Japanese lawmakers: "No massacre in Nanking"
20 June 2007
A group of some 100 lawmakers from Japan's ruling party denied that Japanese troops massacred Chinese during its 1937 capture of Nanking (now Nanjing) after a month-long review, AP reported. "We are absolutely positive that there was no massacre in Nanking," Toru Toida, a group member, said. The group's head, Nariaki Nakayama, said Japanese government archives showed 20,000 people were killed in the 1937 attack - not the 150,000 to 200,000 deaths that are usually cited. Therefore, Nakayama said, the death toll "was nothing more or less than the death toll that would be expected in a normal battle." He also accused Beijing of citing higher figures for propaganda reasons. This year is the 70th anniversary of the incident, which remains a sensitive subject between the two countries.