Editing Nanjing Massacre (section)

=== Racism and Ultranationalism ===
[[File:BattleofShanghaiwarcrime.png|thumb|A Japanese soldier slashes the throat of a prisoner in Shanghai, late October. Japanese atrocities had been in evidence months before the Nanjing Massacre. ]]
The Nanjing Massacre occurred amidst Japan's invasion of China. The extreme cruelty witnessed in Nanjing, including extensive killing, torture, sexual violence, and looting, was not an isolated incident, but rather a reflection of Japan's behavior throughout the 1937 [[Battle of Shanghai|Shanghai]]-[[Battle of Nanking|Nanjing]] Campaign in the Lower Yangtze Delta, and to that extent the entire war in China. This violence cannot be separated from the underlying contempt for other Asians that was deeply ingrained in Japanese society before the war.{{sfn|Fogel|2000|p=154}}

To demonstrate the profound effects of ethnic prejudice, Japanese author Tsuda Michio gives an example:
<blockquote>During the war in south China, a Japanese sergeant who had raped and killed numerous Chinese women became 'impotent' as soon as he found out to his shock that one of his victims was actually a Japanese woman who had married a Chinese man and emigrated to China.{{sfn|Fogel|2000|p=154}}</blockquote>

[[Shiro Azuma]], a former Japanese soldier, testified in a 1998 interview:

{{blockquote|When I tried to cut off the first one, either the farmer moved or I mis-aimed. I ended up slicing off just part of his skull. Blood spurted upwards. I swung again... and this time I killed him... We were taught that we were a superior race since we lived only for the sake of a human god—our emperor. But the Chinese were not. So we held nothing but contempt for them... There were many rapes, and the women were always killed. When they were being raped, the women were human. But once the rape was finished, they became pig's flesh.<ref>{{cite news |last=Kamimura |first=Marina |title=A Japanese veteran attempts to make peace with haunting memories |work=[[CNN]] |date=16 September 1998 |url=http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9808/16/japan.war.crimes/ |access-date=2008-05-13 |archive-date=22 May 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080522173307/http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9808/16/japan.war.crimes/ |url-status=live}}</ref>|}}

Prime Minister [[Fumimaro Konoe]], who presided over the Second Sino-Japanese War,{{sfn|Hotta|2013|pp=31, 47}} justified the massacre as retaliation against persistent Kuomintang aggression,{{sfn|Hotta|2013|p=32}} and advocated for the regime's destruction in January 1938.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Wakabayashi |first=Bob Tadashi |date=1991 |title=Emperor Hirohito on Localized Aggression in China |url=http://chinajapan.org/articles/04.1/04.1wakabayashi4-27.pdf |journal=[[Sino-Japanese Studies]] |volume=4 |page=15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721021647/http://chinajapan.org/articles/04.1/04.1wakabayashi4-27.pdf |archive-date=July 21, 2011 |number=1}}</ref> Prior to the fall of Nanjing, Konoe rejected Chiang Kai-Shek's offer of negotiation through a German ambassador.{{sfn|Hotta|2013|p=32}}