Japan:A new Japanese movie claims to debunk Chinese massacre claims, writes David McNeillin Tokyo
One way to learn about Nanjing is to ask Satoru Mizushima. After "exhaustive research" on the seizure of the then Chinese capital by Japanese troops in 1937, estimated by the Chinese to have cost up to 300,000 lives, Mizushima offers a very precise figure for the number of illegal deaths: zero.
"The evidence for a massacre is faked," explains the president of right-wing webcaster Channel Sakura. "It is Chinese communist propaganda."
The world can assess these claims when Mizushima's movie, The Truth of Nanjing, hits the cinemas later this month.
The revisionist documentary is supported by over a dozen politicians, including Nariaki Nakayama, a former education minister. A panel of academics provides much of its thin intellectual gruel.
Disputes over what occurred in Nanjing began almost as soon as Japanese troops invaded the city on December 10th, 1937, and have only grown in ferocity since.
Dubbed the "forgotten Holocaust" by its most famous contemporary chronicler, Iris Chang, the massacre is now the subject of no less than a dozen new American, German and Chinese movies.
The films include the $53-million Purple Mountain, helmed by Con Air director Simon West; Nanking Xmas 1937, directed by Hong Kong art-house director Yim Ho and Nanking! Nanking!, reportedly starring some of the biggest names in Chinese cinema.
Nanking, released in China earlier this year, is reportedly the most watched documentary in Chinese history.
Producer Ted Leonsis says he was "astonished" when he read about what happened in the city. "I knew I had to do something to make this event better known."
Japanese neo-nationalists have always disputed evidence of a massacre and say that the casualty figures were inflated by Chinese propaganda. Most Japanese historians and many scholars outside the country doubt the 300,000 figure.
On the lunatic fringe, neo-nationalists dispute that anyone was illegally killed.
Mizushima's movie goes a step further. He will argue that Japan's Pacific War leaders, including Iwane Matsui, the soldier accused of orchestrating the capture of the city, were heroes. In one recent interview he likened them to Jesus Christ.
The fact that the Chinese state is involved in most of the new movies has fuelled the suspicions of neo-nationalists like Mizushima that this is a Beijing-steered plot designed to drag Japan through the international mud.
"China is trying to control what the world thinks of Japan," he said.
But the directors behind the movies claim they were forced to tone down content by nervous Chinese censors fretting about their impact on relations with the country's biggest Asian trading partner.
Beijing faces a tricky balancing act. Nanjing occupies a central place in the foundational myths of post-1949 China and the success of the Communists in defeating both the Japanese invaders and the nationalists who failed to protect the country from them.
The government hopes to ensure an event that was for decades all but ignored in popular culture is not forgotten. But it must avoid damaging bilateral ties just as its growing power in Asia butts up against Japan.
Only time will tell if it succeeds. But one sign that Nanjing is no longer only a bilateral issue is the growing interest of foreign filmmakers.
Oliver Stone is reportedly in script development for a movie about the massacre, and James Bond director Roger Spottiswoode is in post-production with The Bitter Sea, about a British journalist who witnessed the Japanese invasion.
The tsunami of bad publicity is likely to inflame anti-Japanese sentiment in China and put an unwelcome spotlight on years of whitewashed education and official fudging in Japan.
"It is a delicate issue, so we hope filmmakers will not create negative emotional reactions," says government press secretary Mitsuo Sakaba. He says a joint academic committee set up with China to study the issue in a "non-political way" will clarify what happened in Nanjing.
In the meantime, will Japanese audiences see any of the foreign productions? Not one has a local distributor.
"We tried to sell the movie to (public service broadcaster) NHK in Japan," says Annette Baumeister, director of a German-made documentary about the massacre.
"They said they will make their own movie about the subject. And maybe they will, some day."