When Japanese troops conquered the then capital of China in 1937, historians agree they slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians in an orgy of violence known since as the Rape of Nanking.
But a Japanese nationalist filmmaker announced on Wednesday that he is working on a documentary with a very different message: the massacre never happened.
The film, to be called The Truth about Nanking and completed in August, will be based on testimony from Japanese veterans, archival footage and documents that proponents say prove accounts of the killings are nothing more than Chinese propaganda.
PHOTO: AP
"This will be our first effort to correct the errors of history through a film," director Satoru Mizushima said at a Tokyo hotel, joined by a group of conservative lawmakers and academics who support the project.
Mizushima, president of the rightwing Internet broadcaster Channel Sakura, said he hoped to enter the film in international festivals later in the year. He is aiming to raise about ?300 million (US$2.47 million) for the effort.
The film is part of a gathering wave in Japan of "massacre denial" projects, mostly books, that attempt to debunk a slaughter that historians say killed at least 150,000 civilians. China says the death toll was as many as 300,000.
The film was certain to rile audiences in China, and opponents say it would only cause embarrassment for Japan.
"They say the film will transmit the truth about Nanking, but they will be only spreading shame for Japan," said Shinichiro Kumagai, a civil activist studying the massacre in Nanjing -- the current name of the city -- and supporting Chinese war victims.
"The move only reveals their inability to face Japan's wartime past by looking the other way," Kumagai said.
The film is based on the work of Japanese historian Shudo Higashinakano, whose work includes two books that claim the massacre was a hoax.
The massacre, brought to a worldwide audience in English by Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, is widely seen as a gruesome symbol of Japan's bloody conquest of East Asia in most of the first half of the 1900s.
Japan's rightists argue Nanking's population was too small to have suffered such a huge massacre, and claim doctored photographs and exaggerated witness accounts have created the false image of Japanese soldiers as craven and bloodthirsty.
China yesterday condemned plans to make the documentary.
"We have also seen the reports. I think that there is irrefutable evidence for the Nanjing massacre, and international society has long ago come to a conclusion about it," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu (
"Japan's taking of a correct and responsible attitude to properly deal with historical problems helps it truly win the trust of Asian neighbors and the global community," she added.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
RSS