Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:03, 1 July 2007

This article or section appears to contradict itself. Please see the talk page for more information.

The contest to kill 100 people using a sword (百人斬り競争, hyakunin-giri kyosō) was a contest that occurred in China during the Nanking Massacre.

In 1937, the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun and the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun covered a "contest" between two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, in which the two men vied to be the first to kill 100 people with a sword. The competition took place en route to Nanking, directly prior to the infamous "Nanking Massacre" and was covered in four articles, from November 29 to December 13, the two last being translated in the Japan Advertiser.

Both officers supposedly surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest. Therefore, they decided to begin another contest, with the aim being 150 kills. The Nichi Nichi headline pertaining to the event read "'Incredible Record' Behead 100 People—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings".

The news coverage of the event found its way into the documents of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Soon after, the two soldiers were extradited to China, and on January 28, 1948, both soldiers were executed at Yuhuatai execution chamber by the Chinese government following trials by a Nanking military court for atrocities committed during the Battle of Nanking and the subsequent massacre.

In Japan, the contest was lost to the obscurity of history until 1967, when Tomio Hora, a professor of history at Waseda University, published a 118-page document pertaining to the events of Nanking. The story was unreported by the Japanese press until 1971, when Japanese historian Katsuichi Honda brought the issue to the attention of the public with a series of articles published in the Mainichi Shimbun—the modern-day descendant of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun. In Japan, the articles sparked ferocious debate about the Nanking Massacre, with the veracity of the killing contest a particularly contentious point of debate. Honda published a book about Nanking and the contest in 1981.

Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, who, in 2000, undertook one of the most comprehensive studies of the incident ever conducted, reached the conclusion that "the killing contest itself was a fabricated story", but served as a positive influence in Japanese culture, making the Japanese more aware of some of the wartime atrocities that had actually been conducted by the Imperial Japanese Army.

In April of 2003, the families of Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda filed a defamation suit in a Tokyo District Court against Katsuichi Honda and the Mainichi Shimbun, requesting ¥36,000,000 in compensation. On August 23, 2005, the court, presided over by Judge Akio Doi, ruled against the plaintiffs, saying that the statute of limitations for the defamation claims had already expired. The judge further found that the allegations of defamation were difficult to prove, in light of the numerous incriminating comments allegedly made by the soldiers themselves.

References

1. http://rene.malenfant.googlepages.com/hyakuningirikyousou
2. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/member.html?eo20031124hs.htm

Further reading

• John B. Powell, "My Twenty-five Years in China", New York, The Macmillan Company, 1945. pp.305 – 308.
• Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, "The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt Amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971 – 75",The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol.26 No.2 Summer 2000.

External links

• English translation of all articles pertaining to the event
• Template:Jp icon Full text of all articles pertaining to the event
• Template:Jp icon Decision of the Tokyo District Court (full text)
• Template:Jp icon Mochizuki's Memories "Watashino Shinajihen" (私の支那事変), one of the exhibits in evidence at the Tokyo District Court, which revealed Noda and Mukai beheaded Chinese farmers with their swords during the killing contest.

• Japan during World War II
• Contests
• Japanese war crimes
• Japanese mass murderers