Rating: 
Summary: Amazing, it's raining Japanese reactionaries
Review: Since the review space has essentially been transformed into a forum of Japanese apologists, I think my contribution to the polemic mess won't hurt. I read the book with the preconception that there was 300,000 casualties in the "rape," and that was without both Chinese and Japanese revisionary efforts. The book was poignant in the illustration of pretermitted Chinese suffering (and in the context of broader Pacific Asia suffering as well in a Western-centric world). The quantitative sector of the history I'm not particularly concerned for. If it's 300,000, it's plaintively tragic; if it's 100,000, it's 'still' horribly lamentable.Japanese apologists -- take a cue from the vast majority of Germans. Avouch the atrocities and at least feel penitence for the past conduct of your nation. You were not personally involved (or hell, maybe not even your family), so don't marginalize yourself by post half a dozen feedbacks of disavowals regurgitating the same thing. It only makes you look more guilty. Now, speaking of Nanjing's population numbers -- I would 'at least' deem the 'post-occupation' population numbers from "kent" and such of Nanjing to be somewhat suspect. Who was taking the census (and for that reason why)? Oh yeah, the Japanese.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing But Propaganda
Review: All the pictures are fabricated or no related to Nankin. Why China continues threating Japan by the forged claim which was introduced 57 years ago? China needs the enemy outside of the China to maintain "People's Republic of China". China is in conflict with other races which China has invaded by the military force. Japan is the most convenient nation for China to force the roll of the enemy.
Rating:
Summary: Population of Nanking in 1937 #3
Review: When confronted with these figures, proponents of the massacre theory attempt to enlarge the civilian population of Nanking. For instance, Hora Tomio writes: When the Japanese military commenced its attack on Nanking, there were reportedly between 250,000 and 300,000 residents remaining in the city.
Reports have it that after stragglers were eliminated during the sweep, there were nearly 200,000 persons residing in Nanking.
Therefore, by the process of subtraction, we arrive at a total of 50,000-100,000 massacre victims.
His repeated use of phrasing like "reportedly" and "reports have it" implies that his sources are, at best, rumors. Rumors do not constitute proof. Hora is simply allowing his imagination to run away with itself, or guessing. None of his claims is the least bit reliable. Like Hora, the authors of Testimonies: The Great Nanking Massacre have inflated the population of Nanking to support their accusation that 300,000-400,000 persons were massacred. According to our research, the population of the Safety Zone, at its highest, was 290,000. When the massacre was nearing an end, and the enemy was forcing the refugees to leave the Safety Zone, it claimed that the population was 250,000. Therefore, the population had decreased by 40,000 in less than two months. There were many reasons for that decrease, but the primary reason was, without a doubt, the enemy's massacre of huge numbers of refugees.
How did the authors arrive at the figure of 290,000? Like Hora, they present no proof. Iris Chang has inflated the population even further. If half of the population of Nanking fled into the Safety Zone during the worst of the massacre, then the other half -- almost everyone who did not make it to the zone -- probably died at the hands of the Japanese.
In a letter to the Japanese Embassy dated December 17, 1937, John Rabe, chairman of the International Committee, wrote: "On the 13th when your troops entered the city, we had nearly all the civilian population gathered in a Zone". Chang either disregarded this document or failed to consult it. Whatever the case, she has invented a group of people residing outside the Safety Zone, and numbering 200,000-300,000. At the IMTFE, defense attorney Levin broached a question that pierced the heart of this problem. Mr. Brooks calls my attention to the fact that in another portion of the affidavit is contained the statement that 300,000 were killed in Nanking, and as I understand it the total population of Nanking in only 200,000.
Flustered, William Webb, the presiding justice, replied, "Well, you may have evidence of that, but you cannot get it in at this stage", thus suppressing any further discussion of the matter. Therefore, the question of the actual population of Nanking was never addressed at the IMTFE, and a most bizarre judgements was handed down, in which the (unsubstantiated) number of massacre victims was stated variously as 100,000, 200,000, 127,000, etc. Since then, proponents of the massacre have avoided the population issue, resorted to guesswork (Hora), or invented their own statistics, as Iris Chang did.
Rating:
Summary: Did you know?
Review: There were only few testimonies of Nanking Massacre in Tokyo Trials after World War II. Now, 66 years passed away from the incident, we can hear those from over hundred eyewinesses. I can not help imagining that the eyewitnesses have been produced by someone.
Rating:
Summary: Population of Nanking in 1937 #2
Review: There are four references to the population of Nanking in late 1937 in Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone; all of them state that the total refugee population was 200,000. A report written by James Espy, vice-consul at the American Embassy, and dispatched to the United States, and another report written by John Rabe, chairman of the International Committee, also mention that Nanking's population was 200,000. However, Frankfurter Zeitung correspondent Lily Abegg, who escaped from Nanking immediately before the city fell, wrote the following in an article dispatched from Hankou. Last week about 200,000 people left Nanking. One million souls once inhabited the city, but their numbers had dwindled to 350,000. Now there are at most 150,000 people remaining, but waves of evacuees seem interminable.
