The Nanking Massacre was the worst event against the Chinese during World War Two. The death tolls go as high as 300,000 civilians, according to Chinese Sources. There is significant evidence to back up what happened in Nanking yet there is still a strong debate that is taking place in Japan about the event. There are those who do not believe the event happened and those who want to push for the event to recognized and taught in schools.
There are still people in Japan who believe that the Nanking Massacre didn’t take place and that the news was fabricated by the Chinese and the West. This is evident in Tanaka Masaaki’s, What Really Happened in Nanking, in which he attempts to state what he believes happened in the wake of the battle over the city. He attempts to point out the reasons why photos from the Nanking Massacre are fake and show what the city was really like after the battle (Masaaki, 112-117). Masaaki believes that this event never took place and wants to connive the reader of that (Masakki, 6). This is a clear attempt at revisionist history which attempts to clear Japan of any wrong doing. This argument is weak since there has been clear attempts by the Japanese government to cover up this event. Something like this should not be allowed to happen, the people of Japan should know what their people did to the Japanese.
Photo believed to be fake by Masaaki
The idea against revisionist history is clearly stated in Iris Chang’s, The Rape of Nanking. She discusses the controversy in Japan over the incident in her writing of this book. Chang shows the way in which this topic is conflicted in Japan through events like the textbook censoring and political persons statements on the events. The Japanese government censored the Nanking Massacre into having people believe some citizens were killed during the battle and that was all (Change, 20). This was a blatant lie to the people and some don’t believe the truth when they are told it. The Japanese government was able to prevent people form learning the truth while teaching them to deny it too.
This can be seen later in Chang’s book when she discusses the way in which political persons were treated when talking about the event. Those who spoke in favor of the event not happening, either believing it not to have happened or saying japan wasn’t aggressive in the war, received significant criticism from other Asian states. They were normally removed from their positions or forced to retract their statement (Chang, 204). This shows how some Japanese ignore the evidence that is behind the event and believe the revisionist history instead. It was a problem inside Japan that wasn’t fixed by the government instead it was propagated by them.
The Japanese government should have better handled the acknowledgement of this event. instead of avoiding it and acting like it didn’t happen they should have accepted it and learned from it. The government could have learned from Germany by acknowledging the event and then attempting to prevent something like that from happening again. The Japanese government failed in their handling of this event and it caused a divide between its people.
I think that you did a good job of analyzing the link between the political issues surrounding this event and the role of censorship in this discourse. You state in your last paragraph, “[t]he Japanese government should have better handled the acknowledgement of this event. instead of avoiding it and acting like it didn’t happen they should have accepted it and learned from it.” If the Japanese were to fix this today, what would this look like? How is it different from the way they could have addressed it immediately following the incident?
I agree with your final thought about the Japanese government. The case Chang presents shows that the efforts of revisionists have only caused more pain and heartache for victims of the massacre. If the Japanese government had been less accepting of revisionists and more open to acknowledging their mistakes, the memory and pain from the massacre would likely have healed much sooner.
If the photos that Masaaki claims are fake are indeed, then what does that mean for interpretations of the event? How should we determine what is to be believed and what is not?