The Daily Populous Monday June 8th, 2026 day edition
Authored by scmp.com and submitted by scmp_news

A museum in Japan is facing accusations of “rewriting history” for replacing the Nanking massacre with the word “incident”, drawing criticism and reviving anger over the country’s wartime aggression.

The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, which previously resisted revisionist attempts, appears to have capitulated to a civic group’s pressure campaign following Thursday’s release of proposed exhibit changes by its operations council.

Other amendments announced by the museum, which opened in 1996, include describing Imperial Japan’s assault on China as an “invasion” and that the army used “aggression”, Japanese broadcaster NCC reported on Friday.

However, the most controversial change was the replacement of the word massacre with “incident”, a decision one analyst said left “Japan with egg on its face”.

The massacre took place in the city now known as Nanjing and occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day Japanese forces captured the city.

The death toll has not been conclusively established. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, estimated in 1946 that more than 200,000 Chinese people were killed.

Xhantoss on June 8th, 2026 at 03:33 UTC »

When I was in the War Museum in Tokyo I was already aware of Japan rewriting their own history, so I've tried to stay aware how they might've done it.

As a German I'm quite aware of all the WW2 events and tried to compare it to those things I already knew.

The museum itself listed all written things pretty factual. I.e. in year x China attacked, then year y America tried stuff, then the bomhs dropped, etc. The only thing that they left out in many cases where what actions Japan did at that time.

So when they described WW2 it was more like a thing that just happened to Japan, but they conveniently just didnt list what they did in retaliation, completely skipping over their own camps and potential warcrimes.

melancholy_dood on June 8th, 2026 at 03:13 UTC »

> Asked about his view on the historical facts of the Nanking massacre, Masamitsu Watanabe – who led the revisionist campaign – said during a meeting with museum officials last year: “There is no evidence. It is a fabrication.”

Wow.

scmp_news on June 8th, 2026 at 02:35 UTC »

A museum in Japan is facing accusations of “rewriting history” for replacing the Nanking massacre with the word “incident”, drawing criticism and reviving anger over the country’s wartime aggression.

Read more: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3356254/japan-museum-under-fire-rewriting-history-nanking-incident-label?utm_source=Reddit&utm_medium=Social