

Naoki Hyakuta, a member of Japan’s public broadcasting company, has found himself in a well-deserved shitstorm after telling a major Japanese newspaper that the Nanjing Massacre (aka the Rape of Nanking) was a fabrication and “never happened.”

Hyakuta apparently belongs to the “Japan great, all other Asian nations can suck it” school of politics, along with Nanjing truther Shintaro Isihara who said that the massacre “is a story made up by the Chinese.” If you couldn’t guess, this kind of rhetoric isn’t exactly welcomed by the Chinese, who see the Nanjing Massacre—to put this in the most delicate terms possible—as a thing that definitely happened.

Hyakuta outed himself in the Asahi Shimbun, where he said:

In 1938, Chiang Kai-shek tried to publicize Japan’s responsibility for the Nanking Massacre, but the nations of the world ignored him. Why? Because it never happened. […]

There is no reason to teach such things to children who are still in compulsory education. I want to first teach children what a wonderful nation Japan is.

Chinese nationalism is not always fair and even in its targets (as the amount of energy and hate expressed over a few uninhabited Pacific rocks can attest) but dear god, the Global Times’ editorial staff must be beating their keyboards to a pulp right now.

[Image via Westin Osaka]



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