The atrocities Japanese soldiers committed in China during the 1930s are well documented. Various Japanese textbooks, however, have downplayed or overlooked the scale and scope of these events. In this lesson, students examine how two textbooks – one Japanese and the other Chinese – depict what happened during the Japanese occupation of Nanjing. Students then corroborate each textbook with an excerpt from historian Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China.
[Teacher Materials, Student Materials, and PowerPoint updated on 8/15/2025.]
Image: Photo of Chinese captives imprisoned by Japanese troops taken in 1937. From the Wikimedia Commons.