This chapter exposes the baseless 400,000-victim theory in Murakami’s Killing Commendatore, tracing its origins to discredited testimonies, biased media, and inflated figures, and revealing how his Nanjing narrative rests on ignorance and fabrication.

Continuation of the Previous Chapter

The Preposterous Nature of Killing Commendatore

Haruki Murakami had been estranged from his father since a young age, and after becoming a writer, their relationship grew increasingly distorted, eventually reaching a near-complete severance.
It is said that they did not see each other at all for more than twenty years until just before his father’s death.
Therefore, when the media reported on his father’s background, his father never spoke about the Fukuchiyama Regiment.

When Murakami was a child, his father would recite sutras every morning before the family Buddhist altar.
When young Murakami asked for whom he was chanting, his father replied, “For those who died in the previous war. For fellow soldiers who died there, and also for the Chinese, who were the enemy at the time.”
From this, too, we can see that his father never spoke of the Fukuchiyama Regiment’s so-called bloody reputation.

As the media coverage continued, it came to light that the squad leader alleged to have killed Chinese civilians was still alive in Tokyo.
This squad leader filed a defamation lawsuit in April 1993 with the Tokyo District Court, asserting that nothing described in the diary had actually occurred.

Whenever court sessions were held in Tokyo, several people from Kyoto would attend the hearings.
Among them was Chujiro Saito, who belonged to the same logistics regiment as Murakami’s father and never missed a session.
Saito self-published a book titled The Military Discipline and False Stigma of Nanjing Four Flags, and rode around Kyoto on a bicycle bearing a banner stating that the Nanjing Incident had never happened.
That was how seriously he took the false testimony.

Even so, the mass media’s support for Shiro Azuma never changed.
In May 1994, TBS Television traveled all the way to Tango to interview Azuma, and aired programs such as Headline and Tetsuya Chikushi News 23 that gave the impression that the massacre was an established fact.

In April 1996, the Tokyo District Court ruled that there was no objective evidence supporting the alleged atrocities, nor any reason to believe that the descriptions were truthful.
In response, Kyoto Shimbun ran the headline, “Save Mr. Azuma (from Tango Town) Who Admitted to the Massacre.”
Azuma repeatedly visited China and offered apologies.

In December 1998, the Tokyo High Court likewise ruled that the diary no longer existed and that there was no objective evidence to substantiate the alleged acts of massacre.
In January 2000, the Supreme Court issued the same finding, making clear the nature of Azuma’s testimony.

The media, without determining the facts, continued to report and campaign in support of Azuma, despite their obligation to remain neutral.
The so-called bloody reputation was groundless, and Haruki Murakami wrote about the Nanjing Incident based on biased reporting.

In Killing Commendatore, Murakami cited the theory of 400,000 victims.
This figure is recorded in the book The Great Massacre by Japanese Imperialism in Nanjing, compiled by the History Department of Nanjing University.
According to that book, the Tokyo Trial’s judgment of 200,000 deaths was based on a count of 210,000 bodies, and when adding the remains discovered at thirteen locations inside and outside Nanjing City, the total reaches around 400,000.

Looking at this, it becomes clear that the only figure presented at the Tokyo Trial that could be considered somewhat credible was the burial records of the Red Swastika Society—and even those tens of thousands were mostly battlefield deaths.
Other figures cited outside the Tokyo Trial are inflated battlefield death counts, fictitious corpses, or remains found in places where no civilians had lived.
Furthermore, in China, both fallen soldiers and civilians killed by stray bullets are counted as “massacre victims.”
None of these can be regarded as valid evidence or grounds.

The 400,000 figure was even cited by Professor Yoko Kato of the University of Tokyo, becoming a topic of public debate.
In 2002, the high school history textbook Detailed Japanese History (日本史B) published by Yamakawa Shuppansha, which passed the official screening, stated that “there are theories ranging from tens of thousands to 400,000 victims.”
It was the first time that the 400,000 figure appeared in a textbook.
Although the Ministry of Education did not object, citing the “neighboring countries clause,” strong criticism erupted from the public.
As a result, on December 3 of that year, Yamakawa submitted a correction, deleting the 400,000 figure.
They explained the decision as being “to avoid hindering students’ proper understanding.”

If such a number could be included in a textbook, then it is only natural that Professor Yoko Kato’s appointment to the Science Council of Japan was rejected in 2020.
The 400,000 figure is, in short, utterly preposterous.

Even as he cited such figures, Murakami at least wrote that “the Japanese army had no capacity to manage prisoners,” thus attributing the cause of the incident to that.
But regarding the handling of prisoners, the Japanese army repeatedly issued directives and orders.
From the very beginning of the conflict, captured prisoners in Shanghai were placed in detention camps, which were visited by writers who reported on them.
Not only did magazines introduce these accounts, but newspapers published numerous photographs of prisoners, and newsreels showed scenes of their daily lives.
Everyone knew how prisoners were treated.
In Matsue, Suzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, and elsewhere, thousands of prisoners were taken, housed in camps, and managed.
To say that the Japanese army had no capacity to manage prisoners is a completely baseless assertion.

Haruki Murakami’s version of the Nanjing Incident is built on ignorance and fabrication.

To be continued.