This essay records how a former Japanese general directly confronted senior Chinese officials over the sudden emergence of the Nanjing Incident narrative.
It reveals that Chinese leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, initially made no reference to the incident, highlighting a later political shift.

2016-10-09
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Here are examples in which senior Chinese officials regarded the Nanjing Incident as having not occurred.
To my knowledge, the first person to directly convey his feelings to a Chinese official regarding the sudden appearance of the Nanjing Incident was Kenjirō Mioka.
Kenjirō Mioka graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1934 and served during the war as a staff officer in the Shipping Section at Imperial General Headquarters.
After the war, he joined the Self-Defense Forces, studied at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, served as commander of the 9th Division, and retired in 1969 with the rank of lieutenant general.
Mioka’s involvement with China began eight years later, when he visited China in 1977.
On October 7, he met with Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping and exchanged frank opinions for more than an hour.
This encounter led him to gather retired Self-Defense Force officers and establish the China–Japan Political and Economic Roundtable, where he served as chairman.
He continued visiting China and held talks with vice premiers such as Xu Xiangqian, Wang Zhen, and Zhang Aiping.
According to Sun Pinghua, then chairman of the Japan–China Friendship Association, Mioka’s roundtable, alongside Saburō Endō’s association of former soldiers for Japan–China friendship, made significant contributions to bilateral friendship.
When Mioka first visited China, the Nanjing Incident was not discussed there.
During his meeting with Deng Xiaoping, Deng stated the following.
“Japanese militarism invaded China. As a result, Chiang Kai-shek retreated, which allowed the Eighth Route Army to expand its influence and ultimately defeat Chiang Kai-shek.”
While Deng Xiaoping criticized the Japanese army and at the same time expressed gratitude toward it, he made no mention of the Nanjing Incident.
Mioka listened in silence.
Four years later, China described the Nanjing Incident in its textbooks, and four years after that, it built a massacre memorial in the city of Nanjing.
The year after the memorial was constructed, Mioka was promptly guided through it.
Mioka had been involved in the training of soldiers upon graduating from the military academy, and those soldiers were of the same age as those who had participated in the Battle of Nanjing.
Knowing the character of Japanese soldiers, Mioka believed that even if there had been misconduct in Nanjing, nothing could have occurred that would be identified as an incident.
Mioka expressed his opinions frankly in his meeting with Deng Xiaoping, but took care never to be discourteous.
He had exercised the same restraint in meetings with other senior officials, but under these circumstances, he could no longer refrain from questioning China directly.
In September 1986, during a meeting with Politburo member and Party Secretary Yu Qiuli, he raised the issue of the Nanjing Incident.
Yu Qiuli was known as a close confidant of Mao Zedong and had served as Minister of Petroleum Industry during the Cultural Revolution.
Four years prior to the meeting, at the 12th Party Congress in 1982, he had been elected to the Politburo, and the following year became Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, holding an extremely important position within the military at the time of the meeting.