Nanking Massacre Denial - Central Issues of The Debate

Central Issues of The Debate

Massacre denialists argue that the "Nanking Massacre" was a fabrication and false propaganda spread by the Chinese Nationalists and Communists. They argue that the activities of the Japanese military in Nanking were in accordance with international law and were humane.

In his book "The Fabrication of the 'Nanjing Massacre', Masaaki Tanaka argues that there was no indiscriminate killing at all in Nanjing and that the so-called Nanjing Massacre was a fabrication manufactured by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) and the Chinese government for the purpose of furthering anti-Japanese propaganda.

According to Takashi Yoshida, Tanaka argues that the "great massacre faction" errs because they accept the documents and claims submitted as evidence at the Tokyo Trials as reliable, fail to distinguish between killing of combatants and noncombatants, ignore the situation on the battlefield, ignore the high casualty count of the Japanese army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, disregard the illegality of Chinese guerrilla tactics, overlook the atrocities committed by Chinese soldiers, ignore the fact that the IMTFE was more focused on meting out victors' justice than on providing a fair trial, and overlook the exaggerated emphasis placed on the Nanjing incident by the IMTFE.

Massacre denialists also make the following arguments: that there is no direct testimony of the supposed massacres, particularly in the contemporary press, that various frequently displayed photographs have been doctored, that the Communist authorities in China did not denounce the supposed massacres until the 1980s, and that when they finally did so, their motive was to counteract the political consequences of opening the country to foreign influence, particularly from Japan.