Nanking Massacre: Genocide, Evidence, and Revisionist History

Introduction

There are numerous reports, studies, and films that refer directly and explicitly to the events that occurred in the city of Nanking in 1937. As one account states: "The chronicle of humankind's cruelty is a long and sorry tale. But if it is true that even in such horror tales there are degrees of ruthlessness, then few atrocities can compare in intensity and scale to the Rape of Nanking during World War II."

Yet despite the abundance of reportage, eyewitness accounts, and first-hand testimonies of the terrible events that took place when the Japanese invaded, many scholars, researchers, and commentators claim that the Rape of Nanking "remains an obscure incident." As one scholar notes, "Although the death toll exceeds the immediate number of deaths from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrors of the Nanking massacre remain virtually unknown to people outside Asia."

Some commentators hold that the Rape of Nanking has not had the same effect on public consciousness as other instances of genocide, such as the Jewish Holocaust. Many critics argue that this silence surrounding Nanking and Japanese aggression has been politically motivated. Nevertheless, in recent decades a wide array of articles and publications have insisted on drawing attention to the atrocities that occurred in that city. The rise of the Internet, the growth of the international human rights movement, and the publication of books such as Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997) have all contributed to a growing awareness and demand for explanation of these events.

This renewed attention has in turn sparked an intense debate within Japanese society about the veracity and authenticity of reports of extreme atrocities and genocide in Nanking. Revisionist historians, journalists, and politicians in Japan and elsewhere have questioned various accepted facts, and some have even cast doubt on whether the massacre and rape occurred at all. This is also related to the critique that an avoidance mentality — one that is politically motivated — pervades certain sectors of Japanese society.

The revisionist tendency often reflects ideological and nationalist motivations. It frequently results in the construction of false narratives in support of those aims, including the use of fallacious arguments, erroneous facts, and historical distortions designed to convince others that reported events are untrue or grossly exaggerated. Revisionism is also frequently supported by what appears to be legitimate and credible scholarly research — constructing an alternative historical truth that counters the negative impact of established reportage and academic condemnation of acts such as genocide.

This paper examines the revisionist interpretation of the massacre and rape of Nanking in relation to the range of viewpoints and evidence that contradict the revisionist stance.

Historical Background and Overview

The historical details of the events leading up to the massacre of Nanking are clear and undisputable. After the Japanese successfully invaded Shanghai in 1937, they proceeded to attack Nanking, which was then the newly established capital of China. The city was entered on December 13, 1937. From that point, Japanese soldiers proceeded to subdue the large Chinese population in a manner that can only be described as barbaric and utterly devoid of regard for human dignity and rights. As one scholar describes:

"Japanese soldiers began an orgy of cruelty seldom if ever matched in world history. Tens of thousands of young men were rounded up and herded to the outer areas of the city, where they were mowed down by machine guns, used for bayonet practice, or soaked with gasoline and burned alive. By the end of the massacre an estimated 260,000 to 350,000 Chinese had been killed. Between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women were raped — and many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, and nail them alive to walls."

The behavior of the Japanese troops reportedly shocked even members of the Nazi party who were present in the city. John Rabe, a German businessman who led the local Nazi party chapter, joined other foreigners in working tirelessly to protect civilians from slaughter by establishing a safety zone in which approximately 250,000 civilians found shelter.

One could argue that the frustrations the Japanese forces had experienced during their war with China partly explain — though in no way excuse — the excessive reaction of troops in Nanking. As one historian remarks, the Battle of Shanghai prior to the Nanking invasion had created a deep enmity between the two sides: "The war in Shanghai was indeed a decisive battle that caused both sides exorbitant damages, left them with a deep-rooted loathing for each other, and begot vengeance. Many historians today say the Battle of Shanghai nurtured the psychological conditions for Japanese soldiers to go on a berserk rampage in Nanking." However, this cannot serve as an adequate reason or excuse for the massacre and rape in any sense. The events that took place in Nanking are described by many scholars simply and straightforwardly as genocide.

According to numerous studies and reports, the number of those killed by Japanese soldiers was staggering. In her research on the events, Iris Chang accepts that at least 260,000 Chinese residents were killed — a figure cited by the Allied military tribunal in bringing twenty-eight perpetrators to justice. Some estimates place the figure in the 350,000 range or higher.

The common view of what took place in Nanking is reflected in a commemorative document published on the sixtieth anniversary of the incident in 1997 at Princeton University: "Most experts agree that at least 300,000 Chinese died, and 20,000 women were raped. Some estimate the numbers to be much higher — 340,000 and 80,000, respectively." There is, however, no definitive consensus on the precise numbers of those killed or wounded, with divergent views depending on whether the researcher adopts the orthodox or revisionist position.

This generally condemnatory view is supported by numerous journalistic accounts. On December 17, 1937, Frank Tillman Durdin of the New York Times wrote that "wholesale looting, the violation of women, the murder of civilians, the eviction of Chinese from their homes, mass executions of war prisoners and the impressment of able-bodied men turned Nanking into a city of terror." Archibald Steele of the Chicago Daily News described the siege as "Four Days of Hell," and reported that "I saw Chinese troops looting shop windows, but later I saw the Japanese troops outdo them in a campaign of pillage which the Japanese carried out not only in the shops but in homes, hospitals and refugee camps." Another account states that the "Nanking killing continued for seven weeks in front of international witnesses, without any attempt at concealment, and with the sadism of recreational murder."

Revisionist Reactions and Denial

The Nanking massacre has remained a center of controversy and denial in Japanese society. While the traditionalist view accepts that the atrocities occurred, there has been persistent debate about how the event should be presented in school textbooks. The depth of divergent feeling can be gauged from the comment of one participant at a recent conference on the issue — a scholar born in Hiroshima in 1942 — who described visiting the site of the worst massacres as "experiencing the original sin of being Japanese."

