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The Nanjing Massacre (Chinese: 南京大屠殺, pinyin: Nánjīng Dà Túshā; Japanese: 南京大虐殺, Nankin Dai Gyaku-satsu), also known as the Rape of Nanking and sometimes in Japan as the Nanjing Incident (南京事件, Nankin Jiken), refers to the widespread atrocities conducted by the Japanese army including the looting, rape and killing of Chinese civilians in and around Nanjing, China after its fall to Japanese troops on December 13, 1937 in the Battle of Nanjing during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) (a war that would later become a part of World War II). The Nanjing Massacre is only one of many major war crimes committed during World War II.
Causes
The Nanjing massacre was perhaps the most brutal event in the Japanese invasion of China. Following the Mukden Incident in 1931, Japan began its invasion of Manchuria. The Communists and the Kuomintang (KMT) were still mired in the Chinese Civil War and did not resist the Japanese effectively. However, in 1937, following the Xian Incident, the Chinese finally agreed to form a united front, and the KMT then formally started an all-out defense against the Japanese threat. Compared to the Japanese army, the Chinese army was poorly trained and equipped, with some regiments armed primarily with swords and hand grenades and with virtually no anti-tank weaponry whatsoever. Although, it was likely that, as at most periods in history, China held the largest army in the world in terms of sheer number of troops. Following the battle at Marco Polo Bridge, which formally started the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese were swift in capturing major Chinese cities in the northeast.
However, in August of 1937, the Japanese army was faced with strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of Shanghai, effectively destroying any possibility of realizing the Japanese proclamation of "三月亡華," or "Conquering China in Three Months." (or in original Japanese "三日下上海,三月亡支那" or "Conquering Shanghai in Three Days, Conquering China in Three Months") The battle in Shanghai was bloody as soldiers fought house to house, with both sides pouring into the battlefield to replenish those who fell. Many historians today believe that the situation in Shanghai nurtured the psychological conditions for Japanese soldiers to march on a berserk rampage in Nanjing later on. By mid-November the Japanese finally captured the city with help of naval bombardment, but the General Staff Headquarters in Tokyo decided not to expand the war due to heavy casualties incurred and the increasingly low morale of the troops. However, on December 1, headquarters ordered the Central China Area Army and the 10th Army to capture Nanjing, the capital of China. The Japanese army contained many army reserves who had families back home and expected to return home once the campaign in Shanghai was over. Thus, as said orders came, the Japanese troops, already burdened with casualties in Shanghai and the possibility of being mired in China indefinitely, began projecting their inflamed animosities on Chinese soldiers and civilians throughout their march to Nanjing, which, according to many historians, was a prelude to the massive atrocities that would later take place in Nanjing.
In his memoirs, journalist Matsumoto Shigeharu, the Shanghai bureau chief of the Domei News Agency, recalled a circulating rumor among his colleagues. "The reason that the Yanagawa Corps is advancing quite rapidly is due to the tacit consent among the officers and men that they could loot and rape as they wish." This was seen by some as the main reason why the brutalities were committed by ordinary infantry troops, not just by some specially-assigned killing squads. Of course, the primary reason that this was perpetrated by the lowest ranking infantry troops was that it was not ordered from above, by the Japanese government or military leaders, and certainly not by the Emperor. While the Japanese, just like most nations at the time, held strongly racist beliefs, it was never their intention, at any level of the government or military, to commit genocide, eliminating the Chinese people from the face of the earth.
Death toll estimates
Currently no notable groups, including Japanese right wing nationalists, dispute the occurrence of atrocities. Subsequently, the controversy has shifted to the extent of the atrocities, especially estimations of the death toll. However, this debate has more to do with the precise definition of the terms "Nanking" and "massacre" than with historical research. In the West, as well as in Japan and China, many people hold the misconception that the Japanese army "massacred" well over "300,000" people ("civilians") "within" Nanking city in "a short period" of time "after" the city fell. This misconception is widespread because the public is exposed largely to testimonies of Nanjing civilians who have survived the atrocities.
The main issue in calculating the number of dead lies in defining the geographical range and time peoriod of killing as well as the question of what "type" of killing is to be included in the definition of the term "massacre". On one extreme is the view, known as the "Illusionist school", that the geographical area of the massacre should be limited to the few square kilometers of the city known as the Safety Zone. Another view to define "Nanjing" as the old walled city of Nanjing. However, many include the Xianquan area as Nanjing as it is the suburbs of Nanjing city (which is about 66 miles) or more broadly, some, known as the "Great Massacre School", include six xian (counties) around Nanjing starting from Suzhou, the western edge of Jiangsu province, 190 kilometers away from Nanjing city, as part of Nanjing as the entire Jiangsu province fell under administration in Nanjing city.
