British Journal of Sociology of Education

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Isolating Knowledge of the Unpleasant: The Rape

of Nanking in Japanese high-school textbooks

Christopher Barnard

To cite this article: Christopher Barnard (2001) Isolating Knowledge of the Unpleasant: The
Rape of Nanking in Japanese high-school textbooks, British Journal of Sociology of Education,
22:4, 519-530, DOI: 10.1080/01425690120094467

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British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 22, No. 4, 2001

Isolating Knowledge of the Unpleasant: the Rape of Nanking

in Japanese high-school textbooks

CHRISTOPHER BARNARD, Teikyo University, Japan

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how the Rape of Nanking in December 1937 and January 1938
by the Imperial Japanese Army is reported in the 88 history textbooks used in Japanese high schools in
1995, and which had passed the compulsory authorisation system of the Japanese Ministry of Education.
An analysis of the language of the textbooks shows that, although the textbooks do deal with the this
atrocity in reasonable detail, there is a consistent pattern of language use that has the effect of isolating
knowledge of the Rape of Nanking from Japan and Japanese people. One possible result of this is that
pupils in Japan today have no basis from which they can critically respond in an informed manner to
denials within modern Japanese society that this atrocity took place. This discussion is framed in terms
of a critical discourse analysis informed by the systemic functional model of grammar.

Introduction
The study reported in this paper is an example of using systemic functional grammar
(Halliday, 1994) as a tool for critical discourse analysis (Martin, 2000), speciŽ cally with
reference to the content of the school curriculum. In recent years, there have been an
increasing number of such studies regarding different areas of the school curriculum (for
example Martin, 1993a,b; Veel, 1997; Martin & Veel, 1998), including the language of
school history (Eggins et al., 1987/1993; CofŽ n, 1997; Barnard, 1998a,b, 2000a,b).
As with many applications of systemic functional grammar, one of the aims is to use
this model of grammar to relate the text being analysed to its wider social and cultural
context. One way this can be achieved is to investigate the range of meaning-making
potential possessed by a language and, by seeking to identify the speciŽ c choices made
in any particular communicative situation, question why such choices have been made,
and suggest what other choices could have been made and what different meanings
would have been produced by these alternative choices.
Concern with the form and content of the curriculum is not limited to those working
in the Ž eld of critical discourse analysis. For example, arguing from a sociology of
education perspective, Whitty (1985, pp. 19, 20) writes that an examination of the
ISSN 0142-569 2 (print)/ISSN 1465-334 6 (online)/01/040519-12 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0142569012009446 7
520 C. Barnard

curriculum will reveal how knowledge is selected and presented in a way that supports
the status quo. Whitty’s claim (1985, p. 19) that ‘pupils were likely to accept as an
immutable “fact” what was but one ideological version of the world’ is a point frequently
made by linguists working in the critical discourse tradition, where it often goes under
the name of ‘naturalised discourse’ (Fairclough, 1992, p. 9).
Among historians, FitzGerald (1979/1980) showed that, in the American history
textbooks published this century, what are judged to be the important facts and how
these are presented has varied in response to different social movements and political and
social pressures. Thus, for students, teachers, and parents, although the facts in the
textbooks may seem to be just the facts as they are, this is very far from the truth. In
actuality, the political economy of textbook publishing and how this is related to changes
in society make this well-nigh impossible.
In his examination of American history textbooks, Loewen (1995) found that the
political economy, the political climate, pressure groups, regional interests, and racial
considerations all in uence what is included in these textbooks, what is omitted, and how
material is presented. Loewen demonstrates that the pervasive ideology of the textbooks
is one of ‘progress’, such that facts and interpretations are made to Ž t in with this
ideology—even when, far from there being progress, there is an actual worsening of the
state of affairs.
Loewen argues that, in the US, one of the aims of history teaching is to instil
patriotism, national unity, and pride in the nation. Thus, a mythic version of history is
inevitably taught. Such mythic versions of history tend to serve the group interests of
particular sections or classes of society. Loewen’s (1995, 1999) work is interesting, in that
he lays stress on how language is used to create meaning, and the ideological signiŽ cance
of this. For example, he writes that textbook authors, when discussing Woodrow Wilson’s
intervention in Mexico:
identify Wilson as ordering our forces to withdraw, but nobody is speciŽ ed as
having ordered them in! Imparting information in a passive voice helps to
insulate historical Ž gures from their own unheroic or unethical deeds.
Some books go beyond omitting the actor and leave out the act itself. (Loewen, 1995,
p. 25)
Loewen’s example demonstrates how language can be used to hide, or in some way
obfuscate, the truth within a curriculum. In a similar vein, Goldhagen (1996), in
criticising the historiography of the Holocaust, writes that:
The Ž rst task in restoring the perpetrators to the center of our understanding
of the Holocaust is to restore to them their identities, grammatically by using
not the passive but the active voice in order to ensure that they, the actors, are
not absent from their own deeds (as in, ‘Ž ve hundred Jews were killed in city
X on date Y’), and by eschewing convenient, yet often inappropriate and
obfuscating labels, like ‘Nazis’ and ‘SS men,’ and calling them what they were,
‘Germans.’ (Goldhagen, 1996, p. 6)
To what extent, then, can we elucidate the relationship between texts themselves,
the meanings created by the language of such texts, and the texts as they exist embedded
in their social and cultural context? In this paper, I shall show that we can seek to
answer this question by adopting a linguistically grounded analysis of the language of
textbooks.
 Isolating Knowledge of the Unpleasant 521

