Japan Press Weekly

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2013 December 11 - 17 [HISTORY]

Historical facts refute attempts at sophism: Nanjing Massacre researcher

December 13 is the 76th anniversary of the conquest of Nanjing by the Imperial Japanese Army. Regarding the so-called Rape of Nanjing, Arakawa Michiyo, a Japanese historian, contributed an essay to Akahata as follows:

Since the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, military clashes between Japanese and Chinese forces spread across China. They engaged in a fierce battle in Shanghai on August 9. After the battle, the Japanese military chased the Chinese forces and conquered the capital Nanjing on December 13.

In the process of the pursuit and after the capital’s fall, the Japanese Army indiscriminately killed an enormous number of Chinese soldiers and civilians. Later the incident came to be known as the Nanjing Massacre.

Since the end of World War II, the claim that “there was no mass murder in Nanjing” has been made repeatedly in Japan. In opposition to this claim, many Chinese survivors of the incident came to Japan over the years and testified as to what they witnessed at that time. Xia Shuqin is one of them.

Xia, then eight years old, lived in the capital city with 13 relatives, including her immediate family members. Japanese soldiers killed 11 of them and stabbed Xia with a bayonet three times. She had a narrow escape from death. Since the war end, Xia has talked about her experience to speak for the victims.

A Japanese right-wing scholar in the past decade has been arguing that Xia’s stories are all made-up. Xia brought a libel action against the scholar for making such claims. In November 2007, the Tokyo District Court ruled in favor of Xia and sharply criticized the defendant by stating that his argument is “not based on solid research”. Although the defendant appealed against the decision, the Supreme Court confirmed Xia’s victory in 2009.

In the meantime, Kaikosha Foundation, an organization which had a close connection with the Imperial Army in the prewar and wartime period, published in its journal from April 1984 to February 1985 the testimonies of former Japanese soldiers involved in military operations in China. The serial’s initial thrust is said to have been to deny the bloodbaths in the capital.

Contrary to their expectations, the editorial department of the foundation received a lot of letters from ex-soldiers who admit to have engaged in the mass killing in Nanjing. Katogawa Kotaro, the then chief editor, said in his summary article carried in the last installment, “As a person who had a tie with the Imperial Army, I cannot help but deeply apologize to the Chinese people for the incident. That was a truly inexcusable, horrible event.”

Japanese conservatives headed by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo prefer to use the word “pride”. However, it is their words and deeds denying the massacre and Japan’s war of aggression that hurt the real “pride” of Japanese people. Our pride lies in the pacifist Constitution. We have a duty to work to protect the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.