The period of the massacre, hence, is naturally defined by the geography of the masssacre. The Battle of Nanjing ended on December 13, when the divisions of the Japanese Army entered the walled city of Nanjing. The Tokyo War Crime Tribunal then defined the period of the massacre to the ensuing 6 weeks. The Illusionist school say the massacre started from December 14th, or more vaguely, the "middle of December", when the troops entred the Safety Zone, and that it lasted for 6 weeks. Those who define the Nanjing massacre as having started from the time the Japanese army entered Jiangsu province push the beginning of the massacre to around mid-November to early December (Suzhou fell on 19 November), and strech the end of the massacre to late March 1938.
Another part of the controversy is who to count as the "victims" of Japanese atrocities. Firstly, it should be noted that all schools agree that the Japanese army went on a rampage, indiscriminately killing civilians in Nanking city, and all schools agree that these should be counted in the death toll of the massacre. Also, over the course of the entire campaign through China, the Japanese army did not take any prisoners of war and killed any Chinese soldiers on the spot during or after the combat. Moreover, the army executed plain-clothed guerilla combatants who were hiding among civilians. This no doubt included many civilians who were wrongly accused of being guerilla combatants.
To make matters even more difficult, archival evidence such as burial records only state the body count and not which type of group each body belonged to. Therefore, it provides no means to distinguish whether bodies were the result of "legitimate" or "illegitimate" killing; whether they belonged to soldiers killed during combat (which the Great Massacre school include in the death toll of the massacre), soldiers who had no will or means to fight but were still summarily executed during and after the battle, or plain-clothed guerilla combatants killed on the spot, plain-clothed soldiers who were hiding among civilians to avoid being executed but killed nonetheless or civilians who were wrongly suspected of being guerrila combatants (which the Illusionist School considers as the legitimate casualties of war in the same vein as victims of aerial bombardment) or those killed when Japanese soliders simply went on rampage committing indiscriminate killing, rape and looting (which all the schools agree to be illegitimate). The Great Massacre School attributes the entire death toll to the massacre, including the soldiers killed during combat while the Illusionist school simply excludes all of the death toll from the massacre except those killed in the Safety Zone.
Today, academics as well as many non-academic sources give widely varying figures for the death toll of the Nanking Massacre. Some academic historians ostensibly refuse to give "estimates" of the death toll, stating that the entire issue is not helpful to the debate. Often the basis for the difference in the estimates is not well explained and this causes great animosities among the participants of the debate. The confusion in the debate is increased by the great number of laypeople involved who have little understanding of the different categories included in the death toll or the basis of the body count. In simplified summary, the Illusionst school who count the killing within the Safety Zone give an estimate of under 10,000 people "massacred". Those who take the conservative stance on geography as well as on the definition of the victims consider 40,000-50,000 to have been "massacred". Those who take a wider geographical and temporal position who also simply include all of the death toll of the Japanese military campaign in the massacre propose estimates starting from 120,000 or 130,000 at minimum and extending upwards of 300,000. Recently, some sources, particularly in China, have claimed the death toll to be upward of 350,000, by including the geographical and temporal limit of the massacre from the Japanese army's march from Shanghai.
Historiography
The large amount of evidence and scholarship regarding the atrocities in Nanjing exist and not even right wing organisation within Japan including Japanese veteran foundation which once attempted to disprove the massacre by conducting the interviews among the members who participate in Nanking campaine, deny that atrocities took place. However, disputes over the historical portrayal of events has been the root of continuing political tensions between the People's Republic of China and Japan.
Widespread atrocities committed by Japanese in Nanking were first reporeted to the world by the Westerners residing in Nanjing city's Safety Zone. For instance, on January 11, 1938, a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, Harold Timperley, apparently tried to cable a similar estimate but was censored by the Japanese authorities in Shanghai because his report said that "not less than 300,000 Chinese civilians" were slaughtered in cold blood in "Nanjing and elsewhere." His message was relayed from Shanghai to Tokyo to be sent out to the Japanese Embassies in Europe and the United States. Also, dramatic reports by American journalists of Japanese brutality against Chinese civilians, in addition to the Panay incident which also occurred after the occupation of Nanjing, helped turn American public opinion against Japan and, in part, led to a series of events which culminated in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In the International Military Tribunal for the Far East or the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, death toll is given to range between 200,000 and 300,000. In China the figure of more than 300,000, the death toll reckoned at the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, is the official estimate engraved on the stone wall at the entrance of the "Memorial Hall for Compatriot Victims of the Japanese Military's Nanjing Massacre".