The Japanese Case

An examination of the language of Japanese school history textbooks is particularly
interesting for at least two reasons. First, all textbooks used in Japanese schools have to
pass the compulsory screening and authorisation procedures of the Japanese Ministry of
Education.
This system has been vigorously and persistently challenged over many years by those
who claim it constitutes a form of censorship (for example, Horio, 1988) and is therefore
contrary to the Japanese constitution and a violation of fundamental human rights:
While current ‘screening’ practices are not as blatantly repressive as was the
case with the prewar system in which all heterodox ideas were subjected to
unyielding censorship, the system now in use in many ways represents a more
insidious (not to mention dangerous) violation of basic human rights. Even
though the Ministry of Education has tried to represent this system as a neutral
attempt to eliminate politically biased opinions, or as a scientiŽ cally objective
effort to correct mistaken information, it in fact constitutes nothing less than an
attempt to keep out of our schools all ideas which do not Ž t in with the State’s
view of the kinds of knowledge which are both appropriate and desirable to
administer to Japanese youth.
Not only does this system breach the educational rights of the child; it also
violates the intellectual and academic freedom of teachers and textbook
authors as well, by trying to channel their thinking into the same Ž xed
framework. (Horio, 1988, pp. 16, 17)
There have been challenges against the textbook authorisation system (see McCormack,
1996, p. 233), especially the long series of lawsuits brought by the historian Saburoo
lenaga against the Ministry of Education (see Horio, 1988, pp. 177–180; Buruma, 1994;
Nozaki & Inokuchi, 2000).
Second, there is the general charge that Japan has not accepted responsibility for its
wartime aggression and has not unreservedly apologised. That the question of Japanese
apologies, or lack of apologies, for waging an aggressive war has not been laid to rest is
attested by the frequency with which the matter is taken up outside Japan, even in
non-specialist forums (see Kunii et al., 1996). The Economist (2000, p. 79) states:
Even now Japan stands in puzzling contrast to Germany in its reluctance to
acknowledge guilt for its monstrous wartime actions—Ž rst in China and then
throughout the PaciŽ c theatre during the merciless campaigns of 1931–1945.
Certainly, within Japan, there are important and vocal sections among the general
public, the academic world, the highest levels of government, and the bureaucracy who
maintain that the war Japan fought from 1931 to 1945 was, to some extent at least, a
just and justiŽ able war; and that the brutality of Japan’s actions have been greatly
exaggerated (see Nakamura, 1990, pp. 430–456; Buruma, 1994, pp. 112–135; ‘Kakuryoo
Gonin’, 1995; Chang, 1997; Matsumura, 1998; McCormack, 2000; Yoshida, 2000).
Within such a climate of opinion, the Rape of Nanking has become one of the main
foci of ideological struggle between those who want Japan to give a frank accounting of
its past and apologise appropriately, and those who maintain the war was justiŽ ed and
the atrocities no more than of the type that are likely to occur in all wars. The Rape of
Nanking has achieved, as it were, the status of a ‘metonyomy’ for Japanese aggression
in China (Fogel, 2000, p. 2).
522 C. Barnard

