Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre

Japanese side. But [the unearthed materials] seem to corroborate theundeniable truth of the incident.Two of the three photographs appear to show dead bodies. One cannot, however, verifywhether or not they were taken in Nanking.The focus of analysis here will be on Photo 96, that is, the third image printed at thebottom of the photo group in the Asahi Newspaper article. Some Nanking-relatedpublications contain photographs similar to Photos B, C, and D. As ‘Rape of Nanking’ nokenkyū by Higashinakano noted, eight of the severed heads seen in Photos B and C arecommon, with their positions only altered slightly. Obviously, someone moved them withthe purpose of photographing them. Although one can see something like a city wallbehind the heads, the wall proved not to be that of Nanking. One could speculate thatthese are the heads of political prisoners or bandits taken during the era of civil warbetween the GMD and the CCP.Photo D—exactly the same image as Photo 96—was included in Bessatsu rekishitokuhon: mikōkai shashin ni miru Nitchū-sensō [Extra Issue of ‘History Reading’: TheSino-Japanese War Seen in Never-Seen Footages] published in 1989. The only differenceis that Photo 96 did not have the hand-written photo caption attached to Photo D, whichreads, “Heads of mounted bandits who were shot to death at Tieling.” The caption did notidentify who was responsible for the execution. Nevertheless, only because thisphotograph was among the possessions of a former Japanese soldier, the Asahi Newspaperdetermined it to be proof of “undeniable truth of” the Nanking massacre.An important side note to this episode is that the Chinese still maintained thecustom of displaying severed heads of the executed in the 1930s whereas the Japaneseceased to observe the same practice after the Meiji Revolution of 1868. Yoshine Hiro’o,author of the previously quoted Yōsukō monogatari, said in his work:[Upon seeing the severed head being displayed publicly] I hurried back tomy ship in a cold sweat. China was in the midst of turmoil in the lateTaishō to the early Shōwa era as numerous warlords battled against eachother. Adding fuel to this chaos was newly emerging CCP force thatinfiltrated into urban areas and clashed with local troops. As a result, onecould witness this sort of scene everywhere then.Some materials substantiate Yoshine’s story. Photo E shows severed heads of banditsexecuted in the Nongan prefecture in the Jilin Province on March 31, 1923. It is one ofthe numerous photographs which a former Japanese soldier purchased at the time of theManchurian Incident in Fengtian—today’s Shenyang. Also, the Osaka MainichiNewspaper reported in its February 12, 1938 issue that three severed heads had been foundon the street of the French settlement in Shanghai. The article added that the people in thecity were frightened to see them.157