 Shōichi Watanabe

A conservative opinion-leader affiliated to the openly revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi, Watanabe was known for his dismissal of the Nanking Massacre as a historical delusion, attributing the known killings to the standard revenge of regular soldiers in war against guerrilla combatants whom they have captured.As he later clarified, in his view, the concept of in war should properly be reserved for atrocities against a civilian population, where the numbers roughly exceed the range of 40–50 victims, as opposed to the wholesale killing of irregular insurgents.