Who was John Rabe…? A member of the Nazi Party and the Siemens Corporation’s resident representative in China—a company that at the time was one of Germany’s largest military contractors.
July 24, 2021
I am once again reposting a chapter originally published on June 11, 2020, titled Every December, German Television Airs the “Nanjing Massacre” Based on the Fabricated Account of John Rabe, and Japan’s Favorability Plummets.
Thanks to Ms. Megumi Kawaguchi-Mann and her article in the monthly magazine Hanada titled Germany’s Leading Tabloid Declares War on Xi Jinping, we Japanese readers—including myself—learned a critical fact for the first time.
Every December, German TV networks repeatedly broadcast dramatizations of the “Nanjing Massacre” based on John Rabe’s fabrication-laden original account.
Each time, Japan’s image takes a serious hit, and anti-Japanese sentiment is cultivated among the German public.
Germany continues to engage in this same act year after year.
Not once have the Japanese media reported on this absurd yet utterly unforgivable reality in Germany.
On the contrary, at every opportunity, the Asahi Shimbun, its sympathetic so-called intellectuals, and TV broadcasters such as NHK have continued to preach, “Learn from Germany.”
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Japan’s reality is one in which we have the most foolish media in the world—where everyone making a living from it is a traitor to the nation.
It’s no wonder that China—a nation of bottomless evil and plausible lies, now compounded by the malevolence of the CCP—has taken full advantage of Japan.
It’s no wonder that South Korea—a country of boundless deception and evil—has continued to promote anti-Japanese education that borders on Nazism, relentlessly slandering Japan in the international arena.
Their ultimate weapon has been the fabricated comfort women story, concocted by Japan’s own John Rabe-like fraudster, Seiji Yoshida.
The Asahi Shimbun spread this fabrication globally, and taking advantage of that lie, Etsuro Totsuka—a then-executive of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA), which can only be described as a group of traitors—reported to the United Nations not of “comfort women,” but “sex slaves,” handing Japan’s enemies the perfect ammunition to disgrace the country.
How infuriating it is that I have to write about such vomit-inducing matters first thing in the morning!
Regarding the Asahi Shimbun, I once published a chapter on March 15, 2019, under the title They Called Siemens’ John Rabe, Who Was Procuring Arms for the Chinese Army, Just a “Regular Company Employee” While He Helped Invent the Nanjing Massacre Lie, and I am now reposting it for the German public.
The German people should already know who John Rabe really was.
A member of the Nazi Party and a resident representative in China for Siemens—one of Germany’s largest military-related corporations at the time.
At that time, post-World War I, Germany was prohibited from exporting weapons.
It was John Rabe who violated that restriction and sold military supplies to the Chinese Nationalist Party.
A well-read friend of mine recommended a paperback from Shincho Bunko titled Henken Jizai: Russia and America—Which One Is the True Evil? (490 yen), and I subscribed to it.
This book is among the best of his works.
He not only exposed lies from the prewar, wartime, and postwar periods and lived his life as a one-of-a-kind journalist in the postwar world, but now—both in Japan and worldwide—he stands as the greatest researcher and investigator of modern and contemporary history.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that his encyclopedic knowledge and unmatched analytical insight make him the most deserving recipient of a Nobel Prize.
Of course, he has no desire whatsoever for such a prize, but continues—so long as he lives—to expose the world’s lies and spread the truth to Japan and the rest of the world.
This is a noble mission of unparalleled value to humanity.
Introduction
– Don’t Be Fooled by Newspapers That Lie Without Shame –
The First Sino-Japanese War began in July of 1894 (Meiji 27).
The Japanese army landed south of Seoul and quickly scattered the Qing forces, and by September, they were already approaching Pyongyang.
It was Japan’s first major war against a foreign enemy in some time, and while the Chinese soldiers were not particularly strong, their brutality shocked the Japanese army.
They had no understanding of the meaning of “prisoner of war.”
When they captured someone, they cut off their noses and ears, gouged out their eyes, severed their genitals and shoved them down their throats, then dismembered their limbs and hung the body parts under the eaves along the roadside.
Yamagata Aritomo, upon landing, immediately issued a directive: “The enemy nation has, since ancient times, been extremely cruel.
If captured alive, you will surely suffer agonizing torture worse than death and will be slain through acts of barbaric savagery—therefore, die with honor.”
At Jinzhou, it was witnessed that local residents swarmed over wounded Qing soldiers defeated by the Japanese army, stripping and killing them as they lay dying.
Just before winter, the Japanese army attacked the supposedly impregnable fortress of Lüshun (Port Arthur) and captured it in a single day.
Most of the town’s civilians had already evacuated, and the remaining Qing troops were quickly eliminated.