The Study
In this study, I report my Ž ndings based on an examination of all 88 high-school history
textbooks that were approved for use in Japanese high schools in 1995. Fifty of these
continued in use until March 1999. The actual illustrative examples discussed in this
paper have been selected by the author, but are highly representative of the corpus as
a whole (with the exception of example 3).
On 13 December 1937, Nanking, capital of the Chinese Nationalist Government, fell
and soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army entered the city. The ensuring arson, pillage,
rape, torture, murder, and mass killings continued for approximately six weeks. (For
readily available discussions in English of this atrocity see, for example, Bergamini, 1971;
Ienaga, 1978; Joyaux & Coox, 1980; Harries & Harries, 1991 Calvocoressi et al., 1995;
Chang, 1997.)
Some foreign writers (for example, Buruma, 1994, p. 114; Chang, 1997) say that the
Rape of Nanking is glossed over or even ignored in Japanese history textbooks. But if one
were to start picking up, at random, one of the textbooks that form the corpus of this
study, it would not be very long before one came across a passage like this:
Example 1 [1],
translation: The Japanese army, in December 1937, occupied Nanking, and at
that time inside and outside the city killed a large number of soldiers and
civilians, and others (the Great Nanking Massacre Incident*). (Tsurumi et al.,
1994)
* The Japanese army, for several weeks during the occupation, killed not only combatants, but also
non-combatants, including women and children, and soldiers who had thrown down their arms, and
others. Those killed are said to be more than 200,000, but in China the Ž gure is reckoned to be more
than 300,000. Also, these actions of massacre, destruction, pillage, and so on, were at the time the focus
of strong international criticism. However, it was due to the post-war International Military Tribunal for
the Far East that the ordinary Japanese people knew about this incident.

This amount of detail is as much as is reported in most Japanese history textbooks about
any historical act or event, so we can say that it is rather fairly dealt with in terms of the
detail given.
Nevertheless, I shall argue in this paper that, even with this degree of detail, there is
a subtle glossing over of the nature of the atrocities that took place at Nanking.
SpeciŽ cally, I shall argue that textbooks, despite reporting the Rape of Nanking in
reasonable detail (as in example 1), nevertheless do so in such a way that isolates
knowledge of the events from Japanese people and Japan. The effect of this is to
potentially hold the historical veracity of these events up to questioning.
None of the 88 textbooks can reasonably be criticised for presenting a false or biased
view of history. This is because authors and publishers can explain away any particular
criticism in terms of questions of style, considerations of space or page layout, and so on.
It is only when one examines a large number of textbooks that one Ž nds consistent
patterns of language use.
Based on my examination of all the textbooks, I will show the following speciŽ c
patterns of language use.

(1) Absence of Perpetrators. I shall show that the perpetrators of the atrocity, namely the
soldiers of the Imperial Japanese army, are not portrayed by the textbooks as being
present at Nanking on an individual human level—but are only present on an
organisational level.
 Isolating Knowledge of the Unpleasant 523

(2) Objects of Criticism. I shall show that a natural result of the foregoing is that Japanese
soldiers, as individuals, are never criticised for perpetrating the atrocity. And
furthermore, even the culpable organisation, namely the Japanese army itself, is often
not criticised for the atrocity.
(3) Location of Knowledge of Nanking. I shall show that knowledge of Nanking is located in
both space and time in such a way that this knowledge is not something that Japanese
people are depicted as possessing until after the war, and, in fact, the main possessors
of this knowledge are almost always parties who can be assumed to be anti-Japanese.

