In China, preserving “face” is valued more highly than acknowledging the truth, while facts disadvantageous to the state or family are concealed through the concept of avoiding taboo. This article reexamines the established account of the Nanjing Massacre by considering the records and silence of accompanying journalists, the U.S. Consulate, the Kuomintang’s Central Propaganda Department, and Chiang Kai-shek.

August 30, 2020
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
This chapter reveals just how foolish and ugly were China’s conduct in concealing the course of events surrounding the Wuhan virus and the conduct of the Japanese media, beginning with NHK, which, out of deference to China, made no attempt whatsoever to uncover the truth.
In reality, they are people of such extreme foolishness that they are not even qualified to discuss matters in the first place.
■ The Nanjing Massacre Issue
An enormous amount of research has been conducted into the Nanjing Massacre issue, but there is not enough room here to examine all of it.
What I wish to point out, however, is that China has a concept known as “bìhuì”—to conceal or avoid—and that this concept has cast a long shadow over the Nanjing Massacre issue as well.
In China, preserving “face” is considered more important than whether something is true.
Proof by contradiction: A method of reasoning in which, in order to prove a proposition, one assumes the negation of that proposition, proceeds with the argument, and demonstrates that a contradiction arises, thereby concluding that the original proposition is true.
The reverse also holds.
For example, in order to prove the negation of a proposition—that the comfort women issue did not exist—one assumes the affirmation of that proposition—that the comfort women issue did exist—and proceeds with the argument.
One then demonstrates that a contradiction would arise—that there should have been an enormous uproar—and thereby concludes that the original proposition, namely that the comfort women issue did not exist, is true.
Accordingly, anything disadvantageous to the state or the family must be thoroughly concealed, even if doing so requires the distortion of facts.
Telling lies for that purpose is regarded not merely as an ethically correct act, but even as a duty.
The issue concerns the alleged mass killing of Chinese soldiers disguised in civilian clothing, prisoners of war, and ordinary civilians when the Japanese Army attacked and occupied the city of Nanjing in 1937, in the early stages of the Sino-Japanese War.
Because Chiang Kai-shek had already withdrawn on December 7, the Chinese military’s chain of command had collapsed, and an organized surrender appears to have been impossible.
Large numbers of Chinese soldiers left inside and outside the walled city of Nanjing removed their uniforms, became soldiers disguised in civilian clothing, and attempted to escape.
Under international law at the time, soldiers disguised in civilian clothing did not possess belligerent rights as military personnel and were not entitled to treatment as prisoners of war even if they surrendered.
As examples of what I stated in the preceding section on “proof by contradiction”—cases in which it would have been impossible for both propositions to coexist—I shall give several examples below, marked with a star.
☆ Approximately 150 journalists and photographers accompanied the Japanese Army at the time Nanjing fell.
Yet not one of them witnessed a massacre of this kind.
Photographs were even published showing Nanjing residents expressing happiness as the Japanese Army distributed food and other supplies to them.
The accompanying journalists included Japanese reporters as well as Western journalists from Reuters, the Associated Press, and other organizations.
There was also a Paramount News film crew from the United States recording the occupation of Nanjing, as well as a reporter from the British-affiliated English-language newspaper the North-China Daily News.
Yet not one of them reported a massacre of this kind.
On the contrary, photographs were published showing Nanjing residents expressing happiness as the Japanese Army distributed food and other supplies to them.
Yoshio Kanazawa, a photographer for the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, also testified, “I walked throughout Nanjing, but I never saw a massacre.”
The Asahi Shimbun likewise published photographs from inside the city under the headline “Peace Returns to Nanjing.”
☆ The Wang Zhaoming, or Wang Jingwei, government, which was established two years after the Japanese Army’s capture of Nanjing, also made no reference to the Nanjing Massacre.
If a mass killing had actually taken place, the government would have revealed it to the world, but nothing of the kind occurred.
☆ Reports sent at the time by James Espy, vice consul at the U.S. Consulate in Nanjing, to U.S. Ambassador Nelson Johnson contain no account of such a massacre.
The United States already had anti-Japanese tendencies at the time, so it is unlikely that the reports were embellished in a manner intended to conceal the facts.
☆ China’s Kuomintang publication Overview of the International Propaganda Work of the Central Propaganda Department, published in 1941, likewise contains no reference to the Japanese Army massacring civilians or prisoners of war.
☆ The Nanjing Massacre was not even raised at the press conferences held almost daily by the Kuomintang’s Central Propaganda Department.
☆ Chiang Kai-shek held several hundred meetings with foreign journalists, but never referred to the Nanjing Incident.
The figure of 300,000 victims appeared at the Tokyo Trial, but it is clearly an exaggerated figure without foundation.
Even the “History of the Pacific War,” which GHQ had Japanese newspapers publish after the end of the war, gave the figure as 20,000.
The figure of 300,000 is comparable to the number of people killed by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The disposal of the bodies, and even the administrative work associated with it, could not have been carried out on such a scale without leaving records.
Haruki Murakami wrote that the figure might have been not merely 300,000 but even higher.
Numerous books and memoirs filled with a self-denigrating view of history have been published on the Japanese side regarding this incident, and all of them have become materials used by China in its attacks against Japan.
Those who provided such materials included Tomio Hora, a professor at Waseda University; Katsuichi Honda, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun; Saburō Ienaga, a professor at Tokyo University of Education; former soldiers Kōzō Tadokoro and Hajime Sone; and Tamaki Matsuoka.
How Should Japan Face China? Shōichi Watanabe, WAC, 2013, page 265, work cited above.
Page 266
Tomio Hora: Professor at Waseda University.
He was invited to China in 1966 and was provided with what were described as materials concerning the Nanjing Massacre.
Using these materials, Hora successively published such works as The Nanjing Massacre, Historical Materials on the Sino-Japanese War, and The Sino-Japanese War: A Collection of Materials on the Great Atrocity in Nanjing, arguing that the Nanjing Massacre was a historical fact.
Katsuichi Honda: Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun.
In 1971, he spent approximately forty days travelling through and reporting from various parts of China.
Saburō Ienaga: Professor at Tokyo University of Education.
In addition to including descriptions in textbooks that presented the Nanjing Massacre as though it were a historical fact, he filed a lawsuit asserting that the textbook authorization system itself was unconstitutional.
The prolonged Ienaga textbook lawsuits began in 1965.
Kōzō Tadokoro: He confessed that he had personally committed murder and rape for approximately ten days after the fall of Nanjing.
However, according to research by Professor Tadao Takemoto of the University of Tsukuba and Professor Yasuo Ōhara of Kokugakuin University, the unit to which he belonged had left Nanjing two days after the city fell.
They therefore pointed out that it would have been impossible for him to have remained in Nanjing for ten days.
He later confessed, “A certain reporter asked me whether I had any interesting stories, so I simply talked about things that had and had not happened.”
His statements were also used in Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking…
To be continued.