The Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre examines how the 1937–1938 massacre of Chinese by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing has been documented, interpreted, and debated over time. Scholarly interpretations vary regarding the scale of the atrocities, the responsibility of Japanese authorities, and the ways in which the massacre has been remembered or downplayed in Japan, China, and internationally outside the two Asian countries. Debates have been shaped by nationalist perspectives, political considerations, access to sources, and evolving historical methods, highlighting how memory, ideology, and evidence influence the understanding of this pivotal event in East Asian history.
While mainly written by non-academic lay authors, revisionist works of the Nanjing Massacre in Japan have been increasingly vocal in the past years, generating international disputes and heightening nationalist tensions. A widely cited figure in historical discussions is that over 200,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were killed during the Nanjing Massacre, according to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), convened after World War II. Despite numerous attempts at collaboration, Japan and China have yet to reach an agreement on the death toll, and the debate remains a significant factor in regional geopolitical tensions in East Asia.
Second Sino-Japanese War
During the war, the Japanese Government kept tight control over the news media. As a result, the Japanese public was not aware of the Nanjing Massacre or other war crimes committed by the Japanese military. The Japanese military was, rather, portrayed as a heroic entity. Japanese officials lied about civilian death figures at the time of the Nanjing Massacre, and some Japanese ultranationalists still deny that the killings occurred.
One brief lapse in the Japanese government's control over negative depictions of the war was the fleeting public distribution of Tatsuzō Ishikawa's wartime novel, Living Soldier (Ikiteiru heitai), which depicted the grim and dehumanizing effects of the war. Ishikawa and his publisher tried to satisfy government censors by a deliberate decision to self-censor lines about soldiers "forag[ing] for fresh meat" and "search[ing] for women like dogs chasing a rabbit", while still preserving the overall tone and import of the novel. The novel was published in 1938 but was pulled from circulation within days; Ishikawa was sentenced to a four-month prison term for disturbing "peace and order".
Controversy and confusion over the Nanjing massacre occurred even soon after, in 1943 George Orwell wrote in Looking Back on the Spanish War: "Recently I noticed that the very people who swallowed any and every horror story about the Japanese in in 1937 refused to believe exactly the same stories about Hong Kong in 1942. There was even a tendency to feel that the atrocities had become, as it were, retrospectively untrue because the British Government now drew attention to them ... There is not the slightest doubt, for instance, about the behaviour of the Japanese in China ... The raping and butchering in Chinese cities, the tortures in the cellars of the Gestapo, the elderly Jewish professors flung into cesspools, the machine-gunning of refugees along the Spanish roads—they all happened, and they did not happen any the less because The Daily Telegraph has suddenly found out about them when it is five years too late."
It was not until the Tokyo Trial (tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East) and the Nanjing Trial that the truth of the Nanjing Massacre was first revealed to Japanese civilians. The atrocities revealed during the trials shocked Japanese society at the time.
Postwar In the 1950s, author Yoshie Hotta wrote a series of pieces of historical fiction about the atrocities in Nanjing.
In 1967, Tomio Hora published his seminal account "Nankin Jiken" ("Nanjing Incident") in which he refuted revisionist denial of the massacre. This detailed treatment of the incident was the first meaningful and in-depth description of the massacre in Japanese postwar historiography.Hora, Tomio, "Nankin jiken", (The Nanjing incident) in Kindai senshi no nazo, ("Mysteries of modern war history") Tokyo: Jinbutsu oraisha, 1967. Some leftwing Japanese journalists of the decade were inspired by the American war in Vietnam to research the events.
International interest in the Nanjing Massacre waned into near obscurity until 1972, the year China and Japan normalized diplomatic relations. Discussion of wartime atrocities developed considerably in this period. The Chinese government's statements about the events were attacked by Japanese diplomats, because they relied on personal testimonies and anecdotal evidence. Also coming under attack were the burial records and photographs presented in the Tokyo War Crime Court, which were said to be fabrications by the Chinese government, artificially manipulated or incorrectly attributed to the Nanjing Massacre.
During the 1970s, Japanese journalist Katsuichi Honda traveled to China to explore the wartime conduct of the Imperial Army. Based on his research in China, Honda wrote a series of articles for the Asahi Shimbun on atrocities (such as the Nanjing Massacre) committed by Japanese soldiers during Second Sino-Japanese War, called "Chūgoku no Tabi" (中国の旅, "Travels in China"). The publication of these articles triggered a vehement response from the Japanese right regarding Imperial Japanese war crimes. Japanese nationalist responses answering this publication included the influential articles of Shichihei Yamamoto, "Reply to Katsuichi Honda", and Akira Suzuki, "The Phantom of The Nanjing Massacre".