Absence of Perpetrators
If we look at all the textbooks, we Ž nd that there is a consistent disparity between the
victims of the atrocity and the perpetrators. The victims are present at an individual,
human level, but the perpetrators are present only at an organisational level, as in
example 2 (and in fact also in example 1).
Example 2,
translation: The Japanese army, having occupied Nanking in December at the
conclusion of Ž erce lighting, slaughtered a large number of Chinese civilians.
(Takahashi et al., 1994)
There is a clear disparity between an organisational perpetrator (i.e. the Japanese army)
and individual, human victims (i.e. ‘Chinese civilians’). Likewise, in example 1, compare
the details and the individuality regarding the victims (viz. ‘combatants’, ‘non-combat-
ants’, ‘women’, ‘children’, ‘soldiers who had thrown down their arms’, ‘others’) with the
faceless, organisational portrayal of the perpetrators (viz. ‘the Japanese army’). This
pattern is the overwhelmingly common one throughout the textbooks.
In fact, in the whole corpus of 88 textbooks, there is only one textbook that ascribes
the killing to the ‘soldiers’ of the Japanese Army, i.e. Japanese ‘people’. This is a textbook
that quotes the diary of a Japanese soldier who was at Nanking. My question is: Why
do the textbooks almost never ascribe the killing to Japanese people? Of course, the
textbooks mention the Japanese army being at Nanking; and, since the Japanese army
is made up of soldiers, who are Japanese people, one can assume that Japanese people
are in the story of the Nanking Massacre. But nevertheless, this is not the same as
ascribing the killing to Japanese people. In fact, why should readers have to examine
texts to identify what is not in the texts but is central to a critical understanding of the
event in question?
Readers will certainly Ž nd Japanese soldiers in example 3, and might therefore believe
this is an exception to what I am saying.
Example 3,
translation: The Japanese army, on the occasion of the occupation of Nanking,
killed a large number of Chinese soldiers and civilians, and among the ofŽ cers
and men of the Japanese army, those who committed rape and pillage were not
a few. This is called the Great Nanking Massacre. (lenaga, 1994)
A careful reading of this text will show that there are two references to Japanese soldiers
(laying aside for the moment the reference to ‘Japanese army’). These references are ‘the
ofŽ cers and men of the Japanese army’ and ‘those’. The larger body of Japanese soldiers
is the former (‘the ofŽ cers and men of the Japanese army’) and the smaller body is the
latter (‘those’). The larger body of Japanese soldiers are not present as perpetrators of
heinous acts, but exist as a large group within which the vaguely deŽ ned smaller group
524 C. Barnard

(‘those’) is located (‘among the ofŽ cers and men of the Japanese army’; emphasis added).
It is this smaller group that is responsible for the rape and pillage. Thus a vaguely
identiŽ ed group of soldiers, comprising some vague, but not small, proportion (‘were not
a few’), of all the soldiers present at Nanking, carried out the heinous acts. Out of all 88
textbooks, this is the nearest that Japanese people get to committing atrocities at Nanking
(apart from the diary entry that I have already mentioned).
In fact, the ambivalent presence of Japanese people in this story, by which I mean the
way this text seems to be struggling to put Japanese soldiers in the story as perpetrators,
while at the same time struggling to take them out of the story as perpetrators, as well
as the awkward prose style, suggest to me that the original text was the subject of dispute
between the author and the authorities in the Japanese Ministry of Education, and that
the text we see here is a compromise. The ambiguous position of Japanese soldiers as
perpetrators, the use of the rather technical, military Japanese word, which I have
translated as ‘ofŽ cers and men’ (and which is not present in any other textbook), and the
fact that Japanese soldiers are present in this short sentence three times in different guises
(‘the Japanese army’, ‘the ofŽ cers and men of the Japanese army’, and ‘those’), but are
not there simply as ‘Japanese soldiers’, seems to suggest that the text is under ideological
pressure.
The last point, namely the Japanese soldiers being present in different guises, is an
example of what Fairclough (1989) calls ‘overwording’. He writes (p. 115) that, ‘Over-
wording shows preoccupation with some aspect of reality—which may indicate that it is
a focus of ideological struggle’. On reading this passage, in both Japanese and English,
one cannot help wondering why the writer has put so much effort and energy into the
rather simple fact of their being Japanese soldiers at Nanking; something is clearly ‘going
on’ as far as this passage is concerned [2].
Japanese people not being at Nanking is but part of a pattern of ignoring Japanese
involvement in the Rape of Nanking at the individual or human level (as opposed to
the organisational level) that we see subtly expressed in the language of the textbooks in
the ways already illustrated. One major result of this pattern is that the links between the
events at Nanking and Japanese society at the time, as well as the links between the Japan
of 1937–38 and of today, are severed. I would say that this is an important step in
isolating the knowledge of Nanking.

