LDP lawmakers dispute Nanking again!
Posted by Matt Dioguardi on June 20th, 2007
- 2007/06/19 Ruling party lawmakers dispute ‘Rape of Nanking’ death toll, AP via IHT; “A group of about 100 lawmakers from Japan’s ruling party claimed Tuesday that after a monthslong review they have determined the number of people killed by Japanese troops during the infamous ‘Rape of Nanking’ has been grossly inflated.”
Nariaki Nakayama an ex-education minister under Koizumi Junichiro and 100 other lawmakers have produced yet more evidence which shows the death toll at Nanking was no where near the 200,000 to 300,000 usually reported — and instead was more like 20,000. Their new source of evidence is a document submitted to the League of Nations by the nationalist Chinese government condemning the Nanking killings. This document places the number of those killed at 20,000.
Nariaki Nakayama is current head of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, an organization once headed by Shinzo Abe, that has continuously called for less masochistic history text books in Japanese schools.
This year marks the 70th year anniversary of the slaughter and several films are set for release concerning it.
As I write this, the Associated Press story concerning this has already appeared nine times at Google news (link). The story in Japanese, appears only once at Yahoo! Japan news. My guess is this story will get carried far and wide in the foreign press and then will get more air time in the Japanese press. The story in the Japanese press will mostly consist of the foreign reaction, and not the actual claims made. We’ll see how this develops.
Previous articles:
2004/11/28 Education minister slams textbooks as ’self-torturing’, The Japan Times; Nariaki Nakayama says, “Every country’s history has light and shadow. While we must reflect on bad deeds, we must not conduct education on the basis of a self-torturing historical perspective that everything that has been done was bad.”
Links:
- Wikipedia: Nanking Massacre
- Wikipedia: Nariaki Nakayama
- Kantei: Nariaki Nakayama
- Nariaki Nakayama’s official page (In Japanese)