The Rape of Nanking (book) - Reaction in Japan

Reaction in Japan

The Rape of Nanking has caused controversy in Japan. Los Angeles Times staff writer, Sonni Efron, reported that Chang was also criticized by both Japanese "ultranationalists", who believe that the massacre in Nanjing never took place, and Japanese liberals, who "insist the massacre happened but allege that Chang's flawed scholarship damages their cause". Associate Professor David Askew of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University stated that Chang's work dealt a "severe blow" to the "Great Massacre School" of thought, which advocates for the validity of the findings at the Tokyo Trials, the tribunal convened to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for crimes committed during World War II. Askew further argued that "the Great Massacre School has thus been forced into the (unusual) position of criticising a work that argues for a larger death toll."

Following the publication of The Rape of Nanking, Japanese critic Masaaki Tanaka had his 1987 book on Nanking translated into English. Entitled What Really Happened in Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth, Tanaka stated in his introduction "I am convinced that will arrive at the realization that violations of international law of the magnitude alleged by Iris Chang in The Rape of Nanking (more than 300,000 murders and 80,000 rapes) never took place."

Chang's book was not published in a translated Japanese language edition until December 2007. Problems with translation efforts surfaced immediately after a contract was signed for the Japanese publishing of the book. A Japanese literary agency informed Chang that several Japanese historians declined to review the translation, and that one professor backed out because of pressure placed on his family from "an unknown organization". According to Japan scholar Ivan P. Hall, revisionist historians in Japan organized a committee of right-wing scholars to condemn the book with repeated appearances at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Tokyo and throughout Japan. They prevailed on Kashiwa Shobo, the contracted Japanese publisher of the book, to insist that Chang edit the book for "corrections" they wanted made, to delete photographs and alter maps, and to publish a rebuttal to Chang's book. Chang disagreed with the changes and, as a result, withdrew the Japanese publishing of the book. The rebuttal piece was nonetheless published as a book by Nobukatsu Fujioka and Shudo Higashinakano entitled A Study of 'The Rape of Nanking'.

Shudo Higashinakano, a professor of intellectual history at Asia University of Japan, argued in Sankei Shimbun that the book was "pure baloney", that there was "no witness of illegal executions or murders", and that "there existed no 'Rape of Nanking' as alleged by the Tokyo Trial." He identified 90 historical factual errors in the first 64 pages of the book, some of which were corrected in the 1998 Penguin Books edition.