Japanese history textbooks
In 1965, Japanese-language textbook author Saburō Ienaga sued the Ministry of Education, claiming that the government was unconstitutionally forcing him to alter the contents of his textbook, violating his right to freedom of expression. This case was ultimately decided in the author's favor in 1997.
The way in which the subject is taught in Japanese schools became the center of controversy in the Japanese textbook controversies of 1982 and 1986. The Nanjing Massacre "was still absent from elementary school textbooks [but] junior high school textbooks such as those published by Nihon shoseki and Kyōiku Shuppan in 1975, for instance, mentioned that forty-two thousand Chinese civilians, including women and children, were killed during the Massacre". Two other textbooks mentioned the massacre but the four other textbooks in use in Japan did not mention it all. By 1978 the Ministry of Education removed the number killed out of all text books in use.
In 1982, the Ministry of Education embarked on a campaign to reframe the presentation of the history of World War II in history textbooks. History textbooks were reworded to describe the Sino-Japanese War as "advancing in and out of China" instead of "aggression" which was deemed to be a more pejorative term. The Nanjing Massacre was characterized as a minor incident which was sparked by the frustration of Japanese soldiers at meeting strong resistance from the Chinese Army. These moves sparked strong protests from other Asian countries.
In the 1990s, the stance of the Japanese government began to change as three consecutive prime ministers sought reconciliation with other Asian countries by acknowledging Japan's responsibility for the war.
Immediately after taking office in 1993, Hosokawa Morihiro, prime minister of the first non-Liberal Democratic Party government, characterized Japan's expansion through Asia in the 1930s and 1940s as an "aggressive war". Hosokawa's two successors, Hata Tsutomu and Murayama Tomiichi made similar statements. For example, Murayama Tomiichi expressed "deep remorse" for Japan's colonial rule and aggression.
During this period, officially endorsed school textbooks were rewritten to reflect this changed perspective on Japan's responsibility for the war. For example, of the seven history books approved in 1997 for use in junior high schools, six cited a figure of 200,000 as the number of people killed by the Japanese military during the capture of Nanjing; four of those books also mentioned the higher Chinese estimate of 300,000 casualties.
Besides total denial, another line of Japanese thought insisted that the scale of the Nanjing Massacre had been exaggerated by the Chinese. This view was expounded by Ikuhiko Hata in his book Nanjing Incident. Hata asserted that the number of victims in the Massacre was 38,000–42,000. He argued that only Chinese POWs and civilians, and not Chinese soldiers killed in action on the battlefield, should be counted as victims of the massacre.Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 98–100.
1980s Chinese interest in the history of the massacre further developed in the 1980s. Research of burial records and documents, as well as interviews, confirmed a figure of 300,000 dead Chinese in the course of the massacre, thus corroborating the findings of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
In Japan, a variety of new evidence was published, including the private journals of commanding Japanese generals as well as those of many ordinary soldiers. Official military records of a number of the Japanese units involved also became available. In addition, a number of Japanese veterans began openly to admit to having committed or witnessed atrocities in the Nanjing area. Iris Chang mentioned important research was made out of the academic community by freelancers and reporters. She cited the works of Ono Kenji, a chemical factory workerCharles Smith, "One Man's Crusade: Kenji Ono Lifts the Veil on the Nanjing Massacre". Far Eastern Economic Review 157, no. 34 (August 25, 1994): 24–25. who, from 1988 to 1994, visited 600 households, interviewed 200 persons, photocopied 20 notebooks, and conducted 7 video interviews. Some of his researches were published in Shūkan Kin'yōbi and were saluted as the first work on Nanjing Massacre solely based on Japanese sources. In 1996, he coedited a book on the subject, "living under the constant shadow of possible Japanese retaliation".
Masaaki Tanaka's book "Fabrication of Nanjing Massacre" not only denied the Nanjing Massacre but laid the blame for the Sino-Japanese war on the Chinese Government.
In September 1986, the Japanese education minister, Fujio Masayuki, dismissed the Nanjing massacre as "just a part of war".
The Japanese distributor of The Last Emperor (1987) edited out the stock footage of the Nanjing massacre from the film.
1990s As far as Japanese academics are concerned, the controversy over the occurrence of atrocities ended in the early '90s. Both sides accept that atrocities did occur; however, disagreement exists over the actual numbers. The debate is focused on the questions of whether to include archival or anecdotal evidence, what time period to use in defining the massacre, and what geographical area to use in defining the massacre.
Chinese historical studies In a 1990 paper entitled The Nanking Massacre and the Nanking Population, Sun Zhai-wei of the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences estimated the total number of people killed at 377,400, combining Chinese burial records and estimates totaling 150,000 given by Japanese Imperial Army major Ohta Hisao in a confessional report about the Japanese army's disposal efforts of dead bodies.Chang, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 1011
Denial by Japanese government officials