Yes. But then, they were starving in the vast majority of cases. AFAIK there’s only one POW camp commander who did that just for kicks.
Not what I read, but I am too lazy to look for a cite.
At least that would provide a reason other than just for kicks.
Tokyo Bayer hasn’t been screaming at me yet for mentioning that.
I am surprised.
Because it wasn’t a true genocide. It was without question a horrific display of wartime brutality, but there was enough brutality to go around in WWII, including many atrocities committed by the Allies.
I find it remarkable that a post like this has gone completely unresponded to in its substance.
Sounds to be like the student was a dysgenic loser hoping to get some of dat trap boipussy by acting as a catamite for Japanese imperialist militarism.
If this was a thread about the Holocaust, would you have done the same with David Irving? Consider that Irving is far more knowledgeable about the Second World War and the Holocaust then some random weeb undergrad in Tokyo town is about the Nanking Massacre.
What’s up with this “I don’t know that this is true”? People don’t say this about the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes-ie “I don’t know if this is true, but maybe the residents of Lidice were hiding anti-Wehrmacht partisans?”. Also this is a generally stupid way to go around hiding yourself considering it’s not difficult to steal clothing.
Are you even conversant with the basic modern history of China? You do realize that the government who did commit most of those postwar atrocities was the communist regime of Mao Zedong not the Kuomintang regime of Chiang that controlled most of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War? And again this is very bizarre logic that nobody would use with regards to the Third Reich’s crimes. One might as well say the Germans have nothing to apologize for to the Soviet people and that the “people of the USSR were doomed either way” because of Stalin’s repressions. This is even ignoring the fact that Nanjing didn’t happen in a vacuum-it being merely the most infamous of eight years (more if you count Japan’s pre-1937 aggressions in Manchuria, Shanghai, and elsewhere) of warfare caused by Japanese imperialism that killed tens of millions of Chinese. Finally, while this should constitute apologia for either of the tyrants, the death tolls of Stalin and Mao have tended to be exaggerated into the tens of millions but it is important to keep in mind: 1) only a few millions (at most) in each case perished from direct violence and 2) mass famines brought on by negligent and disastrous policies is where most of the deaths can be attributed to (although even here numbers tend to be exaggerated).
How generous. Maybe you’ll be even more munificent and accord the Nazis 80% of the blame for the Holocaust (the other 20% of course being attributable to Jews being Jews, supporting Bolshevism, and all that jazz).
The book by an Okinawan historian I read (which, granted, was viciously anti-Japanese) stated that there were women who had served as nurses for the Japanese army and had seen the atrocities committed by the Japanese on their POWs, and that it was these women who encouraged the others to end it rather than be caught.
I don’t know how well regarded the historian was who wrote the book, but it is at least a possible alternative.
If they were advocating a form of Bolshevism that encouraged mass murder, I think it would be reasonable to denigrate those individuals who held and argued for that position. There’s nothing generous about holding all mass murderers accountable for their actions. It is far more generous to pick and choose based on which side fits a particular story that is convenient.
By serious historians? Sure. The destruction of Cambodia is way up there.
That’s even if we leave aside the Annihilation War in Anatolia twenty years earlier, various Imperial Japanese atrocities including the one we’re discussing, the Belgians in the Congo, the British treatment of Tasmania, various attempts to remove indigenous North Americans using smallpox, the Wars of the Protestant Reformation, some of the stupider Crusades, and the mopes who apparently knew they were hunting the great auk to extinction. 
The Shoah is a great go-to reference, but it’s very, very far from unique.
Some Jews may very well have committed other atrocities but that isn’t the question at hand here. You are saying that the Chinese had a role (though “probably” less then 50 percent) in the Nanking Massacre which is comparable to saying the Jews had a role in the Holocaust itself.
From knowing him, I can’t think of any reason to doubt what he said. I would mostly just doubt that it was a significant aspect of the massacre. It seems reasonable to assume that a Japanese soldier might downplay or even skip writing the bad things he had done, and play up the things the Chinese had done, in order to make himself feel better about killing the Chinese.
