Analyzing the “Photographic Evidence” of the Nanking Massacre

As for Chiang Kai-shek and his GMD, they attempted to cover for their militarydefeats . Their solution was to conduct a propaganda campaign. As Guo Moruo saidin his Kangrizhan Huigulu [Memoir of Resistance War Against Japan], the motto of theGMD’s propaganda bureau was “Propaganda war supersedes the war on the field.”Under their initiative, International News Filming Corporation and Filming Section of theCentral News Agency engaged in a “photography campaign.” In view of the closeranges at which these photographs were taken, one may speculate that the GMD’spropaganda bureau orchestrated the scene for propaganda purposes.A glimpse of Japan’s history reveals that there has never been an instance ofpublic execution in Japan since the Meiji Restoration of 1868. It is highly unlikely thatthe Japanese nationals, who were not acustomed to public executions, did this inNanking.In contrast, the Chinese still publicly executed criminals in the 1930s, and somepeople recorded such scenes with their camera as shown in Photo F, which is printedfrom Zusetsu Chūgoku kokukei-shi [Pictorial History of Cruel Punishments in China],published in Japan in 1938. Also, a Japanese navy man wrote an eyewitness account ofa public execution in China. In his privately published book entitled Yōsukō monogatari[A Tale of the Yangzi River](1983), Yoshine Hiro’o describes what he saw in February1930 when he was deputy captain of the gunboat Hira:Photo E: “Public execution of the ‘Boxers.’ Photographed by a Westerner in 1901.” Zusetsu:Chūgoku kokukei-shi, p. 65.[89