Objects of Criticism
Next, I would like to consider the question of how criticism of the Rape of Nanking is
portrayed in the textbooks. When criticism is removed from the people who carry out
heinous acts to the content of the event, or the event itself, then this is not frank criticism.
To use a different example, we can criticise the Holocaust itself (‘The Holocaust was
evil’), or its actions that constitute the Holocaust (‘Killing people in death camps was
evil’). But is this enough? The people who carried out these terrible acts should surely
bear the brunt of criticism, and who they were should be recorded in the pages of history
(‘The Germans who killed people in death camps were evil’).
But this is not what happens in the textbooks. Since there are no Japanese soldiers
recorded as being present at Nanking (with the exceptions already noted) at the time of
the Rape, they obviously cannot be criticised. Rather, the Japanese army itself is
criticised, as in the following example.
Example 4,
translation: At this time, it was reported that the Japanese army killed and
 Isolating Knowledge of the Unpleasant 525

wounded a large number of Chinese, including non-combatants, and received

great criticism internationally (the Nanking Incident). (Ishii et al., 1994)
Or the actions that constitute the event (‘these barbaric acts’) are criticised, as in the
following example.
Example 5,
translation: At the occupation of Nanking the Japanese army killed a large
number of Chinese people, including non-combatants, and carried out pillage,
arson, and rape. These barbaric acts internationally received criticism as the
Great Nanking Massacre. Furthermore, after the war at the International
Military Tribunal for the Far East, the number of victims of the incident was
estimated at 200,000, and the responsibility for this was rigorously pursued.
(Fukuda et al., 1994)
In an even more indirect form of criticism, as in example 6, the event is given a name
and then criticised (‘This incident, as the Nanking Massacre, was the focus of criti-
cism …’).
Example 6,
translation: The Japanese army, during a period of several weeks, inside and
outside the city of Nanking killed a large number of Chinese people, including
women. That number, including prisoners of war, is estimated to be one
hundred and some tens of thousands. This incident, as the Nanking Massacre,
was the focus of criticism from a number of foreign countries, but the Japanese
people were not informed of the fact. (Bitoo et al., 1994)
Thus, in this preceding example, no organisation or group of people, nor any actions are
criticised; just the incident itself receives the criticism. This is equivalent to the earlier
least critical Holocaust example ‘the Holocaust was evil’.
If the textbooks recorded Japanese soldiers as being present at Nanking, and criticised
them, we would have a historical thread linking us to Nanking in 1937–38. We could,
for example, travel round Japan looking for the people who were in Nanking at the time
and became the objects of criticism, and ask for their opinions or memories. Pupils could
even carry out oral history projects.
As it is, the textbooks lead us to question only the Japanese army (which no longer
exists), or the actions that constitute the content of the event (which can answer us, not
in terms of words, but in terms of historical evidence such as grave sites, photographs,
or whatever—which are all naturally subject to a variety of interpretations), or the event
itself (which cannot speak for itself). Thus, the way that criticism is dealt with in the
textbooks is another example of isolating knowledge of Nanking.

Location of the Knowledge of Nanking

Finally, I will discuss how the knowledge of Nanking, because of the way in which it is
located, is isolated from Japan. This is done in two rather different ways.

Separation of the Japanese Army from Japanese People. First, the knowledge is isolated by the
way in which the Japanese possessors of the knowledge of Nanking (namely the Japanese
army—which according to common sense must include Japanese people) are separated
526 C. Barnard

from Japanese people, as in example 6 (i.e. ‘the Japanese people were not informed of
the fact’). Example 7 illustrates the same thing.
Example 7,
translation: In the Ž ghting at this time, the Japanese army carried out cruel
treatment and massacres of ordinary Chinese people, and in particular before
and after the occupation of Nanking caused a massacre incident (the Great
Nanking Massacre). This incident was not made known to the Japanese people,
but it was made known to all the world by the foreigners who were in Nanking.
(Aoki et al., 1994)
How can it make sense to say that the incident was not made known to the Japanese
people when the actual perpetrators of the Rape of Nanking were Japanese people?
Again, this text would suggest that there is no point going round Japan looking for
people who know about the Rape of Nanking, because the people who carried out these
acts are not in the class ‘Japanese people’. Neither is there any suggestion that at the time
there was information leakage from the people who committed the atrocities to the
people back in Japan, such as from soldiers in Nanking to their military comrades
stationed in Japan. So we would have to assume that no one could have found out about
the Rape at second-hand. This does not seem very believable.
Also, in example 7, there is the suggestion that the whole world could know about
something, but not Japan—as if Japan was in some way not part of the world. Was there
no ‘governing elite’, ‘aristocratic elite’, ‘military elite’, ‘diplomatic elite’, ‘intellectual elite’
or ‘media elite’ in Japan who had access to foreign newspapers, foreign news services,
short-wave radios, foreign acquaintances, accurate information from the front in China,
and so on, and thereby found out about the Rape of Nanking? It is very difŽ cult to
believe that such was the case. (See Bix (2000, p. 336) for a short discussion on who
within Japan knew, or probably knew, about the Rape of Nanking at the time of the
event.)
This inclusion of these groups of people (some of whom must have been ‘in the know’)
within the majority of Japanese people who, let us assume, were ignorant of the nature
of the events in question, means that the people in Japan who did know about the
atrocity conveniently, for them, have no explaining to do in the court of history since
they have been swallowed up in the mass of unknowing Japanese people.
Looking at this text a little more closely, we Ž nd that if we interrogate ‘was not made
known to the Japanese people’, we can identify a participant present below the surface
grammar of this expression. Namely, by whom was ‘this incident’ not made known to the
Japanese people? Presumably, it was not made known to the Japanese people by
the military and governmental authorities—the parties who bear ultimate responsibility
for the event and were knowledgeable about it. In fact, the textbook is surely saying—
or rather shying away from saying—‘The military and governmental authorities hid/
attempted to hide the atrocities that occurred at Nanking from the ordinary Japanese
people within Japan’. In other words, there was an attempt at a cover-up. The fact that
this textbook (and not only this one) bends this way and that way to avoid saying this
surely suggests that the textbooks are making conscious efforts to isolate the knowledge
of Nanking.

