Contest to kill 100 people using a sword
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The was a contest between Toshiaki Mukai (3 June 1912 – 28 January 1948) and Tsuyoshi Noda (1912 – 28 January 1948), two Japanese Army officers, which took place during the
Japanese invasion of China The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
. The goal of the contest was to see who could kill 100 people the fastest while using a sword. The two officers were later executed on war crime charges for their involvement.Takashi Yoshida. ''The making of the "Rape of Nanking"''. 2006, page 64 Since that time, the historicity of the event has been hotly contested, often by
Japanese nationalists is a form of nationalism that asserts the belief that the Japanese are a monolithic nation with a single immutable culture, and promotes the cultural unity of the Japanese. Over the last two centuries, it has encompassed a broad range of ideas a ...
or negationist historians who seek to invalidate the
historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...
of the
Nanjing Massacre The Nanjing Massacre (, ja, 南京大虐殺, Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as ''Nanking'') was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the ...
. The issue first emerged from a series of wartime Japanese newspaper articles, which celebrated the "heroic" killing of the Chinese by two Japanese officers, who were engaged in a competition to see who could kill the most first. The issue was revived in the 1970s, which sparked a larger controversy over Japanese war crimes in China, in particular, the Nanjing Massacre. The original accounts printed in the newspaper described the killings as hand-to-hand combat; however, historians have suggested that they were most likely another part of the widespread mass killings of defenseless Chinese prisoners.


Wartime accounts

In 1937, the '' Osaka Mainichi Shimbun'' and its sister newspaper, the ''
Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.4 ...
'' covered a contest between two
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese officers, and , in which the two men were described as vying with one another to be the first to kill 100 people with a sword. The competition supposedly took place en route to
Nanking Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
, prior to the infamous
Nanking Massacre The Nanjing Massacre (, ja, 南京大虐殺, Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as ''Nanking'') was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Ba ...
, and was covered in four articles from 30 November 1937, to 13 December 1937; the last two being translated in the '' Japan Advertiser''. Both officers supposedly surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it difficult to determine which officer had actually won the contest. Therefore, (according to the journalists Asami Kazuo and Suzuki Jiro, writing in the ''Tokyo Nichi-Nichi Shimbun'' of 13 December), they decided to begin another contest with the goal of 150 kills.. The ''Nichi Nichi'' headline of the story of 13 December read Incredible Record' n the Contest to
Behead Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the i ...
100 People—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings". Other soldiers and historians have noted the unlikelihood of the lieutenants' alleged heroics, which entailed killing enemy after enemy in fierce hand-to-hand combat. Noda himself, on returning to his hometown, admitted this during a speech:
Actually, I didn't kill more than four or five people in hand-to-hand combat ... We'd face an enemy trench that we'd captured, and when we called out, "Ni, Lai-Lai!" (You, come here!), the Chinese soldiers were so stupid, they'd rush toward us all at once. Then we'd line them up and cut them down, from one end of the line to the other. I was praised for having killed a hundred people, but actually, almost all of them were killed in this way. The two of us did have a contest, but afterwards. I was often asked whether it was a big deal, and I said it was no big deal ...


Trial and execution

After the war, a written record of the contest found its way into the documents of the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on April 29, 1946 to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for crimes against peace, conven ...
. In 1947, the two soldiers were arrested by the
U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
and detained at
Sugamo Prison Sugamo Prison (''Sugamo Kōchi-sho'', Kyūjitai: , Shinjitai: ) was a prison in Tokyo, Japan. It was located in the district of Ikebukuro, which is now part of the Toshima ward of Tokyo, Japan. History Sugamo Prison was originally built in 1 ...
. They were then
extradited Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdict ...
to China and tried by the
Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal The Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal was established in 1946 by the government of Chiang Kai-shek to judge Imperial Japanese Army officers accused of crimes committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was one of ten tribunals established by the ...
. On trial with the two men was Gunkichi Tanaka, a Japanese Army captain who personally killed over 300 Chinese POWs and civilians with his sword during the massacre. All three men were found guilty of atrocities committed during the
Battle of Nanking The Battle of Nanking (or Nanjing) 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 Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of the Repub ...
and the subsequent massacre, and sentenced to death. On 28 January 1948, the three were executed by shooting at a selected spot in the mountains of the
Yuhuatai District Yuhuatai District () is one of 11 districts of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, China. Geography Yuhuatai District is located in the south of the main city of Nanjing, in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, bordering Jiangning Distr ...
. Mukai and Noda were both 35 years old; Tanaka was 42.


