Chōsa Kenkyūkai (Nanjing Incident Research Group). The research group has collected large quantities of archival materials as well as testimonies from both Chinese and Japanese sources.[25]
Apology and condolences by the prime minister and emperor of Japan
On August 15, 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the Surrender of Japan, the Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama gave the first clear and formal apology for Japanese actions during the war. He apologized for Japan's wrongful aggression and the great suffering that it inflicted in Asia. He offered his "heartfelt" apology to all survivors and to the relatives and friends of the victims. That day, the prime minister and the Japanese Emperor Akihito pronounced statements of mourning at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan. The emperor offered his condolences and expressed the hope that similar atrocities would never be repeated.
Iris Chang
Interest in the West remained muted until the publication of Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking, in 1997. Even though her book was criticized by various historians for flaws in accuracy of its historical research, the book raised consciousness of the incident in a much wider Western audience.
Currently, no notable group in Japan, even among right-wing nationalists, denies that killings did occur in Nanjing. The debate has shifted mainly to the death toll, to the extent of rapes and civilian killings (as opposed to POW and suspected guerrillas) and to the appropriateness of using the word "massacre". Massacre denialists insist that burial records from the Red Swastika Society and the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong) were never cross examined at the Tokyo and Nanjing trials, arguing therefore that the estimates derived from these two sets of records should be heavily discounted. Although they admit that personal accounts of Japanese soldiers do suggest the occurrence of rapes, they insist that this anecdotal evidence cannot be used to determine the extent of rapes. Moreover, they characterize personal testimonies from the Chinese side to be propaganda. They also point out that, unlike the burial records that document the number of deaths, there are no documented records of the rapes, and so they argue that the allegation of mass rape is unsubstantiated. Massacre denialists also assert that the majority of those killed were POWs and "suspected guerrillas" whose executions they characterize as legitimate, and so they argue the use of the word "massacre" is inappropriate.
However, within the public the debate still continues. Those downplaying the massacre have most recently rallied around a group of academic and journalists associated with the Tsukurukai. Their views are often echoed in publications associated with conservative, right-wing publishers such as Bungei Shunjū and Sankei Shuppan. In response, two Japanese organizations have taken the lead in publishing material detailing the massacre and collecting related documents and accounts. The Study Group on the Nanjing Incident, founded by a group of historians in 1984, has published the most books responding directly to revisionist historians; the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility, founded in 1993 by Yoshiaki Yoshimi, has published many materials in its own journal.
In 2004, the Japanese Minister of Education expressed a desire to overcome "self-torturing" accounts of Japanese history.
In 2005, violent riots erupted in China over new history textbooks published by right-wing publisher Fusosha which were approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education.
In 2007, a group of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication, arguing that there was no evidence to prove the allegations of mass killings by Japanese soldiers. They accused Beijing of using the alleged incident as a "political advertisement".[26]
That same year, Xia Shuqin won a defamation of character suit against Japanese massacre denialists who argued that she had fabricated testimony relating to the death of seven of her eight family members during the Nanjing Massacre. Only eight at the time, Xia had herself been bayoneted, but survived, while her four-year-old sister escaped detection under the bed quilts.[27]
Related Research Articles
The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, torture, and arson. The massacre is considered to be one of the worst wartime atrocities.
The Battle of Nanking was fought in early December 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of Nanjing (Nanking), the capital of the Republic of China.
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is a bestselling 1997 non-fiction book written by Iris Chang about the 1937–1938 Nanjing Massacre — the mass murder and mass rape of Chinese civilians committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It describes the events leading up to the Nanjing Massacre, provides a graphic detail of the war crimes and atrocities committed by Japanese troops, and lambastes the Japanese government for its refusal to rectify the atrocities. It also criticizes the Japanese people for their ignorance about the massacre. It is one of the first major English-language books to introduce the Nanjing Massacre to Western and Eastern readers alike, and has been translated into several languages. The book significantly renewed public interest in Japanese wartime conduct in China, Korea, Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Iwane Matsui was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and the commander of the expeditionary force sent to China in 1937. He was convicted of war crimes and executed by the Allies for his involvement in the Nanjing Massacre.
The Nanking Safety Zone was a demilitarized zone for Chinese civilians set up on the eve of the Japanese breakthrough in the Battle of Nanking. Following the example of Jesuit Father Robert Jacquinot de Besange in Shanghai, the foreigners in Nanjing created the Nanking Safety Zone, managed by the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone led by German businessman and Nazi party member John Rabe. The zone and the activities of the International Committee were responsible for safely harboring 250,000 Chinese civilians from death and violence during the Nanjing Massacre.
Katsuichi Honda is a Japanese journalist and author most famous for his writing on the Nanjing Massacre. During the 1970s he wrote a series of articles on the atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese soldiers during World War II called "Chūgoku no Tabi". The series first appeared in the Asahi Shimbun.
The hundred man killing contest was a newspaper account of a contest between Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, two Japanese Army officers, during the Japanese invasion of China, over who could kill 100 people the fastest while using a sword. The two officers were later executed on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their involvement.