In 1947 at the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, the verdict of Lieutenant General Tani Hisao, the commander of the 6th Division, quoted the figure of more than 300,000 death tolls. Apparently the estimation was made from burial records and eyewitness accounts. It concluded that some 190,000 were illegally executed at various execution sites and 150,000 were individually massacred. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated in its judgment that "over 200,000" or "over 100,000" civilians and prisoners of war were murdered during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation. That number was based on burial records submitted by two charitable organizations, the Red Swastika Society and the Chung Shan Tang (Tsung Shan Tong), the research done by Smythe and some estimates given by survivors.
At the Tokyo Tribunal of War Criminals, the Nanjing Massacre death toll was presented either as "more than 200,000" or "more than "100,000". In Japan, there are four opinions about Nanjing Massacre. The extent of Japanese atrocities did shock the world as well as Japanese public of the time but was soon became marginal issue.
Interest in the Nanjing Massacre did not begin until 1971, the year China and Japan normalized their relationship. In China, to foster the newly found friendship to Japan, the Communist Government under Deng Xiaoping ostensibly supressed the mention of Nanking Massacre from public discourse and media, which the communist party directly controled. Therefore, entire debate of Nanking massacre during 1970 takes place in Japan. In commemoration of the normalization, one Japanese major newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, ran serialized articles titled "Chugoku no Tabi" ("Travel to China"), written by journalist Katuichi Honda, which detailed the atrocities of the Japanese Army within China, including the Nanjing Massacre. In the series, Honda mentioned an episode in which two officers competed to slay 100 Chinese with their swords. The truth of this incident is hotly disputed and critics seized on the opportunity to imply that the episode, as well as the Nanjing Massacre and all its accompanying articles, were largely falsified. This is regarded as the start of the controversy in Japan. The debate concerning the occurrence of killings and rapes took place mainly in the 1970s, during which Chinese official statements about the event came under attack because they relied heavily on personal testimonies and anecdotal evidence. Also coming under attack were the burial records presented in the Tokyo War Crime Court, which were said to be fabrications by the Chinese side of the debate.
The controversy flared up again in 1982 when the Ministry of Education censored any mention of the Nanjing Massacre in a school textbook. The reason given by the ministry was that Nanking Massacre was not a well-established historical event. The author of the textbook, Professor Saburō Ienaga, sued the Ministry of Education in an extended case that was eventually won by the plaintiff in 1997. Also number of cabinet minister as well as some high ranking politician made comment denying atrocities committed by Japanese army in the World War II and were subsequently forced to resign after the protest from China and South Korea. In response, a number of journalists and historians formed the Nankin Jiken Chōsakai (Nanking Incident Research Group). The research group collected large quantities of archival materials as well as testimonies from both Chinese and Japanese sources. A competing group with a revisionist bent was headed by Tanaka Shōmei. However, the debate ended in the collapse of the revisionist side. In his presentation of the denial argument, Tanaka Shōmei presented the diary of Major Ishine Matsui. It was revealed that Tanaka altered, deleted or even added his own writing in nearly 600 places to support contention that Nanking Massacre is false. This was discovered by another historian Yuriaki Itakura. Itakura himself was much closer to the revisionist side, but he severely criticized Tanaka's distortion. Moreover, Japanese imperial army records, as well as a number of personal records by Japanese soldiers reporting the killings and rapes, made a denial impossible in the public forum. One of Japanese veteran groups for army officers attempted to disprove the massacre by conducting survey among the members who participated in Nanking campaine but their attempt ended up as proving the existence of the massacre beyond doubt.
In Chinese side, the public perception of Nanjing Massacre and Japan itself has U turn after Jiang Zemin became the head of state. Historically, Chinese nationalism and the legitimacy of communist government are defined by their struggle against Japanese agressor and their eventual victory. Hoever, under Deng Xiaoping, officially ideological line of criticism in public education as well as state controlled mass media were direct lagely against United State and its supposed capitalist Imperialism. Under Jiang Zemin, however, the line of hostility and criticims were redirected to Japan and Nanjing Massacre begun to be promoted widely in school text book as well as the state media. Bizzarely, the death toll of the massacre claimed by Chinese side start to increase since Jiang Zemin. In Japan, as far as Japanese academics are concerned, the controversy over the existence of atrocites ended in the early 90s. Both sides accept that killing did occur; however, disagreement exists over the actual numbers, which depends on the standard of inclusion of archival or anacedotal evidence, definition of the period of the massacre, as well as geographical coverage.
