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Nanjing Massacre denial is the denial of the fact that
Imperial Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of Japan, 1947 constitutio ...
ese forces murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians in the city of
Nanjing 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 ...
during the
Second Sino-Japanese War 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 (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese ...
, an extremely controversial episode in the history of
Sino-Japanese relations Sino-Japanese is often used to mean: * Sino-Japanese vocabulary: That portion of the Japanese vocabulary that is of Chinese origin or makes use of morphemes of Chinese origin (similar to the use of Latin/Greek in English). * Kanbun: A Japanese meth ...
. Some historians accept the findings of the
Tokyo tribunal 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, conv ...
with respect to the scope and nature of the atrocities which were committed by the
Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...
after the
Battle of Nanjing 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 ...
, but others do not. In Japan, however, there has been a debate over the extent and nature of the
massacre A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...
. Relations between Japan and China have been complicated as a result, as denial of the massacre is seen in China as part of an overall unwillingness on Japan's part to admit and apologize for its aggression, or a perceived insensitivity regarding the killings. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, ranging from 40,000 to 200,000.Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, ed. (2008). The Nanking Atrocity, 1937–38: Complicating the Picture. Berghahn Books. p. 362. .James Leibold (November 2008). "Picking at the Wound: Nanjing, 1937–38". Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies. Some scholars, notably revisionists in Japan, have contended that the actual death toll is far lower, or even that the event was entirely fabricated and never occurred at all.Fogel, Joshua A. ''The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography''. 2000, page 46-8Dillon, Dana R. ''The China Challenge''. 2007, pp. 9–10 These revisionist accounts of the killings have become a staple of
Japanese nationalist 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 ...
discourse.Yoshida, pp. 157–158 Some Japanese journalists and social scientists, such as Tomio Hora and
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� ...
, have played prominent roles in countering such historiography, in the decades since the killings. Nonetheless, denialist accounts, such as those of Shūdō Higashinakano, have often created controversy in the global media, particularly in China and other East Asian nations.Gallicchio, Marc S. ''The Unpredictability of the Past''. 2007, page 158 Coverage of the massacre in Japanese school textbooks also troubles
Sino-Japanese relations Sino-Japanese is often used to mean: * Sino-Japanese vocabulary: That portion of the Japanese vocabulary that is of Chinese origin or makes use of morphemes of Chinese origin (similar to the use of Latin/Greek in English). * Kanbun: A Japanese meth ...
, as in some textbooks, the massacre is only briefly mentioned.


National identity

Takashi Yoshida asserts that, "Nanjing has figured in the attempts of all three nations hina, Japan and the United Statesto preserve and redefine national and ethnic pride and identity, assuming different kinds of significance based on each country's changing internal and external enemies."Yoshida, p. 5


Japan

In Japan, interpretation of the Nanjing Massacre is a reflection upon the Japanese national identity and notions of "pride, honor and shame." Takashi Yoshida describes the Japanese debate over the Nanjing Incident as "crystalliz nga much larger conflict over what should constitute the ideal perception of the nation: Japan, as a nation, acknowledges its past and apologizes for its wartime wrongdoings; or... stands firm against foreign pressures and teaches Japanese youth about the benevolent and courageous martyrs who fought a just war to save Asia from Western aggression." In some nationalist circles in Japan, speaking of a large-scale massacre at Nanjing is regarded as Japan bashing' (in the case of foreigners) or 'self-flagellation' (in the case of Japanese)."


China (People's Republic of China)

David Askew, an associate professor of law at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, characterizes the Nanjing Incident as having "emerged as a fundamental keystone in the construction of the modern Chinese national identity." According to Askew, "a refusal to accept the "orthodox" position on Nanjing can be construed as an attempt to deny the Chinese nation a legitimate voice in international society".


Taiwan (Republic of China)

Former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui had, on numerous occasions, claimed that the Nanjing Massacre was purely propaganda perpetrated by the Chinese communists and which could be placed into the same category as "fictitious history". The Taiwanese leader spent the first 22 years of life in
Taiwan under Japanese rule The island of Taiwan, together with the Penghu Islands, became a dependency of Japan in 1895, when the Qing dynasty ceded Fujian-Taiwan Province in the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War. The sho ...
, and served as a military officer when the island-nation was still under Japanese rule. In general, attitudes in Taiwan towards Japan are more positive than in the PRC due to the longer and less harsh Japanese administration of Taiwan compared to the Japanese occupation in the PRC. Furthermore, the geopolitical alignment of Taiwan and Japan against the PRC mean that the perception of Japan is less influenced by Japanese actions in WWII and more influenced by contemporary Japanese cultural exports.


