Nanking Massacre Denial

Nanking Massacre denial is denial that Imperial Japanese forces murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and is a highly controversial episode in Sino-Japanese relations. Despite the popularity of denialism in Japan, it is considered as a revisionist viewpoint and is not accepted in mainstream academia, even within Japanese academia. Most historians accept the findings of the Tokyo tribunal with respect to the scope and nature of the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after the Battle of Nanking. In Japan, however, there has been a heated debate over the extent and nature of the massacre. Because denial of the massacre is seen as part of an overall unwillingness on Japan's part to admit and apologize for its aggression, debate over the massacre, or a perceived insensitivity regarding the killings, complicates relations between Japan and China. Estimates of the death toll vary widely. Many scholars have accepted the figure of 300,000 dead as an approximate total, and this figure has become emblematic of the tragedy in China. Estimates of the dead vary, however, notably among revisionist scholars and activists in Japan, who 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. These revisionist accounts of the killings have become a staple of Japanese nationalist discourse.

In Japan, public opinion of the massacres varies, and only a minority deny the atrocity outright. Some Japanese journalists and social scientists, such as Tomio Hora and Katsuichi Honda, have played prominent roles in countering revisionist historiography, in the decades since the killings. Nonetheless, negationist accounts, such as those of Shūdō Higashinakano, have often created controversy that has reverberated in the global media, particularly in China and other East Asian nations. The 1937 massacre and the extent of its coverage in Japanese school textbooks also troubles Sino-Japanese relations.