The controversy was related outside Japan by some journalists who followed the domestic debate but interest in the West remained muted until the publication of The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang in 1997. Even though the standard of historical research was described as highly flawed by both sides of the debate in Japan, it did bring the controversy to a much wider western audience.
Currently, no notable group, including right-wing nationalists, deny the existence of the killings and 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". Apologists 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 Nanking trials, arguing therefore that the estimates derived from these two sets of records should be heavily discounted. They also admit that personal records of Japanese soldiers do suggest the occurrence of rapes, but insist that this does not determine the extent of rapes. Moreover, they regard personal testimony from the Chinese side to be propaganda. They also point out that there are no documented records of the rapes, unlike the burial records which exist and document the killings, and therefore argue that the assertion of mass rape is unsubstantiated. Apologists further insist that the majority of those killed were POWs and "suspected guerrillas", which they consider to be legitimate killing, so that the use of descriptive 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 Society for the Creation of New Textbooks. Their views are often shared 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, has published many materials in its own journal.
The Society for the Creation of New Textbooks produced history textbooks for junior high school and submitted them to the Ministry of Education. The Ministry ordered corrections in 137 places. After the corrections, the book passed the 2001 inspection. This has again caused fury from Korea and China, both sides demanding reinspection. The book was published and went on to become a bestseller, selling more than 750,000 copies. The 2002 rate of adoption of this textbook in schools was only 0.039%.
Related topics
- Death Railway
- History of the Republic of China
- List of Japanese War Atrocities
- Manila Massacre
- Sook Ching Massacre
- Unit 100
- Unit 731
Further reading
- Askew, David "The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone: An Introduction" Sino-Japanese Studies Vol. 14, April 2002 (Article outlining membership and their reports of the events that transpired during the massacre)
- ——— "The Nanjing Incident: An Examination of the Civilian Population" Sino-Japanese Studies Vol. 13, March 2001 (Article analysis a wide variety of figures on the population of Nanjing before, during, and after the massacre)
- Brook, Timothy, ed. Documents on the Rape of Nanjing, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999. ISBN 0472111345 (Does not include the Rabe diaries)
- Chang, Iris, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, Foreword by William C. Kirby; Penguin USA (Paper), 1998. ISBN 0140277447
- Fogel, Joshua, ed. The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. ISBN 0520220072
- Honda, Katsuichi, Sandness, Karen trans. The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame, London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. ISBN 0765603357
- Kajimoto, Masato "Mistranslations in Honda Katsuichi's the Nanjing Massacre" Sino-Japanese Studies, 13. 2 (March 2001) pp.32-44
- Rabe, John, The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, Vintage (Paper), 2000. ISBN 0375701974
- Yamamoto, Masahiro, Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity, Praeger Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0275969045
- Tanaka, Masaaki, What Really Happened in Nanking, Sekai Shuppan, 2000. ISBN 4916079078
- Yoshida, Takeshi "A Japanese Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre", Columbia East Asian Review, Fall 1999. (A much longer and more detailed version of this article is in above in the work edited by Joshua Fogel)
- Takemoto, Tadao and Ohara, Yasuo The Alleged "Nanking Massacre": Japan's rebuttal to China's forged claims, Meisei-sha, Inc., 2000, (Tokyo Trial revisited) ISBN 4944219059
External links
- The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends - Detailed article by David Askew Discussing New Research on the Massacre and its Victims
- Online documentary: The Nanking Atrocities - Comprehensive account of the Nanjing Massacre including photos, video clips, interviews, and documented materials.
- An English translation of a classified Chinese document on the Nanjing Massacre
- Princeton University's exhibit on the massacre - Contains a gallery of the atrocities.
- Japanese Army's Atrocities - Nanjing Massacre - Contains archived documents including photos and maps.
- A Japanese Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre - details the transpirations of history revisionism in the Japanese media, research done by Columbia University.
- WWW Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre
- Research Institute of Propaganda Photos (Machine translation of Japanese site)
- The Nanjing Massacre is a lie! (Machine translation of Japanese site)
- New Research on the Nanjing Incident - Detailed article by David Askew Discussing New Research on the Massacre and its Victims
- Refutation by Tanaka Masaaki