However, two weeks later, the New York World published a sensational report by journalist James Creelman titled “Japanese Army Massacre.”
He claimed Japanese troops chased, raped, and murdered women and children.
“The soldiers mercilessly shot fleeing children by the water and hacked them apart”—this became the origin of what would later be known as the “60,000 Massacre at Port Arthur.”
The Japanese government was stunned by this baseless slander.
The World was owned by Joseph Pulitzer and was one of the so-called yellow papers.
It had a history of publishing sensationalist stories—abductions by UFOs and sexual assaults by aliens, for example.
Even so, the level of detail in the Lüshun report was disturbingly vivid—too realistic to be imagined.
Fortunately, Albert D’Anethan, the Belgian Minister to Japan, investigated with French military observers and proved that the Japanese army was innocent.
Creelman’s story was confirmed as a fabrication.
But then, what had inspired that disturbingly convincing narrative?
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States describes massacres from the U.S.-Indian Wars, which lasted until around the same time as the First Sino-Japanese War.
Upon investigation, I found that the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado matched Creelman’s description exactly.
The eyewitness account came from Robert Bent, a man of Cheyenne mixed descent.
At dawn, 800 cavalrymen attacked a village whose male warriors were away.
They shot unarmed women and scalped them.
Another woman fled with her child.
“A mother fled toward the riverbank, digging into the sand to hide her child, but was shot in the back.
A six-year-old girl waving a white flag was shot without mercy.
A pregnant woman had her belly slit open, and her fetus was dragged out and left beside her.”
The same scenes appear in Creelman’s article.
The Japanese army did not retaliate against the Qing forces’ brutal acts.
They did not harm surrendering soldiers.
That must have displeased the Western press.
They had likely expected the “barbaric, non-Christian, non-white Japanese” to behave accordingly.
But the only acts of savagery they could imagine were those that they themselves—white people—had actually committed.
That irony is laughable.
This was not a simple lie like “I didn’t cheat.”
It was a deliberate, knowing fabrication.
A type of lie that Japanese people could never bring themselves to utter—so I once thought.
But the world has changed.
The manga artist Tetsu Kariya, who styles himself a socially conscious commentator, made the protagonist of Oishinbo suffer nosebleeds in Fukushima as part of an anti-nuclear narrative.
This juvenile portrayal simply mimicked the film The Story of Pure Love starring Hitomi Nakahara, which dealt with the atomic bomb.
But when it sparked controversy, the editorial department of Big Comic Spirits issued a disgraceful statement.
According to the Asahi Shimbun, “They respected the author’s intent to contribute to a deeper discussion on the effects of low-dose radiation and the role of government and media.”
In other words, it was a knowingly fabricated lie.
How can one deepen discussion on such a grave topic based on lies?
Only by eliminating such vulgar deceptions can a genuine debate on nuclear energy begin.
This author and that editor are no different from the Chinese who lie as naturally as they breathe.
Recently, in a lawsuit involving a secret Japan-U.S. pact tied to Okinawa’s reversion, the Supreme Court dismissed the claim by former Mainichi reporter Taikichi Nishiyama.
That incident, which took 40 years to resolve, was marred by distorted reporting.
Nishiyama seduced a female Foreign Ministry clerk and engaged in a sexual relationship to obtain the secret document.
They slept together nearly every other day.
One might ask if journalists have that much free time—but let’s leave that aside.
The real problem is that, even after extracting the scoop from the woman, he didn’t publish it.
Six months later, he handed it over to Takahiro Yokomichi and Yanosuke Narasaki of the Socialist Party.
Narasaki was a central committee member of the Buraku Liberation League.
Yokomichi then triumphantly displayed the secret pact in the Diet.
Most would reasonably conclude that Nishiyama’s real goal was to use the pact to bring down the government.
He was nothing more than a Socialist activist wearing a journalist’s mask.
How did the newspapers cover the Supreme Court’s final ruling on this sordid affair?
The Mainichi Shimbun wrote, “Mr. Nishiyama reported on the Japan-U.S. secret agreement.”
The Asahi Shimbun wrote, “Mr. Nishiyama was the first to expose the existence of the secret pact.”
If Nishiyama had actually reported on or exposed it in the media, there would have been no scandal.
But because he avoided publication and turned it into political theater, it blew up.
Speaking of the Asahi Shimbun, they once called John Rabe—who fabricated the Nanjing Massacre lie and procured weapons for the Chinese army from Siemens—a “regular company employee.”
When a Socialist-affiliated female activist proposed awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, the Asahi described her as a “housewife.”
It’s not just China or the U.S.—
Newspapers also deliberately weave in deceptions, knowing full well they are false.
If this book can help readers see through such insidious lies, I will be satisfied.
Summer, 2014
Masayuki Takayama
