Hyakunin-giri Kyōsō

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Hyakunin-giri Kyōsō ( Japanese 百 人 斬 り 競争 , dt. About: "Competition to kill 100 people with a sword") was a "competition" between two Japanese army officers during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, who can make it 100 first Killing people with his sword. Both were later executed as war criminals. Since then, the historicity of this event has been questioned by Japanese nationalists and revisionist historians, who also play down the Nanjing massacre .

The matter first appeared in a number of Japanese newspapers during the war, glorifying the killings as part of the "contest" between the two Japanese officers. It reappeared in public in the 1970s, igniting major controversy over Japanese war crimes in China and the Nanjing massacre in particular.

The original newspaper reports described the killings as a duel, while historians see them as part of the widespread mass murders of defenseless prisoners of the time.

Contemporary reports

Article of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun of December 13, 1937 about the "competition".
Mukai (left) and Noda (right)

In 1937 Ōsaka Mainichi Shimbun and its sister paper Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun reported on a competition between the two officers Mukai Toshiaki ( 向 井 敏明 ) and Noda Tsuyoshi ( 野 田 毅 ) in which they both vied for who could kill 100 people first with his sword. The "competition" presumably took place on the way of the army to Nanjing and was dealt with in four articles from November 30th to December 13th 1937. The last two also appeared in a translation in the English-language Tokyo daily Japan Advertiser .

According to reports at the time, both officers exceeded their target mark, making it impossible to determine the winner. According to the article by journalists Asami Kazuo and Suzuki Jirō on December 13th in the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun , both decided to start a new "competition" with the new goal of killing 150 people. The headline of this article read:

「百 人 斬 り〝 超 記録 〟向 井 106-105 野 田 / 兩 少尉 さ ら に 延長 戰」

"Hyakunin-giri" chōkiroku "Mukai 106-105 Noda / ryōshōi sara ni enchōsen"

"The 'unbelievable record' in the [competition] killing 100 people with a sword: Mukai 106, Noda 105 / Both lieutenants go into overtime"

Other soldiers and historians stress the improbability of the lieutenant's ascribed acts of defeating enemy after enemy in a duel. Noda himself said the following in a speech in a primary school in his hometown:

“Actually, I didn't kill more than four or five people in hand-to hand combat… We'd face an enemy trench that we'd captured, and when we called out, 'Ni, Lai-Lai!' (You, come on!), The Chinese soldiers were so stupid, they'd rush toward us all at once. Then we'd line them up and cut them down, from one end of the line to the other. "

"In fact, I didn't kill more than four or five people in one-on-one combat ... We turned to an enemy trench that we were in, shouting 'Ni Lai-Lai!' (You, come!) And the Chinese soldiers were so stupid to come up to us all at once. We then lined up and killed them from one end to the other. "

Military tribunal

After the war, the reports found their way into the files of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East ("Tokyo Trials") . The two soldiers were extradited to China and sentenced to death by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. The execution took place on January 28, 1948 at the Yuhuatai Execution Site.

reception

In Japan, the "contest" was forgotten until Hora Tomio ( 洞 富雄 ), professor of history at Waseda University , published a 118-page document on the events of Nanjing in 1967. This story was not picked up by the press until 1971 when journalist Honda Katsuichi wrote a series of articles in the Asahi Shimbun that included interviews with Chinese survivors of the occupation and massacres.

These articles sparked a debate about the Nanjing Massacre, with the veracity of the killing contest as the most contentious part. In the following years various authors argued whether the Nanjing massacre took place at all and at the same time whether the "competition" was an invention.

In later work, Honda Katsuichi put the record of the killing race in the context of the effect on the Japanese armed forces in China. In one case, Honda wrote about the veteran Uno Shintarō, who gave an autobiographical description of the effect the beheading of nine prisoners in a row had on his sword. The UN compares these experiences with those of the two lieutenants of the "competition". Although he found stories of duels in his youth inspiring, after his war experiences he only perceived them as executions. Uno added:

“Whatever you say, it's silly to argue about whether it happened this way or that way when the situation is clear. There were hundreds and thousands of [soldiers like Mukai and Noda], including me, during those fifty years of war between Japan and China. At any rate, it was nothing more than a commonplace occurrence during the so-called Chinese Disturbance. "

“Whatever is said, it is silly to argue whether it happened this way or that when the situation is clear. There were hundreds and thousands [soldiers like Mukai and Noda] including myself during those 50 years of the war between Japan and China. In any case, it was nothing more than an everyday occurrence during the so-called Chinese incident. "

In 2000, historian Bob Wakabayashi wrote that the "killing contest itself was an invention," but his controversy "increased the knowledge of the Japanese people of the atrocities and awareness of the perpetrators in this war of imperialist aggression, despite the efforts of the conservatives to the contrary Revisionists ". The historian Joshua Fogel pointed out that recognizing the newspaper reports "as true and accurate requires such a leap of faith that no balanced historian can make".