Issues of definition

The precise definition of the geographical area involved, duration of the massacre, as well as who is to be considered and counted among the victims, forms a major part of both the definition of the massacre and the arguments of denialists. Among the most extreme denialists, casualty claims range from several dozen to several hundred. Masaaki Tanaka, a denialist, engaged in academic misconduct to support his claim that the massacre was a fabrication and death tolls were low. While figures within the range of 50,000–300,000 is typically articulated among more sophisticated and mainstream historians. 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, conv ...
estimated at least 200,000 casualties and at least 20,000 cases of rape. The common revisionist viewpoint, made by denialists such as Higashinakano Shudo is that the geographical area of the incident should be limited to the few square kilometers of the city, and they typically estimate the population to be about 200,000–250,000. However, this geographic definition is almost universally unheard of outside of revisionist circles. Their use of 200,000–250,000 civilians also only includes those in the Nanjing Safety Zone, which does not include everyone inside of the city. Most historians include a much larger area around the city, including the Xiaguan district (the
suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separat ...
s north of Nanjing city, about 31 km2 in size) and other areas on the outskirts of the city. In 2003, Zhang Lianhong estimated that the population of greater Nanjing was between 535,000 and 635,000 civilians and soldiers just prior to the Japanese occupation. In 2008, he revised his estimate to 468,000–568,000. Some historians also include six counties around Nanjing, known as the Nanjing Special Municipality. With the six surrounding counties included, the population of Nanjing is estimated to be more than 1 million.Historian
Tokushi Kasahara is a Japanese historian. He is a professor emeritus at Tsuru University and his area of expertise is modern Chinese history. Life and career He was born in Gunma Prefecture and graduated from Gunma Prefectural Maebashi High School and the depa ...
states "more than 100,000 and close to 200,000, or maybe more", referring to his own book ''Nankin jiken'' Iwanami shinsho (FUJIWARA Akira (editor) ''Nankin jiken o dou miruka'' 1998 Aoki shoten, , p. 18). This estimation includes the surrounding area outside of the city of Nanking, which is objected by a Chinese researcher (the same book, p. 146). Yutaka Yoshida concludes "more than 200,000" in his book (''Nankin jiken o dou miruka'' p. 123, YOSHIDA Yutaka''Tennou no guntai to Nankin jiken'' 1998 Aoki shoten, , p. 160). Professor Tomio Hora at Waseda University in Tokyo writes 50,000–100,000 (TANAKA Masaak
''What Really Happened in Nanking''
2000 Sekai Shuppan, Inc. , p. 5).
The duration of the incident is naturally defined by its geography: the earlier the Japanese entered the area, the longer the duration. The
Battle of Nanjing 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 ...
ended on December 13, when the divisions of the Japanese Army entered the walled city of Nanjing. The Tokyo War Crime Tribunal defined the period of the massacre to the ensuing six weeks. More conservative estimates say the massacre started on December 14, when the troops entered the Safety Zone, and that it lasted for six weeks. Most scholars have accepted figures between 50,000 and 300,000 dead as an approximate total. Revisionists in Japan, however, have contended at times that the actual death toll is far lower, or even that the event was entirely fabricated and never occurred at all.


