The Shadow of Nanjing
- Naina K.
- Apr 15, 2025
- 5 min read
This article contains descriptions of extreme violence, including rape and mass killing, which may be distressing to some readers.
Once regarded as a magnificent and blooming metropolis, Nanjing is now haunted by a shadow that will stain its place in history forever. The city was an unfortunate casualty of the Second Sino-Japanese War, as the Japanese chose to pillage the city after they were through with Shanghai and ended up committing
one of the most horrific war crimes in history. Troops entered the city on December 13, 1937, and chaos began. Thousands of families and innocents were executed, and then the cruel Japanese soldiers set their eyes on another target: the women. Women and girls, old and young, no one was spared. Somewhere between 20,000 and 80,000 women were raped, with many being killed after the abuse, with the total death toll of the massacre estimated to be close to 300,000 people. The soldiers did not discriminate— they abused pregnant women, elderly women, and even teenagers. Many victims were gang-raped, and left to die afterwards. The International Military Tribunal did ensure that the perpetrators were tried, with many convictions, yet Japan believed that treatment to be unjust. These horrors are the sort that cannot be made up, yet for years, Japan has attempted to downplay the massacre or even go so far as to deny its occurrence, essentially stomping on the struggles of every victim in Nanjing.
The sheer amount of eyewitness testimonies affirms that the massacre’s existence is indisputable, and that the extent of atrocities committed were enormous. However, many Japanese historians and groups claim that the massacre was either exaggerated or never happened at all. One group even attempted to create a documentary about “The Truth of Nanjing” in the early 21st century. The political shift towards the right-wing party in Japan created a rise in the denials of the massacre, and the Ministry of Education tried to rewrite the history of WWII in 1982. Words such as “aggression” were replaced in textbooks with phrases like “advancing in and out”. Although this was finally stopped due to protest from other countries and educational groups, the new narrative remained and continued to spread, and the Ministry never admitted that they rewrote history or that their version was false.
Around the same time, Japanese historians began to cite the numbers killed in the massacre as much lower than the figures in reality. Hata Ikuhiko’s Nanking Incident asserts that there were only 38,000 - 42,000 victims of the massacre, which is absolutely ridiculous considering the extent of the damage. Hundreds of thousands were tortured and killed, and with many women undergoing horrific rapes, the damage far outlasted the victims both in actuality and in Ikuhiko’s claim. Nanjing is hollowed by the echoes of the massacre’s victims, and the ghosts of the victims walk the blood-stained streets. What may be worse than the attempt to downplay the massacre is the attempt to deny it altogether—two articles, “Reply to Katsuichi Honda” and “The Phantom of the Nanking Massacre” denied that the massacre ever happened. These articles and historians claimed that the massacre was a fabrication of the Chinese to stain Japan’s reputation, which is a repulsive lie on the historians’ part. It’s honestly shameful that people can even think about denying the occurrence of such a horrible event, as it is so disrespectful to the massacre’s victims. Another book, “The Fabrication of the Nanking Massacre”, by Massaki Tanaka, denied the massacre further and blamed the Chinese for the occurrence of the Sino-Japanese War. Tanaka’s book is perhaps one of the most disrespectful pieces of literature written about the massacre, and it makes a mockery out of the entire event.
Worst of all, in 1990, Japanese government officials denied the Nanjing Massacre and claimed it was all a lie in a formal statement. The deputy Japanese Consul told Americans on November 10, 1990, that according to Japanese sources, “the massacre never occurred”. The historians were bad enough, but a government official denying it is even more offensive to those who were in Nanjing during that
fateful December in 1937. The Japanese perspective is that their soldiers were heroes, and that they didn’t do any unjust killing. However, one soldier discusses his experience raping Chinese women, saying that it was a form of “initiation” to demonstrate strength. There is no strength in violating someone and taking a sense of choice away from them. There is only shame on the perpetrator for committing an atrocity on an innocent. One survivor, Ma Xiu-yi, stated that her cousin was seven months pregnant and was raped. Her cousin was murdered after being violated, and eleven-year-old Ma Xiu-yi had to dress up as a boy to avoid being raped, and she was still harassed, being slapped 70 times by a soldier until her cheeks bled. She was a child, an elementary-aged child. Her innocence was taken too soon by the horror of the massacre.
Nearly 75 years after the massacre, in 2012, Takashi Kawamura, the mayor of Nagoya, told visitors that only “conventional acts of combat” took place in Nanjing. He repeated his statement multiple times according to CNN, saying that “a thing as so-called Nanjing Massacre is unlikely to have taken place”, and “if they [the Chinese Communist Party] think it is not fact, they can tell us as openly as they want. I am ready to hold an open debate in Nanjing to discuss it”. Kawamura’s comments impacted Sino-Japanese relations, as Nanjing officials wanted to disrupt their close ties with Nagoya. Kawamura received backlash from social media and newspapers around the globe, and officials in his city attempted
to clean up his mess though the damage was done. Kawamura demonstrated a common Japanese perspective that the massacre never happened, which rings a disgustingly similar bell to those of the Holocaust deniers. One cannot deny that a full-scale massacre happened simply because they are ashamed of the event. They must admit that it happened and remember it, so that they can do better in the future. History has a dangerous pattern of repeating itself, and that cannot be prevented if people forget history.
Overall, the Nanjing Massacre, commonly regarded as the “Japanese Holocaust”, is an example of the dangers of a society with nationalism-based superiority complexes. The Chinese were viewed as something other than human to the soldiers in 1937, and treated them as such. Japan is obviously ashamed considering they want to deny the massacre’s existence, though if they do not educate the newer generations about their history, it is prone to repeat. History repeating itself has been seen over centuries, with the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Nanjing Massacre, and many more horrible events. The only way to break the cycle is to remember rather than ignore.
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