Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre

obviously taken at a horizontal angle.9. Persons (c) and (d), who are in Photo 6, are not seen in Photo 7. Why they were notincluded on Photo 7, which was supposed to be taken immediately after the execution, isa mystery.All of these considerations lead to one conclusion: these photographs are theproduct of dramatization and forgery.There is yet another dubious aspect about Photo 6, one of the first photographswhich the GMD’s propaganda bureau printed in its propaganda books almost ten yearsbefore the IMTFE. If this photo had genuinely captured a scene of a defenseless manmurdered by Japanese military men and had been obtained by Chinese authorities in away described by them, they should have been aware of its origin. In addition, theyshould have searched for the culprits as shown in these photos as they did with respect toMukai Toshiaki and Noda Tsuyoshi—then second lieutenants who were charged after thewar with the alleged “killing contest.” (See Chapter 4 for the details of this alleged killingcontest.) Strangely, however, there is absolutely no trace of judicial effort on the part ofthe Chinese authorities to find these four individuals in Photos 6.One side note to Photo 6 is that Rijun Qinhua Banian Kangzhanshi [History ofEight-Year Resistance War Against the Invading Japanese] by He Yingqin, published in1983 in Taiwan, contains this photograph with a fabricated caption. The caption saidthat Noda Tsuyoshi and others killed our innocent nationals with a sword for fun(December 13, 1937).(* Photos 6 and 7 here are reprints from those on the October 1938 issue of the ChinaWeekly Review [p. 144]. The black spot to the right of the man holding a sword lookslike a stain on the page of the magazine which is preserved at the National Diet Libraryof Japan.)(b) A man holding up a severed headPhotos 8 and 9 show a person who appears to be a Japanese navy sailor holdinga sword in his right hand and a severed head in his left hand. Viewers are likely to havethe impression that the sailor had just beheaded someone on the spot, which looks like anentrance to a house. The photos made their debut in WMRB and in RBS, respectively,and the only difference is that Photo 9 is printed with a reduced version of Photo 7 in itsupper left corner.Photo 8 has been reprinted in the following sources: Ken Magazine (1938),China Weekly Review (1939), Chūgoku no tabi (1972), Chūgoku no nihongun (1972),Japanese translation of Timperly’s book (1972), Kōnichi kaihō no Chūgoku [China inResistance Against Japan and in Liberation] (1986), and RON-YY. As for Photo 9, itappeared in QINHUA (1985) and SND (1995).What is puzzling are the obscured and dark parts of these photos, especially thebackground and the area around the severed head. One may be tempted to speculatethat this was actually a touched-up photo of a live man with the area around his headblackened sitting next to the sword-holding man. One may point to two facts in thisphotograph to corroborate this reasoning. First, what appears to be the severed head isso short-haired that the standing “sailor” could not possibly hold it up by grabbing its hair.Second, the severed head faces straight into the camera. His eyes even look like those72