Beijing: China on Friday accused Japan's new defence minister of recklessly misrepresenting history after she declined to say whether Japanese troops massacred civilians in China during World War Two.

Tomomi Inada, a 57-year old lawmaker known for her revisionist views of Japan's wartime actions, took up her post on Thursday and repeatedly sidestepped questions at a briefing on whether she condemned atrocities committed by Japan.

China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 massacre in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in its then capital.

A postwar Allied tribunal put the death toll at 142,000, but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars deny a massacre took place at all.