History and censorship during the War

During the war, Japanese media and newspapers typically portrayed a positive view of the war in China. Reports on the massacre were generally muted, and newspaper reports and photos typically emphasized cooperation between Chinese civilians and Japanese soldiers. Massacre denialists claim that the news published in the Japanese media and newspapers were "true" and "reliable" stories. However, most mainstream historians counter that it is well known that the ''Naikaku Jōhōkyoku'' (''Cabinet Information Bureau''), a consortium of military, politicians and professionals created in 1936 as a "committee" and upgraded to a "division" in 1937, applied censorship of all the media of the Shōwa regime and that this office held a policing authority over the realm of publishing.David C. Earhart, ''Certain Victory : Images of World War II in the Japanese Media'', M.E. Sharpe, 2007, p.89, 108, 143 Therefore, the ''Naikaku Jōhōkyokus activities were proscriptive as well as prescriptive. Besides issuing detailed guidelines to publishers, it made suggestions that were all but commands. From 1938, the print media "would come to realize that their survival depended upon taking cues from the Cabinet Information Bureau and its flagship publication, ''Shashin shūhō'', designers of the "look" of the soldier, and the "look" of the war." Article 12 of the censorship guideline for newspapers issued on September 1937 stated that any news article or photograph "unfavorable" to the Imperial Army was subject to a gag. Article 14 prohibited any "photographs of atrocities" but endorsed reports about the "cruelty of the Chinese" soldiers and civilians. Owing to the censorship, none of the hundred Japanese reporters in Nanjing when the city was captured wrote anything unfavorable to their countrymen. In 1956, however, Masatake Imai, correspondent for the ''Tokyo
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 ...
'' who reported only about the "majestic and soul-stirring ceremony" of the triumphal entry of the Imperial Army, revealed he witnessed a mass execution of 400 to 500 Chinese men near ''Tokyo Asahi''s office. "I wish I could write about it", he told his colleague Nakamura. "Someday, we will, but not for the time being. But we sure saw it", Nakamura answered. Shigeharu Matsumoto, the Shanghai bureau chief of ''
Dōmei Tsushin was the official news agency of the Empire of Japan. History and development Dōmei was the end result of years of efforts by Japanese journalists and business leaders to create a national news agency in Japan that could compete with (and if nec ...
'', wrote that the Japanese reporters he interviewed all told him they saw between 2,000 and 3,000 corpses around the Xiaguan area and a reporter, Yuji Maeda, saw recruits executing Chinese prisoners-of-war with bayonets. Jiro Suzuki, a correspondent for the ''
Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...
'', wrote, "When I went back to the Zhongshan Gate, I saw for the first time an unearthly, brutal massacre. On the top of
the wall ''The Wall'' is the eleventh studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released on 30 November 1979 by Harvest/EMI and Columbia/ CBS Records. It is a rock opera that explores Pink, a jaded rock star whose eventual self-i ...
, about 25 meters high, the prisoners of war were rounded up in a line. They were being stabbed by bayonets and shoved away off the wall. A number of Japanese soldiers polished their bayonets, shouted to themselves once and thrust their bayonets in the chest or back of POWs." Historian
Tokushi Kasahara is a Japanese historian. He is a professor emeritus at Tsuru University and his area of expertise is modern Chinese history. Life and career He was born in Gunma Prefecture and graduated from Gunma Prefectural Maebashi High School and the depa ...
notes, "Some deniers argue that Nanjing was much more peaceful than we generally think. They always show some photographs with Nanjing refugees selling some food in the streets or Chinese people smiling in the camps. They are forgetting about Japanese propaganda. The Imperial Army imposed strict censorship. Any photographs with dead bodies couldn't get through. So photographers had to remove all the bodies before taking pictures of streets and buildings in the city ..Even if the photos were not staged, the refugees had no choice but to fawn on the Japanese soldiers. Acting otherwise meant their deaths..."


Revived international interest in the Nanjing Massacre

Iris Chang Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968November 9, 2004) was a Chinese American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, '' The Rape of Nanking'', an ...
's 1997 book, '' The Rape of Nanking'', renewed global interest in the Nanjing Massacre. The book sold more than half a million copies when it was first published in the US, and according to ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', received general critical acclaim. ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' wrote that it was the "first comprehensive examination of the destruction of this Chinese imperial city", and that Chang "skillfully excavated from oblivion the terrible events that took place". ''
The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pennsy ...
'' wrote that it was a "compelling account of a horrendous episode that, until recently, has been largely forgotten." The text, however, was not without controversy. Chang's account drew on new sources to break new ground in the study of the period. Japanese ultra-nationalists maintained that the Nanjing Massacre was a fabrication which sought "to demonize the Japanese race, culture, history, and nation."Takashi Yoshida. ''The making of the "Rape of Nanking"''. 2006, page 146


Massacre affirmation vs. massacre denial

Takashi Hoshiyama characterizes opinion in Japan about the Nanjing Massacre as "broadly divided into two schools of thought: the massacre affirmation school, which asserts that a large-scale massacre took place, and the massacre denial school, which asserts that, a certain number of isolated aberrations aside, no massacre took place."


Hijacking of the debate by layperson activists

David Askew asserts that the debate over the Nanjing Massacre has been hijacked by "two large groups of layperson activists".
"Chinese" are turned into a single, homogenised voice and portrayed as sinister and manipulative twisters of the truth, while the similarly homogenized "Japanese" are portrayed as uniquely evil, as cruel and blood-thirsty beyond redemption, and as deniers of widely accepted historical truths. Both positions are victimisation narratives. One depicts the Chinese as helpless victims of brutal Japanese imperialism in the winter of 1937–38, while the other depicts the gullible Japanese, innocent in the ways of the world, as victims of Chinese machinations and propaganda in the post-war era.