The silence surrounding the rape and massacre of Nanking has been broken in recent years. A number of well-received books and studies have been published, alongside commentary in various media, which have encouraged a resurgence of attention and criticism regarding what took place under Japanese occupation. This renewed historical inquiry has also produced a reassessment from revisionist historians and journalists, including claims that "critics have stretched tales of Japanese brutality as means of putting political pressure on Japan and winning compensation."

In fact, revisionist interpretations of the events at Nanking have existed since the postwar period, with the intention of either ignoring or invalidating accounts of rape, torture, and wanton slaughter. For example, a 1995 report states that the Japanese Supreme Court ruled that the government had illegally deleted references in schoolbooks to atrocities committed by the Japanese army during the war.

This revisionist attitude can be contrasted with the publication of Iris Chang's acclaimed bestseller, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997), which did much to revitalize the debate and reignite condemnation of the massacre. Chang's book provides a detailed account of events in Nanking during the winter of 1937 and spring of 1938. While many previous histories referred to the rape only cursorily, Chang offers a far more comprehensive view of what actually took place. Her book also presents the political and military background to the events, includes personal accounts from survivors, and attempts to demonstrate the considerable influence of the Code of Bushido on Japanese military behavior, as well as to expose the political forces that encouraged postwar amnesia on the subject. She also suggests that there was considerable complicity in the silence about the massacre on the part of the Japanese royal house.

Some scholars function more as apologists than outright revisionists. They point to underlying causes for the behavior of Japanese troops, arguing that a war mentality was socialized into Japanese society from a young age: "In the 1930s, toy shops became virtual shrines to war, selling arsenals of toy soldiers, tanks, rifles, antiaircraft guns, bugles, and howitzers. Japanese schools operated like miniature military units. Indeed, some of the teachers were military officers, who lectured students on their duty to help Japan fulfill its divine destiny. Teachers also instilled in boys hatred and contempt for the Chinese people, preparing them psychologically for a future invasion of the Chinese mainland."

Some argue further that Japan had only recently emerged from a medieval social structure, and that its soldiers were effectively operating by twelfth-century rules of war rather than twentieth-century standards. This view is strongly condemned by many modern Japanese scholars as being reductionist and simplistic.

However, many scholars and journalists are strictly revisionist — denying the claims of rape and atrocity put forward in works such as Chang's. In political circles there has also been revisionist denial of the scale of rape and deaths and of the extent of Chinese suffering. Many senior Japanese politicians have referred to the rape as a lie, a fabrication, or merely as "a part of war." Textbooks in Japan were rewritten by the Ministry of Education to tone down the Nanking events, and newspapers at the time tended to paint a very different picture. For example, the Asahi Shimbun carried a photograph titled "Nanjing, Where Peace Has Been Restored," with the caption "Soldiers of the Imperial Army Distributing Candy to Refugees."

Since 1970, there have been a growing number of contradictory scholarly and journalistic interpretations of Nanking. The more orthodox view is represented by figures such as Honda Katsuichi, a newspaper correspondent, and Hora Tomio, an academic, who argue that Japan must bear responsibility for the full scale of the atrocities and genocide. The revisionist side is represented by many scholars, politicians, and journalists who refute these claims — particularly the figure of 300,000 people killed in six weeks.

The extent of political denial is illustrated by the public statements of senior officials. Takami Eto, a Cabinet minister who led the third-largest faction in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, dismissed as "a big lie" estimates that the Japanese army killed as many as 300,000 civilians during the 1937–38 occupation of Nanjing. Some Japanese nationalist scholars and conservative lawmakers go further, calling the entire massacre a hoax. A museum at a shrine to Japan's war dead states that the people of Nanjing were "once again able to live their lives in peace" after the Japanese army took over the city.

Some scholars also interrogate first-hand accounts of the massacre in search of inconsistencies that might suggest exaggeration. For instance, one Western scholar notes that John Rabe's diary — written by the German who witnessed the massacre — omits certain details of atrocities later described by Chinese sources, such as "live burials, mass disembowelments, deaths by freezing, or death by being eaten alive by dogs." The spurious reasoning offered is that these crimes were later embellishments because Rabe did not mention them specifically, leading to the conclusion that "perhaps they did not occur at all."

Conclusion

One important source of insight into the events at Nanking is the testimony of Japanese journalists who witnessed events firsthand. "These atrocities shocked many of the Japanese correspondents who had followed the troops to Nanking. Even seasoned war correspondents recoiled at the orgy of violence."

Despite the mass of factual and research evidence, a strong revisionist effort persists in attempting to reduce the significance and tragedy of the Nanking massacre. This tendency suggests that revisionism is ultimately a stance that attempts to ignore or deliberately invalidate historical reality. Yet the denial of genocidal events typically only increases exposure of and attention to those tragic occurrences.

The relative neglect of the Nanking massacre in the decades following the war has been attributed by some scholars to Cold War political motivations. However, in recent years numerous publications and reports have surfaced that attest to the realities of the atrocities at Nanking. While there remain some inconsistencies and discrepancies in the reports — and the precise number of Chinese civilians killed remains contested — what can no longer be disputed with any confidence is that these events did occur and that they constitute genuine atrocities.

While revisionist histories of the events continue to appear, those arguments are becoming increasingly threadbare in comparison to the growing body of research, survivor testimony, journalistic documentation, and even confessions from participants. The work of scholars like Iris Chang and journalists like Honda Katsuichi has ensured that the historical record of the Nanking massacre is far more difficult to suppress or distort than it once was. As the Cold War constraints that encouraged silence give way to an era of greater historical transparency and international human rights consciousness, the revisionist position faces ever-mounting evidentiary challenges that it cannot credibly meet.

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