More importantly, I could see such a story forming the basis for a denialist’s argument, and that is what the OP was asking for.
Of course, it doesn’t explain the weeks of murders and rapes that occurred in Nanking. It would only explain a number of the early deaths, and as you point out, it’s an inefficient way to mascarade as a commoner.
If this was a thread asking for examples of denialist claims and arguments about the Holocaust, would I describe some examples that I was aware of? …Yes? That is the stated purpose of the thread after all.
Why did you not include that in your original post, making it clear that this is what a denialist claim might look like? It’s clear from the general thrust of your post where you bring up unrelated atrocities committed by later Chinese governments, and saying Japan “probably mostly” was responsible for Nanking that you weren’t just saying what denialist arguments might be, but by taking a pseudo-neutral position legitimitizing said deniers by essentially trivializing Nanking.
Would you make such statements without a disclaimer of disapproval and even saying it “maybe true” and something that is credible enough to warrant investigation? Would you immediately follow that statement up with paragraphs minimizing the Holocaust by bringing up Soviet and Western Allied war crimes and atrocitieis and even suggesting those governments have more to apologize for then the Nazis did? Would you suggest that Jews may have been responsible for a significant portion though not a majority of the Holocaust?
I’m an interested party, but I have no more interest in investigating this than I have in investigating if there was no Holocaust and any mass deaths of Jews was due to typhus outbreaks in concentration camps. There is a mountain of evidence that the Holocaust occurred, and there is a mountain of evidence that the Nanking Massacre occurred.
This is as bad as passing off what you think you remember someone said they read. Actually, it’s worse; you make it a kindness that the IJA would kill everyone they encountered to spare them from starving. This entire claim is complete horseshit. Japan had horrible logistics during the Pacific War and sent troops into places where their ability to supply them was so bad that they couldn’t even properly feed them, notable examples being Guadalcanal and Imphal-Kohima. Even in these cases where there was starvation, it caused far less than half of the Japanese military deaths in the campaigns. That half of all Japanese military deaths during the entire war were due to starvation is an absolutely ludicrous statement. What the Japanese were doing in China had nothing to do with this absurd notion that half the IJA died of starvation and everything to do with the Three Alls Policy: kill all, burn all, loot all.
This is right up there with saying you’re pretty willing to believe the Holocaust didn’t happen, it was just some typhus outbreaks in concentration camps where the Nazis justifiably put all the Jews during the war since they were hostile to the Nazi government.
You want us to take this seriously?
Minister of Defense.
Of course she is. That stance plays well to her party’s leadership and to too large a segment of the population in her constituency.
Her. The moron-in-question is female. She’ll get fired when her party is out of government.
Unlikely. Japanese politics doesn’t work like American. Besides, her party is always “the government” - more correctly I should say “is always elected”. But it doesn’t matter, Japan is controlled by unelected bureaucrats, not by elected officials.
There is a strong wave of nationalism right now in Japan. The media (possibly spurred on by the government) has much of the public thinking that everyone is out to get Japan, to besmirch them, to attack them and to invade them. Revisionist history is small potatoes.
No, not by serious historians. In the common understanding of Americans. Is there anything that is viewed in the same light as the holocaust?
Seriously, someone like Trump would do well there right now.
To be fair, China *is *encroaching on Japanese waters and North Korea *has *gone nuclear and still fires missiles in Japan’s direction.
The world’s largest (Russia,) most populous (China,) and craziest (North Korea) countries are hostile to Japan.
I should have said: Revisionist history is small potatoes compared to what else is going on, but it is all part and parcel of the prevailing zeitgeist which is that Japan, who never did any wrong to anyone, is under attack from all sides, economic, military, and ideological, by the nasty foreigners.
Oh, in that case, English rule in Ireland. And chattel slavery in the USA.
Anything seen that way by WASPs and privileged Jews, specifically? No, probably not. But then, the WASPs were committing the atrocities I just named, and the Jews have understandable biases.