Maj. Zhang Qunsi, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese, revealed that there were 50,000 Nanking Defense Corps soldiers and 100,000 noncombatants in the city. Another prisoner, Maj.-Gen. Liu Qixiong, who was later appointed head of the Nanking Military Academy (during Wang Jingwei's administration), and who commanded the brigate that defended the Yuhuatai position, estimated the population of Nanking as "approximately 200,000". In an entry in his war journal dated December 20, Gen. Matsui Iwane, commander-in-chief of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force wrote, "There are 120,000 Chinese in the Refugee Zone, most of them poor people". Taking all these sources into account, we can state with certainty that the population of Nanking at the end of 1937 was somewhere between 120,000 and 200,000. We know from contemporaneous records that the members of the Nanking Defense Corps, under the command of Tang Shengzhi, numbered between 35,000 and 50,000. Even allowing for gross underestimates, the population of Nanking could not have been less than 160,000 or more than 250,000. And even if the Japanese had murdered every single member of the Nanking Defense Corps and every single civilian, they could not have killed more than 160,000-250,000 Chinese. To massacre 300,000 persons, they would have had to kill many of them twice.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: About time a book like this was published on the Rape Of Nanking, a disgusting and atrocious act, proven beyond a doubt to have happened and with the entire world in agreement except for the Japanese, who say otherwise due to oppression, censorship and indecency. The publication of this book speaks volumes about the freedom of today and speaks out against censorship, which flows so abundantly in Japan. Obvious reason and truth have prevailed in this book over the propaganda in Japan. Thank you Iris Chang for this emotionally charged accounting of the horrors of the Sino-Japanese War.
Rating: 
Summary: Capturing the Truth
Review: But allow me to try. Clearly the subject is complicated by a number of factors. The Cultural Revolution, The Great Leap forward are all elements of Chinese History that no one likes to talk about within China. As it was put to me recently in Shanghai, "it's like knowing your parents have done something wrong yet we still object to hearing any criticism towards them from others". In this context China has numerous historical examples of barbarism towards their own, and in this instance Chairman Mao is the parent. This societal denial complex and the shame of not protecting Nanking is added to an equation which includes the gross inability of the Japanese to see themselves as the aggressors in the of this war. This is because they are the last sentence of the last chapter of WWII, and it was the opening saga of the cold war, a Uranium atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Japanese continued to refuse to capitulate and a subsequent Plutonium Bomb was then used on Nagasaki. It took a further week for Japan to submit. This gives an indication of the resolve and turmoil of the Japanese over their final decision to surrender. So there appears to be a guilt and shame complex on both party's side although with different dynamics. That said, Iris Chang writes humanely and eloquently about the thin veneer of civilisation that witholds human natures' aggression the world over. It is by no means an anti Japanese book, but there is a coda that unless responsibility for the rape of Nanking is acknowledged and apologised for, future generations of Japanese will never purge their historical guilt. As for the Japanese revisionist attempts on these reviews to even suggest that the rape did not happen, there are sufficient Japanese subjects still alive who have testified that it did. Japan is once more a civilised nation that contributes massively to aid in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and their conscience is appeased by these generous humanitarian acts. But until the school text books tell it like it is, then the notion of honour for Japans' future will always be questionable.
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Summary: Rape of Nanking is indeed a propaganda
Review: If cool-headed readers read this book along with "The Good German of Nanking" and " the Document of the Rape of Nanking" thoroughly, they would see there are no "massacre" nor even murder witnessed by those so-cold "objective" foreigners. Some "killings" they saw were, as they admitted in the document, " lawfull executions". After the commander of the defending army fled Nanking leaving Chinese soldiers in panic,
most of the soldiers threw their uniforms and stuffs away on the street, then wore civillian clothes and ran into the "Safety Zone" for the refugees. Because they hid the weapons inside the safety zone and some were still hostile, while some others were engaged in propaganda activity, i.e. raping, looting and setting fire and then spread rumors that the "atrocities" were done by Japanese, the Japanese Army did "mopping up operation".
By the way, according to the International Law on Land, such " plain-clothes snipers" are not assumed as lawful combatants and, therefore, should not be treated as P.o.W. They cannot complain if they are shot on the spot.
Recently, a Japanese resercher, Minoru Kitamura, discovered very interesting facts in Chinese document of ex-officers of the Chinese Nationalist Army's propaganda department. Acccording to Kitamura, it was clearly stated that M.S.Bates, the American professor of Nanking University and a member of the International Committee of the Nanking Safety Zone, and essentially, was a main accuser of the "atrocities of the Japanese Army", was INDEED A PROPAGANDIST of the C.N.A. for a reward.
With the fact that it has been proven that many other accusations made against Japanese Army are left-wing propaganda or maybe cultural misunderstanding, I think it is the time for us to look for the true history of modern Japan.
Rating:
Summary: Totally disagree
Review: I don't want to believe the american read the book of this kind and believe it easily. I wish they are only want to blame the highly developped country of different race by reading F class book. My parents are chinese too and I know photographs in this book are not true. Most of them were propaganda of communism china to disgrace Japan to unite so many people who speak different languages in their own country. Actually communism china (and North and south Korea) still asks Japan to pay for these fake crimes. Their purpose is to turn Japan to communism country and control highly educated and developped country as they want. I strongly believe this Iris Chang is sponcered by communism china. You will lose intelligence if you believe this book.
This book is toooo bad for intelligent people in the united states and will give bad influence to relationship between Japan.
Rating:
Summary: Every article in this book is
Review: lie. My parents are chinese and I don't like Japan but this book is terrible. For example, the photo of necks is widely believed to be taken in Manchuria and they are thieves that slaughtered many people in Manchuria. A photo of abandoned in ruin has another one taken at the same time. It shows his parent and (his brother?) put the baby in the ruin for the problem photo to show barbarism of Japan Army. There are more but it takes long time to type and I don't want to waste my important time. Anyway, this book is not worth reading.
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