historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...
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 Rape of Nanking") committed by Japanese troops 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 and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
is a hoax.
Biography
Higashinakano came to public attention when he attacked
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'', and ...
's 1997 book '' The Rape of Nanking''. He argued in an opinion column that appeared in ''
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, ''Asa ...
'' that the book was "pure baloney", alleging that there was "no witness of illegal executions or murders". Referring to the war crimes trial in Tokyo after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, he opined that "there existed no 'Rape of Nanking' as alleged by the Tokyo Trial." He alleged to have identified 90 historical factual errors in the first 64 pages of ''The Rape of Nanking.'' In the 1998
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.
Higashinakano pursued his arguments in his book ''Thorough Review of Nanjing Massacre'' (published in English as ''The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction'', 2006). In 2006, Xia Shuqin (夏淑琴), a Chinese woman whose testimony he sought to discredit in his book, took Higashinakano to court in China, winning 1.6 million yuan in damages. Higashinakano had claimed that she had not been a witness of the Nanjing massacre and was not the child filmed by the missionary John Magee during the event.
The case was later pursued in the Japanese courts. On February 5, 2009 the
Supreme Court of Japan
The , located in Hayabusachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo, is the highest court in Japan. It has ultimate judicial authority to interpret the Japanese constitution and decide questions of national law. It has the power of judicial review, which allows it t ...
damages
At common law, damages are a remedy in the form of a monetary award to be paid to a claimant as compensation for loss or injury. To warrant the award, the claimant must show that a breach of duty has caused foreseeable loss. To be recognised at ...
to Xia Shuqin, asserting that he had
libelous
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defin ...
ly defamed her. Higashinakano and his publisher Tendensha appealed, but lost their case. Higashinakano was unable to prove that Mrs. Xia and the girl in the film were different people.