Answer:
An estimated 40,000 to over 300,000 Chinese were killed.[11][12] Since most Japanese military records on the killings were kept secret or destroyed shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945, historians have been unable to accurately estimate the death toll of the massacre. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo estimated that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the massacre.[13] China's official estimate is "more than 300,000" dead, based on the evaluation of China's own Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal in 1947. The death toll has been contested by scholars since at least the 1980s.[3][14]
The Chinese government has been accused by many Japanese of exaggerating details surrounding the massacre, such as the death toll.[12][15][16][17] The government of Japan has admitted to the killing of many non-combatants, looting, and other violence committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after the fall of Nanjing,[18][19] and Japanese veterans who served there have confirmed that a massacre took place.[20] In Japan, public opinion of the massacre varies, but few deny outright that the event occurred.[21] A small but vocal minority in the Japanese government and society have argued that the death toll was military in nature and that no such crimes ever occurred. Denial of the massacre and revisionist accounts of the killings have become a staple of Japanese nationalism.[21] Historical negationists go as far as claiming the massacre was fabricated for propaganda purposes.[22]
Explanation:
