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The Nanjing Massacre (Chinese:
南京大屠殺,
pinyin: Nánjīng Dà Túshā;
Japanese: 南京事件,
Nankin Jiken), also known as the Rape of Nanking, refers to
the widespread atrocities conducted against
Chinese civilians in and around
Nanjing after its fall to
Japanese troops on
December 13,
1937 in the
Battle of Nanjing during the
Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).
The
People's Republic of China now estimates that 300,000 people were killed
during the following three months (December
1937 -
February
1938), though the number is still in dispute. The number cited in the
popular book
The Rape of Nanking was 260,000. According to some sources, there
were only 200,000 people (including 50,000 soldiers) in Nanjing when it
fell. The fact that Nanjing was awash with refugees at the time, and that
many of the killings occured outside of the city, complicate these
estimates. Some reports stated that many thousands of the city's women were
raped by Japanese soldiers, often repeatedly, before being killed.
Dramatic reports by American journalists of Japanese
brutality against Chinese civilians helped turn American public opinion
against Japan and, in part, led to a series of events which culminated in
the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor.
Historiography
Since the Second World War, some Japanese historians and
politicians with nationalist or traditionalist perspectives have either
denied the existence of atrocities (as, for example,
Fujio Masayuki, a Minister of Education), or (more recently) sought to
minimize them. The way in which the subject is taught in Japanese schools
became the center of controversy in the Japanese textbook controversies of
1982 and 1986. Despite this persistent
revisionism, the events following the fall of Nanking are well
documented by journalists and other eyewitnesses and are not disputed by
most historians, including the majority of Japanese historians.
The atrocity continues to receive attention from
researchers in Japan. Those downplaying the massacre have most recently
rallied around a group of historians associated with the Society for the
Creation of New Textbooks. Their views also are often shared in publications
associated with conservative publishers such as Bungei Shunjû and Sankei
Shuppan. In response, two Japanese organizations have taken the lead in
publishing material detailing the massacre and collecting related documents
and accounts. The Study Group on the Nanjing Incident, founded by a group of
historians in 1984 has published the most books responding directly to
revisionist historians and the Center for Research and Documentation on
Japan's War Responsibility, founded in 1993 has published many materials in
their own journal.
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