Has Japan killed more foreign civilians in WWII than any other country in history ?

[Maciamo]

Are you sure? Doesn't that number include deaths of Chinese killed by other Chinese in internal conflicts? Seems impossibly high for the Japanese alone to be responsible for those deaths.

No, that was after WWII. The reason why the Japanese killed more people than the Nazi is that they invaded China from 1933 and stayed until 1945. 12 years in total, while the Nazi only fought for about 4.5 years (from late 1939 to early 1945).

[mad pierrot]

Good point. But surely all of China couldn't have been united against Japan for all of those 12 years? There had to have been a few petty warlords who took advangtage of the situation. Enemies weakened by fighting Japanese forces would have been tempting targets.

I get your point, though. This is something I'm going to have to look into.

[Maciamo]

Good point. But surely all of China couldn't have been united against Japan for all of those 12 years? There had to have been a few petty warlords who took advangtage of the situation. Enemies weakened by fighting Japanese forces would have been tempting targets.

China was not united, and that's partly why there was so little organised resistance from the Chinese. China was laready 10x more populous than Japan, and Japan only sent a fraction of its people as soldiers to China, but managed to control the most densely populated regions of the East. Only about 2 million Chinese soldiers died, against 10 million civilians. From what I read in my various history books, the Japanese army was extremely brutal in China, which accounts for the high number of civilian casualties.

[mad pierrot]

Posted something and put my proverbial foot in mouth.

China was not united, and that's partly why there was so little organised resistance from the Chinese. China was laready 10x more populous than Japan, and Japan only sent a fraction of its people as soldiers to China, but managed to control the most densely populated regions of the East. Only about 2 million Chinese soldiers died, against 10 million civilians. From what I read in my various history books, the Japanese army was extremely brutal in China, which accounts for the high number of civilian casualties.

Of course. I'm well aware of the circumstances, but it seems dubious to attribute all of the 10,000,000 civilian casualties just to Japanese forces. That's not to say the Japanese didn't have a large hand in it. I mean attributing all isn't very reasonable. (For example, say directly slaughtered 7 million, caused another 2 million indirectly, and the remaining one million killed by various factions/warlords.) Blaming just Japan as the sole source of death at that time seems unrealistic to me. The major source, sure. But the sole source? No.

[Maciamo]

Of course. I'm well aware of the circumstances, but it seems dubious to attribute all of the 10,000,000 civilian casualties just to Japanese forces. That's not to say the Japanese didn't have a large hand in it. I mean attributing all isn't very reasonable. (For example, say directly slaughtered 7 million, caused another 2 million indirectly, and the remaining one million killed by various factions/warlords.) Blaming just Japan as the sole source of death at that time seems unrealistic to me. The major source, sure. But the sole source? No.

Agreed, but 10 million is only one estimation. According to this article, the Chinese government claims that Japan killed as many as 30 million Chinese. I tried to be conservative on the number already.

[mad pierrot]

Point taken. I believe the number to be likely more than 10 million as well. Sad, but not far-fetched at all. I've got a few copies of Japanese middle school history texts sitting around and I've been trying to find a figure for it. I'm curious what they are teaching it to be. So far, no success. I'll be back with it when I find something substancial.

[bossel]

Agreed, but 10 million is only one estimation. According to this article, the Chinese government claims that Japan killed as many as 30 million Chinese. I tried to be conservative on the number already.

I don't think, 10m is a conservative estimate. Acc. to Rummel, that's already the high. I wouldn't trust the PRC government on the number of Chinese deaths. Rummel who seems to me to have the most accurate presentation of war deaths gives the medium of roughly 6m for Japanese democide (which includes 4m Chinese from 37-45 & 2m non-Chinese from 41-45).

Germany's democide was most probably worse (in numbers, the cruelty was presumably comparable). Rummel gives the number of 21m victims of German democide (see attachment).

Total killed by Stalin during the war years:
Davies: 16-17,000,000 non-war-dead
Rummel: 18,157,000 democides
NOTE: Numbers this high are hard to reconcile with the common estimates of 7 million Soviet civilian deaths during WW2. Even if we go with larger, more recent estimates of 17M civilian deaths, these number proposed by Rummel and Davies would leave no room for murders at German hands and deaths as a simple by-product of war.

A slight misrepresentation of Rummel, I think. The numbers I have look a bit different. The medium numbers Rummel gives are 19m for battle/occupation dead & 10m for Soviet democide.

[Shooter452]

Because the personal computer had not yet been invented, records keeping was not up to today's standards, but according to the pundits of the time, it is possible that this title belongs to the Mongols.

Beside the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indians, various Europeans, they conquered most of Islam, heaping mountains of skulls in the process. Given their trend to exagerate beyond all understanding, historians of the time still say the numbers ran into tens of millions. It is conceivable. When they encountered a community that resisted them, they were known to put whole cities to the sword--literally.

The world population might have been smaller then, so the gruesome numbers might not have been close to the 20-30 million figures we're tossing around here but chronicals of the time were in agreement that these were some cru-well dudes. If they did not kill that many, it was because their sword arms got weary.

De mortuis nihil nisi bene.

[ralian]

Agreed, but 10 million is only one estimation. According to this article, the Chinese government claims that Japan killed as many as 30 million Chinese. I tried to be conservative on the number already.

I don't trust information comes out from Chinese government. Will they ever provide accurate information?
Besides, nobody knows the accurate number on this because of lack of research and accurate information.
Also, I would like to point out that in the book written by Iris Chan ”The Rape of Nanking” , so many fabricated photos were found. Of course, the provider of those photos was Chinese government.

[bossel]

I don't trust information comes out from Chinese government. Will they ever provide accurate information?
Besides, nobody knows the accurate number on this because of lack of research and accurate information.
Also, I would like to point out that in the book written by Iris Chan ”The Rape of Nanking” , so many fabricated photos were found. Of course, the provider of those photos was Chinese government.

Don't see your point...

We don't need the PRC government to know that millions of Chinese were killed by Japanese forces.

Nobody knows the accurate numbers in Europe, too. But we have estimates.

[lexico]

Also, I would like to point out that in the book written by Iris Chan ”The Rape of Nanking”, so many fabricated photos were found. Of course, the provider of those photos was Chinese government.

The caracterization 'fabricated' could be considered loaded; perhaps 'misidentified' might serve the purpose better, reserving the term 'fabricated' for genuinely forged instances only. With critical cross-examinations such as offered by Hata Ikuhiko the reliability of existing photos should become more reliable in future studies.