Visiting the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, Masayuki Takayama heard the same “signature accusation” he once heard from an American condemning Japan. The exhibits, lacking any real evidence, rely on staged photos and altered captions—facts long exposed by Professor Higashinakano. Even a benign Asahi Graph photo of smiling Japanese soldiers buying chickens was rewritten under Jiang Zemin’s directive. This chapter reveals how political motives shaped the mythologized narrative.

2016-01-06

The following continues from the previous chapter.

Emphasis in the text is mine.

It is not a pleasant story, but in fact I heard the very same “signature line” in Nanjing that I once heard from that American.

After the Japanese Army captured Nanjing, it supposedly killed 300,000 civilians over six weeks—meaning 7,000 people every day for 42 days.
I visited the “Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders,” which claims to preserve the evidence of this.

The exhibition hall is constructed to be ominous and theatrical, but because the incident itself is fictional, there can be no physical evidence.

Thus the exhibits consist of “photographs proving the Japanese Army’s atrocities.”
But as Professor Higashinakano Shūdō of Asia University has demonstrated, every one of these pictures collapses under verification.
They are staged photos featuring the same individuals and locations, doctored to create the appearance of atrocity.

The only genuine photographs are those published in Asahi Graph, showing Japanese soldiers smiling as they buy chickens from a farming family.
But even these captions were altered to read:
“Japanese soldiers who slaughtered the farmers and pillaged their poultry,”
instead of the original
“Soldiers smiling after buying chickens from a farmer.”

It was Jiang Zemin who ordered these changes.

This chapter continues.