Did the 1937 Nanjing Massacre really happen? This might seem like an absurd question, but then the recently elected governor of Tokyo is on record as having denied that the looting, rape and assembly-line murder reported by eyewitnesses ever took place. The Dr. Feelgoods of Japanese history, Yoshinori Kobayashi and Nobukatsu Fujioka, have penned best-selling books that seek to deny, mitigate, rationalize and minimize the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army during Japan's 15-year rampage in Asia.

The whitewashing of history promoted by their organization of like-minded conservatives, Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho o Tsukuru Kai (The Japanese Institute for New History Education), has struck a chord among a surprising number of Japanese who resent and resist dilatory efforts to wean the nation from the collective amnesia approach to the "troubled past" propagated by the Ministry of Education in the post-World-War-II era. They have attacked efforts to include more forthcoming accounts of the atrocities committed in the name of Emperor Showa in textbooks, arguing that the evidence is inconclusive.

Iris Chang, author of "The Rape of Nanking" (1997), reignited the Nanjing debate and even provoked the Japanese ambassador to the United States into an ill-considered broadside that seemed to lend credence to some of the egregious caricatures served up in her book. The decision earlier this year not to proceed with a translation of her work has kept the controversy in the limelight.