Possessors of the Knowledge of Nanking. Second, we should examine the way in which the
knowledge of Nanking is located among participants in the story of the atrocity and
 Isolating Knowledge of the Unpleasant 527

subsequent research concerning it, for this is another way in which the language of the
textbooks distances the reality of Nanking from present-day Japan.
In all the textbooks, knowledge of Nanking is only located among the following (again,
excluding the diary entry that I have previously mentioned): anyone in the world who
was not in the class ‘(ordinary) Japanese people’ (as in examples 1, 6 and 7); a small
group of foreigners who were at Nanking at the time of the atrocity (as in example 7);
the victorious Allies who conducted post-war war crimes trials (as in examples 1 and 5);
post-war Chinese government-sponsored researchers and a very small number of
Japanese researchers (rather indirectly referred to in example 1, but in other textbooks
more clearly identiŽ ed); and ordinary Japanese people after the war (as in example 1),
who of course were under the military occupation of the victors.
There are four things to notice about this pattern, First, the two largest groups who
know by far the most about the events (the ‘owners’ of the atrocity, as it were), namely
the Japanese perpetrators and the Chinese victims, are excluded from the class of those
who know. Second, with the exception to the Japanese researchers, all knowledge is
restricted to foreigners who may be assumed to be anti-Japanese (namely, the mostly
American and British nationals present at Nanking at the time, identiŽ ed in other
textbooks as such, the post-war allied victors, and the post-war Chinese). Third,
knowledge of Nanking is displaced either in space in such a way that it is outside Japan
(within the international community, but excluding Japan, as in examples 1, 6 and 7) or
in time (to the post-war period, as in examples 1 and 5). Finally, related to the previous
point, is the manner in which the Japanese people as a whole receive this knowledge
from victorious foreigners occupying their country. What the textbooks do not do is to
give contemporaneous reporting from the ‘owners’ of the atrocity regarding what
happened at the time, on the ground.
In modern Japan, two of the main arguments used by those who deny the occurrence,
or at least the scale, of the Rape of Nanking, are: Ž rst, it could never have happened,
since Japanese people only found out about it after the war; and, second, it is a
fabrication by the Allies, which was part of their administration of ‘victors’ justice’ to the
Japanese (see McCormack, 2000, p. 57).
It is unfortunate that the way the textbooks locate the knowledge of Nanking allows
those arguing against the reality of the atrocity enough ‘purchase’ to mount such
arguments.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have discussed and shown three ways in which the knowledge of Nanking
is isolated from Japan and Japanese people (by Japanese people not Ž guring as
perpetrators, by criticism being de ected away from the perpetrators, and by knowledge
of Nanking being located in particular ways). I would suggest that this study shows that
the historiography of the textbooks tells far less than the frank truth. What we see in the
language of the textbooks is a reluctant telling of what has to be told. I would further
claim that the highly vocal campaign within Japan (McCormack, 2000, pp. 56, 57;
Yoshida, 2000) that calls into question the brutality of Japanese aggression, together with
the teaching of a type of history that shies away from pinning down the responsibility for
the atrocity, creates a climate of opinion within modern Japanese society that allows the
historical fact of the Rape of Nanking to be either held up to questioning, or at least its
magnitude to be doubted.
If young people in Japan are to be given knowledge and critical skills with which they
528 C. Barnard

can respond to denials within modern Japanese society of what happened, they must
surely be taught a history that tells them who perpetrated the atrocity and allows them
to follow the thread of evidence that links the Japan of that time and modern Japan to
the atrocity itself.

Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and
advice.

Correspondence: 4–24–1–159 Minami Ikuta, Tama-ku, Kawasaki 214–0036, Japan. E-mail:

chrisbar@zb3.so-net.ne.jp

NOTES
[1] References to textbooks quoted are given under References. In the appendix I have given Hepburn
romanisation of the original Japanese.
[2] In fact the author of this text, which occurs in identical form in two different textbooks, is Saburoo
Ienaga—either as sole author or as joint author. It is interesting that the Japanese historian who is well
known for challenging the Ministry of Education’s control of textbooks is the only author who puts
Japanese people into the story of Nanking—albeit in a rather indirect manner.

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Appendix
Example 1 (p. 319)
Nihon-gun wa, 1937-nen 12-gatsu, Nankin o senryoo-shita ga, sono toki shinaigai de tasuu no horyo/minshuu
nado o gyakusatsu-shita (Nankin-daigyakusatsu-jiken)*.
* Nihon-gun wa, senryoo-ji no suushuukan ni, sentooin bakari de naku, joshi/kodomo o fukumu hisentooin
ya buki o suteta heishi o mo gyakusatsu-shita. Gyakusatsu mono wa 20-man-nin ijoo to iwareru ga,
Chuugoku de wa sono kazu o 30-man-nin ijoo to shite iru. Nao, kooshita gyakusatsu/hakai/
ryakudatsu nado no kooi wa, tooji tsuyoi kokusai-hihan o abita. Shikashi, ippan no Nihonjin ga kono jiken
no koto o shitta no wa, sengo no Kyokutoo-kokusai-gunjisaiban ni yotte de atta.

Example 2 (p. 149)

Nihon-gun wa, hageshii sentoo no sue 12-gatsu ni Nankin o senryoo, tasuu no Chuugoku-minshuu o
satsuriku-shita.
530 C. Barnard

Example 3 (p. 278)

Nihon-gun wa Nankin-senryoo no sai, tasuu no Chuugoku-gunmin o satsugai-shi, Nihon-gun shoohei no naka
ni wa bookoo ya ryakudatsu nado o okonau mono ga sukunaku nakatta. Nankin-daigyakusatsu to yobareru.

Example 4 (p. 206)

Kono toki, Nihon-gun wa hisentooin o fukumu tasuu no Chuugokujin o satsugai-shita to hoodoo-sare,
kokusai-teki ni ookina hinan o uketa (Nankin-jiken).

Example 5 (p. 184)

Nankin senryoo ni atatte Nihon-gun wa, hisentooin o fukumete tasuu no Chuugokujin o satsugai-shi,
ryakudatsu/hooka/bookoo o okonatta. Kono bankoo wa, Nankin-daigyakusatsu to shite kokusai-teki ni hinan
o uketa. Mata, sengo no Kyokutoo-kokusai-gunjisaiban de wa, jiken no higaisha kazu o ni-man-nin ijoo to
shite, sono sekinin ga kibishiku tsuikyuu-sareta.

Example 6 (pp. 305, 306)

Nihon-gun wa, suushuukan no aida ni, Nankin no shigaichi no naigai de, fujoshi o fukumu ooku no
Chuugokujin o satsugai-shita. Sono kazu wa, horyo o fukumete yaku 10-suuman-nin to suitei-sarete iru. Kono
jiken wa Nankin-daigyakusatsu to shite sho-gaikoku kara hinan o abita ga, Nihon-kokumin wa sono jijitsu o
shirasarenakatta.

Example 7 (p. 290)

Kono aida no sentoo ni oite Nihon-gun wa ippan Chuugokujin no gyakutai/gyakusatsu o okonai, toriwake
Nankin-senryoo zengo ni wa, daigyakusatsu-jiken o okoshita (Nankin-daigyakusatsu). Kono jiken wa Nihon-
kokumin ni wa shirasarenakatta ga, Nankin ni ita gaikokujin ni yotte sekai kakuchi ni shirasareta.