Historiography of The Nanking Massacre

The Historiography of the Nanking Massacre is the representation of the events of the Nanking Massacre as history, in various languages and cultural contexts, in the years since these events took place. This historiography is disparate and sometimes contested, owing to conflicting currents of Chinese and Japanese nationalist sentiment and national interest, as well as the fog of war.

Revisionist views of the Nanking Massacre in Japan have sometimes caused international disputes and stoked nationalist tensions. Japanese-language historiography on the subject has ranged from nationalist-revisionist accounts which completely deny Imperial Japanese culpability in war crimes, to leftist critics of militarism who prefer to center the narrative on the accounts of Chinese survivors of the events. Although Japanese revisionist accounts, which have sometimes arisen in the context of Japanese domestic politics, have been controversial, particularly in China, the Japanese-language historiographical material regarding the massacre has featured much diverse and sophisticated research.

Read more about Historiography Of The Nanking Massacre:  Sino-Japanese War, Postwar, Japanese History Textbooks, 1980s, 1990s

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