Editing The Rape of Nanking (book) (section)

=== Death toll ===
Chang wrote of the death toll estimates given by different sources:<ref name="RapeOfNanking8-9" />{{Rp|100}}
* Chinese military specialist Liu Fang-chu proposed a figure of 430,000; officials at the [[Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall]] and the procurator of the District Court of Nanjing in 1946 stated at least 300,000 were killed;
* the [[International Military Tribunal for the Far East]] (IMTFE) judges concluded that more than 260,000 people were killed;
* Japanese historian [[Akira Fujiwara]] mentioned at least 200,000;
* [[John Rabe]], who "never conducted a systematic count and left Nanking in February," estimated 50,000 to 60,000; and
* Japanese historian [[Ikuhiko Hata]] argued the number killed was between 38,000 and 42,000.

The book discusses the research of historian Sun Zhaiwei of the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences. In his 1990 paper, "The Nanking Massacre and the Nanking Population", Sun estimated the total number of people killed at 377,400. Using Chinese burial records, he calculated that the number of dead exceeded the figure of 227,400. He then added estimates totaling 150,000 given by Japanese Imperial Army Major Ohta Hisao in a confessional report about the Japanese army's disposal efforts of dead bodies, arriving at the sum of 377,400 dead.<ref name="RapeOfNanking8-9" />{{Rp|101}}

Chang wrote that there is "compelling evidence" that the Japanese themselves, at the time, believed that the death toll may have been as high as 300,000. She cited a message that [[Japan's foreign minister]] [[Kōki Hirota]] relayed to his contacts in [[Washington, DC]] in the first month of the massacre on January 17, 1938. The message acknowledged that "not less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians [were] slaughtered, many cases in cold blood."<ref name="RapeOfNanking8-9" />{{Rp|103-4}}