During the interwar period in Japan, "incident" became a common euphemism for wars, coups, and other events of a politically sensitive or sensational nature. Using "incident" rather than more specific terms allowed Japanese journalists to maintain the appearance of neutrality while avoiding potential censorship. Prominent examples include the "Manchurian Incident", the "China Incident", and the "Nanjing Incident".
The International Committee was established in 1937 to establish and manage the Nanking Safety Zone.
Hisao Tani was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War and a convicted war criminal as well as crimes against humanity. Forces under his command committed the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. Tani was tried in the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and executed.
The Truth About Nanjing is a 2007 film by Japanese far right filmmaker Satoru Mizushima that is widely considered to advocate for denial or revisionism of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
Ikuhiko Hata is a Japanese historian. He earned his PhD at the University of Tokyo and has taught history at several universities. He is the author of a number of influential and well-received scholarly works, particularly on topics related to Japan's role in the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
Shōichi Watanabe was a Japanese scholar of English and one of Japan's cultural critics. He is known for ultranationalist historical negationism.
Satoru Mizushima is a Japanese filmmaker. He graduated from Waseda University majoring in German literature. He can often be seen and heard during nationalist rallies in Tokyo, especially during anti-Chinese protests. He denies Japan's destructive role in World War II.
Shūdō Higashinakano is a Japanese historian. He is a professor of intellectual history at Asia University who maintains that the Nanjing Massacre committed by Japanese troops during the Second Sino-Japanese War is a hoax.
Nanjing Massacre denial is the pseudohistorical claim denying that Imperial Japanese forces murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians in the city of Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. This is relevant today in Sino-Japanese relations. 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. In Japan, however, there has been a debate over the extent and nature of the massacre with some historians attempting to downplay or outright deny that the massacre took place.
Tomio Hora was a Japanese historian and Waseda University professor, well known for his pioneering efforts to push back against Nanjing Massacre denial inside Japan.
Tokushi Kasahara is a Japanese historian. He is a professor emeritus at Tsuru University and his area of expertise is modern Chinese history.
Minoru Kitamura is a Japanese historian. He is a professor at Ritsumeikan University whose academic speciality is modern Chinese history.
The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanjing (Nanking), and though a large number of Chinese POWs and civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese following their entrance into Nanjing on December 13, 1937, the precise number remains unknown. Since the late-1960s when the first academic works on the Nanjing Massacre were produced, estimating the approximate death toll of the massacre has been a major topic of scholarly debate.
↑ Gallicchio, Marc S. (2007). 'The Unpredictability of the Past. Duke University Press. p.158. ISBN978-0-8223-3945-8.
↑ Li, Fei Fei, Robert Sabella and David Liu (eds) (2002). Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. ISBN978-0-7656-0817-8.{{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
↑ Hora, Tomio, "Nankin jiken", (The Nanjing incident) in Kindai senshi no nazo, ("Mysteries of modern war history") Tokyo: Jinbutsu oraisha, 1967.
↑ Hata, Ikuhiko (1986). Nanjing Incident. Chuo Koron Shinsho.
↑ Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 98–100.
↑ Charles Smith, "One Man's Crusade: Kenji Ono Lifts the Veil on the Nanjing Massacre". Far Eastern Economic Review 157, no. 34 (August 25, 1994): 24–25.
↑ Ono, Kenji; Fujiwara, Akira; Honda, Katsuichi (1996). Nankin Daigyakusatsu o kirokushita Kogun heishitachi: daijusan Shidan Yamada Shitai heishi no jinchu nikki [Records of the Massacre of Nanking by the soldiers of the Imperial Army: frontline log of the soldiers of the 13e division of the group Yamada]. Tokyo: Otsuki Shonen.
↑ Iris., Chang (1997). The rape of Nanking: the forgotten holocaust of World War II (1sted.). New York, NY: BasicBooks. pp.Chapter "A Second Rape. The Academic Cover–Up". ISBN9780465028252. OCLC776994797.
Hata, Ikuhiko (1986). Nanjing Incident (南京事件―「虐殺」の構造. Nankin Jiken― Gyakusatsu no kozo). Chuo Koron Shinsho. ISBN4-12-100795-6.
Yamamoto, Shichihei (March 1972). "Reply to Katsuichi Honda". Every Gentlemen.
Higashinakano, Syudo. The Truth of the Nanking Operation in 1937. Shogakukan.
Higashinakano, S., Susumu, Kobayashi and Fukunaga, S. Analyzing the "Photographic Evidence" of the Nanking Massacre. Shogakukan.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Tanaka, Massaki (1984). Fabrication of Nanjing Massacre. Nihon Kyobun Sha.
The Truth about Nanjing (2007) a Japanese-produced documentary denying that any such massacre took place.
Suzuki, Akira (April 1972). "The Phantom of The Nanjing Massacre". Every Gentlemen.
Yang, DaQing (June 1999). "Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing". American Historical Review. 104 (3): 842–865. doi:10.2307/2650991. JSTOR2650991. PMID19291890.
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