This chapter reveals how Murakami’s Killing Commendatore distorts history—from false depictions of prisoner executions to fabricated casualty figures—and warns that such narratives fuel China’s propaganda and global misinformation.

Continuation of the Previous Chapter

The Chinese Army, Utterly Different from the Japanese Army

Haruki Murakami also wrote the following.
He said that while his father rarely spoke of his wartime experiences, there was one thing he did tell him:
That in the logistics unit to which he was assigned, executions of prisoners took place, and that when Chinese soldiers were executed, they showed no fear. They quietly sat with their eyes closed, displaying a dignified attitude.
Murakami wrote that this scene not only left his father traumatized but also that “the cruel sight of a human head being severed by a military sword was, needless to say, seared indelibly into my young mind.”

However, executions of prisoners were carried out for reasons, and unless the circumstances behind those executions are explained, any criticism is baseless.
Among the Chinese army, there were soldiers who wore civilian clothes under their uniforms and immediately disguised themselves when defeated.
There were even units that fought from the start in plain clothes.
They were completely different from the Japanese army.
They were not entitled to the treatment of prisoners under international law and could be punished.
Murakami’s condemnation that killing defenseless prisoners is a violation of international law is nothing but contrived hypocrisy.

In Killing Commendatore, the pianist Tsuguhiko is ordered to kill prisoners, suffers psychological wounds, and upon returning home, slits his wrists and commits suicide.
The gruesome killings are vividly described and made into a central motif of the painting Killing Commendatore, but they are nothing more than a construct of one-sided hypocrisy.

Murakami’s ignorance and distortions do not stop there.
He writes that his father was conscripted in August 1938 due to an administrative mistake, interrupting his studies.
But in fact, local mayors compiled registers of eligible men, which formed the basis for conscription screenings, and students were granted deferments while in school.
Because military conscription officers carried out the draft, such a mistake could not have happened.
At the time, only about 20 percent of those who underwent physical examinations were actually conscripted, so it was impossible for someone in the midst of studies to have been drafted.

When his father was first called up, he was discharged after one year.
Murakami wrote, “At the time, the term of service for active-duty soldiers was two years, but for some reason my father finished after only one year. I do not know why.”
But in fact, the 16th Division was demobilized in August 1939, and conscriptions were lifted.
Some soldiers indeed completed only one year of service.
This is recorded in the regimental history and in soldiers’ diaries—something anyone writing about the Fukuchiyama Regiment should know.

Distortions are also evident in Murakami’s earlier The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
He wrote: “I could see that the shadow of war was growing darker day by day. The years 1937 and 1938 were such a grim time.”

But when Nanjing fell in December 1937, actor Rokuhō Furukawa was performing in Nagoya.
At a Western-style restaurant he visited for lunch, he ordered “Nanjing Fall Soup” from the menu.
What was served was pumpkin potage with cheese toast. He thought it had merely been given that name, but pumpkin (nankin) and cheese (kanraku) created a pun, and he was impressed: “Delicious—this must be the Fall of Nanjing. What a witty chef!”
It was, in fact, a cheerful time when even the fall of Nanjing was treated in such a lighthearted way.

In February 1938, 2,000 students at cafés in Tokyo’s entertainment districts were rounded up in a single sweep.
The authorities said it was because too many people still failed to recognize the emergency, but the fact that 2,000 students were merrily enjoying themselves shows how lively things still were.

In October, 500 journalists, correspondents, broadcasters, and critics accompanied the campaign to capture Hankou—many more than during the Nanjing offensive—and public enthusiasm for its fall exceeded that for Nanjing.
The years 1937 and 1938 were before the conflict reached stalemate, years of consecutive victories, when society remained upbeat.
In fact, 1937 and 1938 were the most prosperous years in prewar Japan, just after recovering from the Great Depression.

Murakami’s historical view is that “Japanese people have a fundamentally weak awareness of the fact that they were also perpetrators” and that “Chinese and Koreans are still angry.”
To fit this worldview, he distorted 1937 and 1938 into “dark years.”

Examples of his ignorance abound in Killing Commendatore.
He wrote: “Examine their palms; if they are calloused and rough, they are farmers and may be released. If they are soft, they are regular soldiers who have discarded their uniforms to escape as civilians, and they should be killed without question.”
Murakami presents this as a method of distinguishing civilians from plainclothes soldiers, but in fact, it was the opposite.
Japanese soldiers considered calloused hands a sign of being a soldier, as handling rifles inevitably created calluses.

Murakami also wrote: “What happened in 1938, or Showa 13? In Europe, the Spanish Civil War was intensifying. The Condor Legion bombed Guernica indiscriminately around that time.”
This, too, is wrong.
The Spanish Civil War began in 1936. The bombing of Guernica took place in April 1937, and Picasso painted his mural Guernica that same year.
Such errors appear repeatedly.

---

The Fabrication of History That Could Spread

In August last year, a Chinese staff member at NHK Radio International added the unscripted words “Do not forget the Nanjing Massacre” during a broadcast, then resigned and returned home.

In Atami, the Kōa Kannon statue built by General Iwane Matsui to console the souls of both Japanese and Chinese soldiers has stood since the war.
But this January, a young Chinese man urinated on the approach, trespassed, and when noticed, scattered flyers along the cliff beside the path before fleeing.

In April, another Chinese man, Xu Haoyu, declared that “300,000 civilians were killed in the Nanjing Incident” and even considered running in next year’s Atami mayoral election.

This is not limited to China.
In March last year, Brian Rigg’s book Japan’s Holocaust was published in the United States, claiming that the Japanese army killed 300,000 people in Nanjing.
On March 18 this year, when a bipartisan committee of the British Parliament released its report on the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, it compared the atrocities to “a scene of brutal barbarity unseen in world history since the Nanjing Massacre of 1938.”

If Haruki Murakami were to receive the Nobel Prize, China would take that as an authoritative endorsement, amplify the Nanjing Incident even further, and the safety of Japanese citizens in China would remain at risk.
Globally, the fabrication of history would spread all the more.