Japanese perspectives on the massacre

Japanese affirmationists not only accept the validity of these tribunals and their findings, but also assert that Japan must stop denying the past and come to terms with Japan's responsibility for the war of aggression against its Asian neighbors. Affirmationists have drawn the attention of the Japanese public to atrocities committed by the Japanese Army during World War II in general and the Nanjing Massacre in particular in support of an anti-war agenda. The most extreme denialists, by and large, reject the findings of the tribunals as a kind of " victor's justice" in which only the winning side's version of events are accepted. Described within Japan as the Illusion School (''maboroshi-ha''), they deny the massacre and argue that only a few POWs and civilians were killed by the Japanese military in Nanjing. More moderate denialists argue that between several thousand and 38,000–42,000 were massacred.


Prominent Japanese denialists


Shudo Higashinakano

Massacre denialists such as Higashinakano argue that the Nanjing Massacre was a fabrication and war-time propaganda spread by the Chinese Nationalists and Communists. He argues that the activities of the Japanese military in Nanjing were in accordance with international law and were humane.Higashinakano (2005) pp. 219–223 Among other claims, he has denied that there was execution of POWs in uniform, and cited anecdotes claiming that Chinese POWs were treated humanely by Japanese soldiers. However, Higashinakano has also claimed at times that the executed POWs were illegitimate combatants, and so their execution was legitimate under international law. Higashinakano believes some several thousand "illegitimate combatants" may have been executed in such a fashion. What Higashinakano believed is against the articles of
Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were amon ...
, which was ratified by Japan and China. Japan violated the spirits and the statements of
laws of war The law of war is the component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war ('' jus ad bellum'') and the conduct of warring parties (''jus in bello''). Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territ ...
. For examples, according to historian
Akira Fujiwara was a Japanese historian. His academic speciality was modern Japanese history and he was a professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University. In 1980 he became a member of the Science Council of Japan and was a former chairman of the Historical Scien ...
, on August 6, 1937, deputy minister of Military of Japan notified Japanese troops in Shanghai of the army's proposition to remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners. This directive also advised staff officers to stop using the term "
prisoner of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of w ...
". During the massacre, Japanese troops in fact embarked on a determined search for former soldiers, in which thousands of young men were captured, most of whom were killed. In another case, Japanese troops gathered 1,300 Chinese soldiers and civilians at the Taiping Gate and killed them. The victims were blown up with landmines, then doused with petrol before being set on fire. Those that were left alive afterward were killed with bayonets. F. Tillman Durdin and Archibald Steele, American news correspondents, reported that they had seen bodies of killed Chinese soldiers forming mounds six feet high at Nanjing's Yijiang Gate in the north. Durdin, who was working for the
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
, made a tour of Nanjing before his departure from the city. He heard waves of machine-gun fire and witnessed the Japanese soldiers gun down some two hundred Chinese within ten minutes. Two days later, in his report to the ''New York Times'', he stated that the alleys and street were filled with civilian bodies, including women and children. A claim that Harold Timperley, whose report formed the basis of the Tribunal's findings, was reporting only hearsay, and that thus, the figure of 300,000 dead was "unreal", drew a response from Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, who suggested that Higashinakano's assertions and conclusion were not "sensible":
Higashinakano jumps to this conclusion in all earnestness because he clings to a hypothetical fixation that the Atrocity never happened. This forces him to seize any shred of evidence, whether sound or not, to sustain and systematize that delusion.
Higashinakano has also at times denied the occurrence of mass rape on the part of Japanese troops, at times ascribing it to Chinese soldiers, and at other times simply denying its occurrence. The occurrence of rape during the massacre is testified to by
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 ...
, elected leader of the Nanjing Safety Zone, who writes:
"Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital. ..Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls College alone. You hear nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they're shot. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers."
Minnie Vautrin Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin (September 27, 1886 – May 14, 1941) was an Americans, American missionary, diarist, educator and president of Ginling College. She was a Christian missionary in China for 28 years. She is known for the care and prote ...
, a professor at Ginling College, wrote in her diary on that day, "Oh God, control the cruel beastliness of the Japanese soldiers in Nanking tonight..," and on the 19th, "In my wrath, I wished I had the power to smite them for their dastardly work. How ashamed women of Japan would be if they knew these tales of horror." Vautrin also wrote in her diary that she had to go to the Japanese embassy repeatedly from December 18 to January 13 to get proclamations to prohibit Japanese soldiers from committing crimes at Ginling because the soldiers tore the documents up before taking women away. Xia Shuqin, a woman testifying that she had been a massacre victim, sued Higashinakano for defamation for a claim made in a book written in 1998 that the murder of her family had been performed by Chinese, rather than Japanese, soldiers. On 5 February 2009, the Japanese Supreme Court ordered Higashinakano and the publisher, Tendensha, to pay 4 million yen in damages to Mrs. Xia. According to the court, Higashinakano failed to prove that she and the girl were different persons, and that she was not a witness of the Nanjing massacre, as Higashinakano had claimed in his book.


