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

[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.

[ralian]

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.

Wasn't it PRC government who suggested that 30M people were killed in 南京?
Nobody else is suggesting such figure.
However, wasn't the population of 南京 20M that time?
I could be wrong.

[bossel]

Wasn't it PRC government who suggested that 30M people were killed in 南京?

It seems, you're confusing some things here. The official PRC victim figure for the Nanjing Massacre is >300,000. Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles, but there are a number of lower estimates & very few higher.

30m is, IIRC, the officiall PRC estimate for the whole Sino-Japanese War. This is probably exaggerated. I'd go for a number around 10m, but the estimates vary widely.

However, wasn't the population of 南京 20M that time?

The actual number of Nanjing inhabitants at the time is hard to calculate, since the city was full of refugees. It may have been up to 1m, but I never saw the number of 20m anywhere.

[ralian]

It seems, you're confusing some things here. The official PRC victim figure for the Nanjing Massacre is >300,000. Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles, but there are a number of lower estimates & very few higher.

30m is, IIRC, the officiall PRC estimate for the whole Sino-Japanese War. This is probably exaggerated. I'd go for a number around 10m, but the estimates vary widely.

The actual number of Nanjing inhabitants at the time is hard to calculate, since the city was full of refugees. It may have been up to 1m, but I never saw the number of 20m anywhere.

Yes, I was confused about the figure as I was reading articles written in Japanese.
I meant to say that the population of Nanjing was 200,000 that time, while PRC claims that the figure for Nanjing Massacre was 300,000.
Probably no one knows.
It is hard to investigate unless researchers receive full corporation from Chinese government.

[pipokun]

It seems, you're confusing some things here. The official PRC victim figure for the Nanjing Massacre is >300,000. Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles, but there are a number of lower estimates & very few higher.
...
The actual number of Nanjing inhabitants at the time is hard to calculate, since the city was full of refugees. It may have been up to 1m, but I never saw the number of 20m anywhere.

Roughly that number is widely accepted in historical circles
Really? Which circles?

I always wonder if WWII really ended in Asia in 1945.
If I were a Chinese/Korean survivor, maybe even Taiwanese after Kunmintan regime, my answer must be "no".

[lexico]

The actual number of Nanjing inhabitants at the time is hard to calculate, since the city was full of refugees. It may have been up to 1m, but I never saw the number of 20m anywhere.

Acc. to Tawara Yoshifumi 俵 義文 Nanjing area consisted of

1. NCD Nanjing City Ditrict 南京城區
2. NSA Nanjing Suburban Area 南京近郊區
3. NISZ Nanjing International Safety Zone 南京� 際安全區

"Within NCD lies NISZ, the International Safety Zone."

"Nanjing Massacre involved not only NCD but also NSA."

"At that time, immediately preceding Najing's takeover by Imperial Japanese Army, NCD had around 1 million people, NSA around 1.5 million, adding up to around 2.5 million. (Kasahara Jugyushi 笠原十九司 Nanjing Incident 南京事件 Iwanami shoden 岩波書店 1997)."

"When Imperial Japanese Army attacked Nanjing many people including the rich left the NCD; however there also flowed from the NSA into NCD. Hence the population of NCD was in a constant flux."

"NCD population was around 500,000; in addition to that were Nanjing Defence Force numbering 150,000. (Nanjing Mayor Ma Chaojun 馬超俊 in his letter to KMT Military Committee dated 1937.11.23 wrote 'current population around 500,000, and expecting an increase of around 200,000 refugees.')"

"The (oft quoted population of 'Nanjing' of) 200,000 refers to (only) those concentrated in the Nanjing International Safety Zone including some refugees (who made it into the safery zone). After the Imperial Japanese occupation of Nanjing, additional refugees fleeing from the massacre and rapes caused the Safety Zone's population to rise to around 250,000 within a month."

"The scheme of downplaying/neglecting the magnitude of the Nanjing Massacre can be seen in the right-wing nationalist group of historians' (Association for Creating New Textbooks) attempt at forging revisionist history books) is conuing although the stated facts have been elucidated byt Nanjing Massacre researchers (南京事件照査硏究會 ed. '13 Lies of Nanjing Massacre Sceptics' 柏書房, 1999)."

Source: Tawara Yoshifumi 俵 義文, a Japanese expert on textbooks, examined the situation in a recent article: "Kenpo Ihan/Shinryaku Senso Kotei no 'Abunai Kyokasho' no Jittai" (The facts of a 'dangerous textbook' that violates the constitution and that affirms the aggressive war), published in _Kikan Senso Sekinin Kenkyu_, no.30 2000

Acc. the information above the estimated population in NCD alone would have been around 500k + 200k + 150k = 850k = 850,000 on December 13, 1937, at the time of Nanjing's fall. To this should be added the remaining population of NSA, Nanjing suburbs comprised of 6 regional districts 懸府 which can only raise the population estimate.

[Dorian1977]

I think that Japan was not the only country responsible for killings, during a war casualties are inevitable, even killings of innocent (unfortunately), there are are other countries too which are responsible for world war 2 except Japan, Germany killed millions of people during world war 2 , and Stalins victims are tens of millions therefore blaming only Japan is something inacurate from the historical point of view.

[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.