Postwar accounts

In Japan, the contest was lost to the obscurity of history until 1967, when Tomio Hora (a professor of history at
Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...
) published a 118-page document pertaining to the events of Nanking. The story was unreported by the
Japanese press Japanese newspapers ( , or older spelling ), similar to their worldwide counterparts, run the gamut from general news-oriented papers to special-interest newspapers devoted to economics, sports, literature, industry, and trade. Newspapers are ci ...
until 1971, when Japanese journalist
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" (中 ...
brought the issue to the attention of the public with a series of articles written for ''
Asahi Shimbun is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition and ...
'', which focused on interviews with Chinese survivors of the World War II occupation and massacres. In Japan, the articles sparked fierce debate about the Nanking Massacre, with the veracity of the killing contest a particularly contentious point of debate. Over the following years, many authors have argued over whether the Nanking Massacre even occurred, with viewpoints on the subject also being a predictor for whether they believed the contest was a fabrication. The ''
Sankei Shimbun The (short for ) is a daily newspaper in Japan published by the It has the seventh-highest circulation for regional newspapers in Japan. Among Japanese newspapers, the circulation is second only to ''Yomiuri Shimbun'', Seikyo Shimbun, ''Asah ...
'' and Japanese politician
Tomomi Inada is a Japanese lawyer and politician serving as a member of the Japanese House of Representatives, representing the 1st Fukui Prefecture since September 2005. She previously served as the 14th Japanese Minister of Defense from August 2016 to Jul ...
have publicly demanded that the ''Asahi'' and ''Mainichi'' media companies retract their wartime reporting of the contest. In a later work, Katsuichi Honda placed the account of the killing contest into the context of its effect on Imperial Japanese forces in China. In one instance, Honda notes Japanese veteran Shintaro Uno's autobiographical description of the effect on his sword after consecutively beheading nine prisoners. Uno compares his experiences with those of the two lieutenants from the killing contest. Although he had believed the inspirational tales of hand-to-hand combat in his youth, after his own experience in the war he came to believe the killings were more likely brutal executions. Uno adds,
Whatever you say, it's silly to argue about whether it happened this way or that way when the situation is clear. There were hundreds of thousands of soldiers like Mukai and Noda, including me, during those fifty years of war between Japan and China. At any rate, it was nothing more than a commonplace occurrence during the so-called Chinese Disturbance.
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" (中 ...
, ed.
Frank Gibney Frank Bray Gibney (September 21, 1924 – April 9, 2006) was an American journalist, editor, writer and scholar. He learned Japanese while in the American Navy during World War II, then was stationed in Japan. As a journalist in Tokyo, he wrote ''F ...
. ''The Nanjing massacre: a Japanese journalist confronts Japan's national shame''. 1999, page 128-132, M.E. Sharpe,
In 2000, Bob Wakabayashi wrote that "the killing contest itself was a fabrication", but the controversy it created "increased the Japanese people's knowledge of the atrocity and raised their awareness of being victimizers in a war of imperialist aggression despite efforts to the contrary by conservative revisionists"..
Joshua Fogel Joshua A. Fogel (; born 1950) is an American-Canadian Sinologist, historian, and translator who specializes in the history of modern China, especially focusing on the cultural and political relations between China and Japan. He has held a Tier ...
has stated that to accept the newspaper account "as true and accurate requires a leap of faith that no balanced historian can make". The Nanking Massacre Memorial in China includes a display on the contest among its many exhibits. A ''
Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...
'' article has suggested that its presence allows revisionists to "sow seeds of doubt" about the accuracy of the entire collection.. One of the swords allegedly used in the contest is on display at the
Republic of China Armed Forces Museum The Republic of China Armed Forces Museum (AFM; ) is a museum located on Guiyang Street in the Zhongzheng District of Taipei, Taiwan. It was opened on October 31, 1961, under the administration of the Republic of China Ministry of National Defen ...
in
Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...
,
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
. The contest is depicted in the 1994 film '' Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre'', as well as the 2009 film, ''
John Rabe John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23 November 1882 – 5 January 1950) was a German businessman and Nazi Party member best known for his efforts to stop war crimes during the Japanese Nanjing Massacre (also known as Nanking) and his work to prot ...
''.


Lawsuit

In April 2003, the families of Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda filed a defamation suit against
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" (中 ...
, Kashiwa Shobō, the Asahi Shimbun, and the ''
Mainichi Shimbun The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English language news website called ''The Mainichi'' (previ ...
'', requesting ¥36,000,000 in compensation. On 23 August 2005,
Tokyo District Court is a district court located at 1-1-4 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan.Supreme Court of Japan websit東京地方裁判所の紹介Retrieved on August 7, 2011 See also *Judicial system of Japan The judiciary (also known as the judicial sys ...
Judge Akio Doi dismissed the suit on the grounds that "The contest did occur, and was not fabricated by the media." The judge stated that, although the original newspaper article included "false elements", the officers admitted that they had raced to kill 100 people and "It is difficult to say it was fiction." Some evidence of killing Chinese POWs (not hand-to-hand fighting) were shown by the defendants, and the court admitted the possibilities of killing POWs by sword. In December 2006, The Supreme Court of Japan upheld the decision of the
Tokyo District Court is a district court located at 1-1-4 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan.Supreme Court of Japan websit東京地方裁判所の紹介Retrieved on August 7, 2011 See also *Judicial system of Japan The judiciary (also known as the judicial sys ...
.


See also

* Nanking (1937-1945) * Petar Brzica *
Tameshigiri ''Tameshigiri'' (試し斬り, 試し切り, 試斬, 試切) is the Japanese art of target test cutting. The kanji literally mean "test cut" (kun'yomi: ためし ぎり ''tameshi giri''). This practice was popularized in the Edo period (17th cen ...
*
Japanese war crimes The Empire of Japan committed war crimes in many Asian-Pacific countries during the period of Japanese militarism, Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars. These incidents have b ...


References


Citations


Bibliography

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Further reading

;In English: * Nanking (1937-1945) * (English translation of the newspaper articles on the contest) ;In Japanese:
Full text of all articles pertaining to the event
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070115105111/http://andesfolklore.hp.infoseek.co.jp/intisol/hyakunin/hanketul.htm Decision of the Tokyo District Court (full text)br>Mochizuki's Memories "Watashi no Shina-jihen" (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.'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Contest To Kill 100 People Using A Sword Japan in World War II Japanese war crimes Competitions in Japan Nanjing Massacre Second Sino-Japanese War 20th-century mass murder in China 1937 murders in China