Editing Nanjing Massacre (section)

=== Massacre contest ===
{{Main|Hundred man killing contest}}
[[File:日本人拿人頭.jpg|thumb|A Japanese soldier poses with the severed head of one of his victims]]
Perhaps the most notorious atrocity was a [[Contest to kill 100 people using a sword|killing contest between two Japanese officers]] as reported in the ''[[Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun]]'' and the English-language ''Japan Advertiser''. The contest—a race between the two officers to see who could kill 100 people first using only a sword—was covered much like a sporting event with regular updates on the score over a series of days.<ref>Tokyo Nichi Nichi, December 13, 1937, article on the killing contest.</ref><ref>Japan Advertiser, December 7, 1937 (an American-owned and edited English-language daily paper in Tokyo)</ref> In Japan, the veracity of the newspaper article about the contest was the subject of ferocious debate for several decades starting in 1967.<ref name="Kingston_2008_9">{{harvnb|Kingston|2008|p=9}}.</ref>

In 1937, the ''[[Osaka Mainichi Shimbun]]'' and its sister newspaper, the ''[[Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun]]'', covered a contest between two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda of the Japanese 16th Division. The two men were described as vying to be the first to kill 100 people with a sword before the capture of Nanjing. From [[Jurong, Jiangsu]] to [[Tangshan]], Mukai had killed 89 people while Noda had killed 78. The contest continued because neither had killed 100 people. By the time they had arrived at [[Purple Mountain (Nanjing)|Purple Mountain]], Noda had killed 105 people while Mukai had killed 106 people. Both officers supposedly surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest. Therefore, according to journalists Asami Kazuo and Suzuki Jiro, writing in the ''Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun'' of December 13, they decided to begin another contest to kill 150 people.{{sfn|Wakabayashi|2000a|p=319}}

In 2000, historian Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi concurred with certain Japanese scholars who had argued that the contest was a [[Urban legend|concocted story]] by the Japanese army, with the collusion of the soldiers themselves for the purpose of raising their [[Yamato-damashii|national fighting spirit]].<ref name="Wakabayashi Summer 2000 307">{{cite journal |first=Bob Tadashi |last=Wakabayashi |title=The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt Amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971–75 |journal=The Journal of Japanese Studies |volume=26 |issue=2 |pages=307–340 |date=Summer 2000a |jstor=133271}}</ref>

In 2005, a Tokyo district judge dismissed a suit by the families of the lieutenants, stating that "the lieutenants admitted the fact that they raced to kill 100 people" and that the story cannot be proven to be clearly false.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/08/japanese-court-rules-newspaper-didnt.php |title=Jurist – Paper Chase: Japanese court rules newspaper didn't fabricate 1937 Chinese killing game |publisher=Jurist.law.pitt.edu |date=August 23, 2005 |access-date=March 6, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110225011506/http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/08/japanese-court-rules-newspaper-didnt.php |archive-date=February 25, 2011}}</ref> The judge also ruled against the [[civil claim]] of the [[plaintiff]]s because the original article was more than 60 years old.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://andesfolklore.hp.infoseek.co.jp/intisol/hyakunin/hanketu4.htm |script-title=ja:楽天が運営するポータルサイト ： 【インフォシーク】Infoseek |work=infoseek.co.jp |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060512091852/http://andesfolklore.hp.infoseek.co.jp/intisol/hyakunin/hanketu4.htm |archive-date=May 12, 2006 |language=ja}}</ref> The historicity of the event remains disputed in Japan.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-scars-of-nanking-memories-of-a-japanese-outrage-764827.html |location=London |work=The Independent |title=The scars of Nanking: Memories of a Japanese outrage |date=December 13, 2007 |access-date=August 22, 2017 |archive-date=January 28, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120128210201/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-scars-of-nanking-memories-of-a-japanese-outrage-764827.html |url-status=dead}}</ref>