The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-1938: Complicating the Picture

First published in 2007, The Nanking Atrocity remains an essential resource for understanding the massacre committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanking, China during the winter of 1937-38. Through a series of deeply considered and empirically rigorous essays, it provides a far more complex and nuanced perspective than that found in works like Iris Chang’s bestselling The Rape of Nanking. It systematically reveals the flaws and exaggerations in Chang’s book while deflating the self-exculpatory narratives that persist in Japan even today. This second edition includes an extensive new introduction by the editor reflecting on the historiographical developments of the last decade, in advance of the 80th anniversary of the massacre.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Wade-Giles to Pinyin Conversion Table Maps Introduction: Iris Chang Reassessed: A Polemical Introduction to the Second Edition Chapter 1. The Messiness of Historical Reality   Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi Chapter 2. The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview Fujiwara Akira SECTION I: WAR CRIMES AND DOUBTS Chapter 3. Massacres outside Nanking City Kashara Tokushi Chapter 4. Massacres near Mufushan Ono Kenji Chapter 5. Part of the Numbers Issue: Demography and Civilian Victims David Askew Chapter 6. The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate, 1971–75 Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi Chapter 7. Radhabinod Pal on the Rape of Nanking: The Tokyo Judgment and the Guilt of History Timothy Brook SECTION II: AGGRESSORS AND COLLABORATORS Chapter 8. Letters from a Reserve Officer Conscripted to Nanking Amano Saburô Chapter 9. Chinese Collaboration in Nanking Timothy Brook Chapter 10. Westerners in Occupied Nanking: December 1937 to February 1938 David Askew Chapter 11. Wartime Accounts of the Nanking Atrocity Takashi Yoshida SECTION III: ANOTHER DENIED HOLOCAUST? Chapter 12. The Nanking Atrocity and Chinese Historical Memory Joshua A. Fogel Chapter 13. A Tale of Two Atrocities: Critical Appraisal of American Historiography Masahiro Yamamoto Chapter 14. Higashinakano Osamichi: The Last Word in Denial Kasahara Tokushi Chapter 15. Nanking: Denial and Atonement in Contemporary Japan Kimura Takuji Postscript Chapter 16. Leftover Problems Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi Appendix Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi is Emeritus Professor of History at York University, Toronto. He specializes in Japanese political thought and World War II in East Asia.

Review :
Praise for the First Edition “A refreshingly candid response to Japanese scholarship that denies or minimizes the attack on Nanking in order to advance contemporary jingoistic politics … Highly recommended.” · Choice “All of the articles in the volume are essential reading for anyone interested in the subject.” · The Historian “These essays provide a compelling refutation of the tired and implausible arguments typically espoused by the deniers and minimizers and also vividly portray the various atrocities committed by the Imperial Armed Forces. This collection also offers refreshing counterpoints to the hyperbole that biases - and undermines - Chinese accounts of the tragedy.” · Japan Times