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File:Nanjing massacre skulls.jpg
Many bones of the dead
File:Old woman raped.jpg
Old women were not spared from been raped and killed
File:Slayers.jpg
Two Japanese second lieuenants said to be competing with each other to kill Chinese. One killed 106 and another with 105 at that time.
File:Body everywhere.jpg
The dead bodies lay everywhere.

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).

Causes

The Nanjing massacre was perhaps the best remembered and most infamous event in the Japanese invasion of China. It continues to stir Chinese passions to this day. Following the Mukden Incident in 1931, Japan began its invasion of Manchuria. Because the Communists and the Kuomintang (KMT) were engaged in the Chinese Civil War they were distracted from the reality of Japanese advances. However, in 1937, following the Xian Incident, the Chinese communists and nationalists agreed to form a united front. The KMT then formally started an all-out defense against the Japanese threat. However, the Chinese army was poorly trained and equipped: some regiments were armed primarily with swords and hand grenades and few had anti-tank weaponry. Despite their difficulties, it is likely that China fielded the largest army in the world at the time in terms of troop strength. 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.

In August of 1937, the Japanese army faced strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of Shanghai, effectively destroying the 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 both sides faced attrition in urban hand-to-hand combat. Many historians today believe that the traumatic situation in Shanghai nurtured the some of the psychological conditions for Japanese soldiers to march on Nanjing later on. By mid-November the Japanese had captured the city with help of naval bombardment. The General Staff Headquarters in Tokyo decided not to expand the war due to heavy casualties incurred and the 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 some historians, was a prelude to the 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 reason why many of the brutalities were committed by ordinary infantry troops, not just by some specially-assigned killing squads.

Destruction

The destruction of Nanking was ordered by Matsui Iwane, commanding general of the Central China Front Army that captured the city. Over the next several weeks, Japanese soldiers carried out Matsui's orders, perpetrating numerous mass executions and tens of thousands of rapes. The army looted and burned the surrounding towns and the city, destroying more than a third of the buildings. In 1940 the Japanese made Nanking the capital of their Chinese puppet government headed by Wang Ching-wei. Shortly after the end of World War II, Matsui and Tani Hisao, a lieutenant general who had personally participated in acts of murder and rape, were found guilty of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and executed.

Death toll estimates

There is some debate as to the extent of the war atrocities in Nanjing, especially estimations of the death toll.

The issues involved in calculating the number of dead lie 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 side is the view that the geographical area of the incident 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. Some historians include a much larger area around the city. The Xianquan area is the suburbs of Nanjing city (which is about 66 miles). Because the entire Jiangsu province fell under the administration of Nanjing, some historians also include six xian (counties) around Nanjing starting from Suzhou, at the western edge of Jiangsu province.


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. Conservative estimates say the massacre started from December 14th, 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 November 19), and strech the end of the massacre to late March 1938.

Another point of debate is the question of whom to count as the victims of Japanese atrocities. Historians agree that the Japanese army indiscriminately killed many civilians in Nanking city, and that these should be counted in the death toll of the massacre. Over the course of the campaign through China, the Japanese army did not take prisoners of war and summarily executed Chinese soldiers during or after combat. Moreover, the army executed plain-clothed guerilla combatants who were hiding among civilians. It is unclear how many innocent civilians were wrongly accused of being guerilla combatants and were dispatched in this manner.


To make matters more difficult, archival evidence such as burial records only state the body count and not which type of group to which each body belonged. Therefore, it provides no means to distinguish whether bodies were the result of "legitimate" or "illegitimate" killing. Many different categories of varying legitimacy exist: soldiers killed during combat, surrendered soldiers summarily executed after the battle, plain-clothed guerilla combatants, plain-clothed soldiers hiding among civilians, civilians wrongly suspected of being guerrila combatants, or those bystanders attacked during the period of indiscriminate killing, rape and looting (which all the scholars deem to be illegitimate).

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. 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.


Historiography

China and Japan have acknowledged the existence of war attrocities. 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 reported 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.

Interest in the Nanjing Massacre did not begin until 1972, the year China and Japan normalized their relationship. In China, to foster the newly found friendship to Japan, the Communist Government under Mao Zedong ostensibly suppressed the mention of the Nanking Massacre from public discourse and media, which the communist party directly controled. Therefore, the entire debate of Nanking massacre during 1970 took 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 Nanjing Massacre 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, a number of cabinet minister as well as some high ranking politicians made comments 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 the Nanking Massacre is false (that it had never occurred). The falsification was discovered by 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 denial impossible in the public forum. One Japanese veteran group for army officers attempted to disprove the massacre by conducting a survey among the members who participated in Nanking campaign but their attempt ended up as proving the existence of the massacre beyond doubt.

On the Chinese side, the public perception of Nanjing Massacre and Japan itself has made a U-turn after Jiang Zemin became the head of state. Historically, Chinese nationalism and the legitimacy of the communist government are defined by their struggle against the Japanese aggressor and their eventual victory. In Japan, as far as Japanese academics are concerned, the controversy over the existence of atrocities 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 anecdotal 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 that 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


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

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