Customer Reviews

What Really Happened in Nanking

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

This revisionist book is a blatant and poorly-organized attempt to counter Timothy Brooks' outstanding work, "Documents on the Rape of Nanking," which had been published the previous year by the University of Michigan (1999). Unlike the clear objectivity of that book, here once again a deluded Japanese ultra-nationalist tries to skew facts that have been verified by numerous international sources. This is done using clumsy English, for the "benefit" for those gullible enough to accept a viewpoint where Japanese soldiers did no wrong in their march from Shanghai, where the Rape of Manila also never occurred, and where Allied soldiers and civilians were "guests" of Japanese "hospitality" during WWII, instead of its very unfortunate victims. The title of this book should read: "What We Hope Really Happened in Nanking", because the book is subjective whitewash. To believe the findings of a Japanese journalist assigned to the Imperial Army in China during WWII is the same as asking readers to embrace the propoganda of Joseph Goebbels or Soviet revisionists.

For those who truly desire to learn about the Rape of Nanking, you are better served to obtain works from legitimate historical sources, most of which unfortunately must come from outside of Japan. While I do admire many aspects of the Japanese culture, ultra-nationalists such as this misguided author do severe discredit to the youth of Japan today. Most of them are not fooled by their elders and harbor much private shame over Japan's role in brutalizing its Asian neighbors during the first half of the 20th Century. Books like this only will result in confusing the reader, rather than dealing forthright with the disturbing reality of what happened in China during the winter of 1937-38.

Tanaka Masaaki's book does not contain good refutations against the Nanjing Massacre. They are not even coherent. He and other Revisionists focus on the number of people killed but is 200,000 or even 13,000 deaths not enough to constitute a massacre? His arguments using primary sources that say how Japanese reporters who were in Nanjing, contradict collections of Chinese and other Japanese primary sources with testimonies and personal accounts. The Japanese publication, Asahi Shinbun, even published an article on the "beheading race" that was mentioned in Chang's book.

Though Chang's narrative is not the best and leaves holes for attacks like these, she is still correct in saying that a massacre occurred. The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography is a better book with scholarly writing on the subject. After reading Tanaka's book, his credibility as a history scholar is greatly undermined. His book is also very old and new research is available, though unfortunately not in English, that refute his arguments.

Seriously, this is one of the worst books that I've read on the Nanjing Massacre. I was literally laughing while reading because of how incoherent and illogical his arguments were. Though if one did not have a solid historical background of the Nanjing Massacre, one could easily be swayed by his "data" and arguments.

As Barbara Tuchman mentioned in the March of Folly,

"Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception...consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts."

My family and I just returned from an extended trip to China where we visited Nanking (Nanjing). More importantly, we visited cities surrounding Nanking and were fortunate enough to personally speak with elderly survivors and witnesses. The atrocities occured, and the truth is much closer to Iris Chang's account. Masaaki's book is simply an abomination.

This book is a sad attempt to cover up what really happened in Nanking by deliberately distorting the history. Shame on the author for trying to deny such a bone-chilling historical event that is so well documented by many sources other than Iris Chang's book "Rape of Nanking". Shame on Japanese nationalists for refusing to admit their crime even after their own war soldiers confessed their brutality. While I have Japanese friends who admit privately that they are ashamed of their war history, I also know to date, some Japanese men (my best friend is married to one) still believe that they are destined to dominate Asia because their schools still teach them that. Now, how terrifying and arrogant is that?!!! Please also read "The Good Man of Nanking : The Diaries of John Rabe", why would a German business man lie about what he experienced?

Quote from another review:
Since when do communists tell the truth?

Such a moronic comment just shows what kind of people read this book. Tanaka's work is filled with the most basic fallacies of reasoning, ranging from broad generalizations to post hoc conclusions, and deceptive quoting out of context, a technique that only pundit Ann Coulter could stoop so low to.

He even has the audacity to say on page 37: "This writer is unable to understand why Japanese textbooks contain accounts that distort the facts, and encourage our children to despise their motherland and their forebears." Typical childish, illogical right-wing whining about how truth = hatred of one's country.

Tanaka brings forth some interesting evidence, but until he learns to grow up and start writing in a scholarly fashion, he needs to do a basic review of how a writer constructs reasonable arguments.

Japanes Nationalistic fanatics are at it again in this book and in readers reviews. The rest of the world accepts the truth.
Also, earlier this month reformations where finally payed out to wartime slave workers for a Japanese Corp. The first time any victim of Imperial Japan's abuses has found a bit of justice. It only took 60 years. May the good pacifists of Japan stay in the majority.

I have just finished reading this book, and I recommend it as as supplementary reading to Iris Chang's book about the Japanese occupation of Nanking, only because Tanaka Masaaki attempts to show the proverbial other side of the coin.
Personally, I believe both books got bogged down by presenting history in terms of numbers. Imperial Japanese forces perpetrated atrocities in Nanking, like they did years later in Singapore, Burma, and Manila - there is no denying that.( Whether the overwhelming evidence to support this is classified by Japanese history as "military operations" is a totally separate subject.) But how many casualties constitute a massacre? Is the death toll really significant? To (mis)quote Mao Tse Tung, " one death is a tragedy; one thousand deaths is just a statistic".
Anyway, play Devil's Advocate, read the book, and keep an open mind.

Think about this for a moment, every Japanese book ever written about this incident calls it a lie. Every other book, Chinese, American, European says it happened and sites the same information over and over again, from a magnitude of sources. Didn't the Nazis deny the holocaust too? At least until they couldn't anymore. Just some food for thought.

Frankly, I'm sick and tired of certain Japanese people claiming that the Nanking massacre was "fabricated" or that it was a "lie" or referring to it as the "so-called Nanking massacre".
This would be the same as claiming that the Nazi death camps in Poland were "fabricated", or that the euthanasia program was a "lie" or that the Nazis weren't bent on world conquest but simply wanted to create Lebensraum for all the good citizens of planet Earth.

Come on all you revisionist out there! Wake up and smell the coffee! No one with an ounce of savy believes these revisionist theories. Isn't it strange how Masaaki's book (and all other far right-wing Japanese revisionist waffle) don't get published by Western publishing houses, but Japanese ones? I wonder why...
The Japanese Imperial Army was renowned for its brutality against all other non-Japanese south-east Asians from the Chinese to the New Guineans. One has to just read Sheldon Harris' shocking book about Japanese biological and chemical warfare in Manchuria during the 1930's and about doctor Ishii Shiro, who never stood trial as a war criminal.

All credit to humane and brave Japanese (like Katsuichii Honda) who have the guts to stand up for what they know is right!

I have read most of the books out in Japanese, Chinese, and English on the Rape of Nanking. I have personally met survivors as well as Japanese officers that were stationed there. According to all I've learned, I've learned that though figures are fuzzy and there's some funny math going on, more than 200,000 people were killed in Nanking during the 6 months it was occupied by the Japanese. Not all these people were killed during the first few weeks of the invasion, and therefore, the number is more plausible. However, the injustice done to the Chinese people that happened there remains and should be remembered through time.