Masaaki Tanaka

Masaaki Tanaka was discredited after it was proven that he engaged in academic misconduct by altering several hundred places of an important document. In his book ''The Fabrication of the 'Nanjing Massacre, Masaaki Tanaka alleges that there was no indiscriminate killing in Nanjing and that the massacre was a fabrication manufactured by 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, conv ...
(IMTFE) and the Chinese government for the purpose of propaganda. He alleged that the Tokyo Tribunal was "victor's justice" and not a fair trial; that there were 2000 deaths for the entirety of the massacre; and that many civilians were killed by the Chinese military.


See also

* Nanking (1937-1945) *
2005 anti-Japanese demonstrations The anti-Japanese demonstrations of 2005 were a series of demonstrations, some peaceful, some violent, which were held across most of East Asia in the spring of 2005. They were sparked off by a number of issues, including the approval of a Japane ...
*
Anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan Anti-Chinese sentiment has been present in Japan since at least the Tokugawa period. History Tokugawa period Beginning in the period (1600 to 1868), Japan left a prolonged period of civil war and began to prosper as a unified and stable state ...
* Racism in Japan *
Sino-Japanese relations Sino-Japanese is often used to mean: * Sino-Japanese vocabulary: That portion of the Japanese vocabulary that is of Chinese origin or makes use of morphemes of Chinese origin (similar to the use of Latin/Greek in English). * Kanbun: A Japanese meth ...
*
Japanese history textbook controversies Japanese history textbook controversies involve controversial content in government-approved history textbooks used in the secondary education (junior high schools and high schools) of Japan. The controversies primarily concern the nationalist ri ...
*
List of war apology statements issued by Japan This is a list of war apology statements issued by Japan regarding war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The statements were made at and after the end of World War II in Asia, from the 1950s to present day. Controvers ...
*
Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform The is a group founded in December 1996 to promote a nationalistic view of the history of Japan. Productions and views The group was responsible for authoring a history textbook published from Fusōsha (扶桑社), which was heavily criticised ...
*
Japanese nationalism 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 ...
* Historiography of the Nanking Massacre *
Shintaro Ishihara was a Japanese politician and writer who was Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to 2012. Being the former leader of the radical right Japan Restoration Party, he was one of the most prominent ultranationalists in modern Japanese politics. An ultrana ...
* *
Japanese war crimes The Empire of Japan committed war crimes in many Asian-Pacific countries during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars. These incidents have been described as an "Asian Holocaust". Some w ...
*
Genocide denial Genocide denial is the attempt to deny or minimize the scale and severity of an instance of genocide. Denial is an integral part of genocide and includes secret planning of genocide, propaganda while the genocide is going on, and destruction of ...
*
Holocaust denial Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements: * ...
*
Holocaust trivialization Holocaust trivialization is any comparison or analogy that diminishes the impact of the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide of six million European Jews during World War II. The Wiesel Commission defined trivialization as the abusive use of compariso ...
*
Armenian genocide denial Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of ...
*
Historical negationism Historical negationism, also called denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with ''historical revisionism'', a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterp ...


Notes and references


Bibliography


Academic sources

* * * * * * * *


Denialist sources

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nanking Massacre Controversy
Denial Denial, in ordinary English usage, has at least three meanings: asserting that any particular statement or allegation is not true (which might be accurate or inaccurate); the refusal of a request; and asserting that a true statement is not true. ...
* Far-right politics in Japan Historical negationism Anti-Chinese sentiment Japanese nationalism Pseudohistory Anti-communism Nippon Kaigi