The Nanking Massacre Memorial Hall in China also contains one of its many exhibits about the "competition". An article in the Japan Times suggests that its presence allows revisionists to "sow a seed of doubt" about the accuracy of the entire collection.

One of the swords used in the "competition" is in the Republic of China Armed Forces Museum in Taipei , Taiwan .

The "competition" was mentioned in the 2009 film John Rabe .

Legal proceedings

In April 2003, the families of Mukai Toshiaki and Noda Tsuyoshi sued the Mainichi Shimbun as the successor to the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun, which published the articles in 1937, the Asahi Shimbun and Honda Katsuichi for the articles from 1971, and the Kashiwa Shobō publishing house for defamation for 36,000. 000 yen (about € 270,000). On August 23, 2005, Judge Doi Akio of Tokyo District Court dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that the "contest" was taking place and not a media invention. He went on to say that although the original newspaper report contained false claims that the officers admitted to having murdered 100 people in competition, it was difficult to say that this was fiction.

The plaintiffs then went unsuccessfully to the Tokyo Supreme Court in 2006 and, after another defeat, turned to the Supreme Court , which dismissed their suit.

literature

  • Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi: The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt Amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971-75 . In: Journal of Japanese Studies . tape 26 , no. 2 , 2000, pp. 307-340 , doi : 10.2307 / 133271 .
  • Honda Katsuichi: The Nanjing Massacre. A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame . Edited by Frank Gibney. ME Sharpe, Armonk NY et al. 1999, ISBN 0-7656-0335-7 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - Japanese: 南京 へ の 道 . Translated by Karen Sandness).

supporting documents

  1. Takashi Yoshida: The Making of the "Rape of Nanking". History and memory in Japan, China, and the United States. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2006, ISBN 0-19-518096-8 , p. 64.
  2. Takashi Yoshida: A Battle over History: The Nanjing Massacre in Japan. In: Joshua A. Fogel (Ed.): The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (= Asia. Local Studies, Global Themes. Vol. 2). University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2000, ISBN 0-520-22006-4 , pp. 70-132, here p. 82.
  3. Katsuichi: The Nanjing Massacre. 1999, pp. 131-132.
  4. M. Kajimoto: The Postwar Judgment: II. Nanking War Crimes Tribunal. In: Nanking Atrocities (Nanjing Massacre). August 2000, accessed May 30, 2015 .
  5. Katsuichi: The Nanjing Massacre. 1999, p. 128.
  6. ^ Wakabayashi: The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate. 2000, pp. 307-340, p. 319.
  7. a b M. Kajimoto: The Postwar Judgment: II. Nanking War Crimes Tribunal. In: Nanking Atrocities (Nanjing Massacre). August 2000, accessed May 30, 2015 .
  8. Katsuichi: The Nanjing Massacre. 1999, pp. 125-127.
  9. Katsuichi: The Nanjing Massacre. 1999, p. IX.
  10. Takashi Yoshida: A Battle over History: The Nanjing Massacre in Japan. In: Joshua A. Fogel (Ed.): The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (= Asia. Local Studies, Global Themes. Vol. 2). University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2000, ISBN 0-520-22006-4 , pp. 70-132, here pp. 81-82.
  11. Katsuichi: The Nanjing Massacre. 1999, pp. 126-127, footnote.
  12. a b Katsuichi: The Nanjing Massacre. 1999, pp. 128-132.
  13. ^ Wakabayashi: The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate. 2000, pp. 307-340, p. 307, "the killing contest itself was a fabrication", "increased the Japanese people's knowledge of the Atrocity and raised their awareness of being victimizers in a war of imperialist aggression despite efforts to the contrary by conservative revisionists ”.
  14. ^ Joshua A. Fogel: The Nanking Atrocity and Chinese Historical Memory. In: Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi: The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38. Complicating the Picture (= Asia Pacific Studies. Past and Present. Vol. 2). Berghahn Books, New York NY et al. 2007, ISBN 978-1-84545-180-6 , pp. 267–284, here p. 280.
  15. ^ Jeff Kingston: War and reconciliation: a tale of two countries . In: The Japan Times . August 10, 2008, p. 9 ( online ).
  16. Chris Hogg: Victory for Japan's war critics. In: BBC News. August 23, 2005, accessed May 30, 2015 .
  17. hanketulist. Archived from the original on January 15, 2007 ; Retrieved May 30, 2015 (Japanese, full text of court decision).

Web links