general matsui mistakes ww2 not government policy japan imperial

In Japan the majority of the historical literature on Iwane Matsui's life focuses on his role in the Nanking Massacre.^[116] He has both sympathizers, who depict him as "the tragic general" who was unjustly executed, and detractors, who assert that he had the blood of a massacre on his hands.^[3][116] Among his detractors are the historian Yutaka Yoshida, who believes that Matsui made six serious mistakes which contributed to the massacre.^[67] First, he insisted on advancing on Nanking without ensuring proper logistical support which forced his men to rely on plunder. Second, he established no policies to protect the safety of Chinese POWs. Third, he permitted an excessively large number of soldiers to enter the city of Nanking. Fourth, he did not cooperate sufficiently with the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Fifth, he insisted that his triumphal entrance into Nanking be held at an early date, a demand which his subordinate commanders responded to by increasing the speed and severity of their mopping up operations. Finally, he spent too much time on political maneuvering and neglected his duties as commander.
Nevertheless, other historians like Masashiro Yamamoto have argued that the death sentence was too severe a penalty for Matsui's crime of mere negligence in failing to stop the massacre.^[117] The journalist Richard Minear also points out that Matsui's penalty was disproportionately severe compared to the other convicted defendants. Kuniaki Koiso was found guilty on four counts and Mamoru Shigemitsu was found guilty on five counts, in both cases including one count of negligence, and both were given prison sentences.^[124] Matsui, by contrast, was found guilty of only one count of negligence but was sentenced to death. The historian Tokushi Kasahara argues that the prosecution at the IMTFE did not attempt seriously to investigate all those who were involved in the Nanking Massacre, and instead just decided to make Matsui the sole scapegoat for the whole atrocity.^[125]
Matsui has a somewhat infamous reputation in China today, where he is sometimes popularly referred to as "the Hitler of Japan" due to his connection to the Nanking Massacre.^[126] However, Matsui's name was not always notorious in China for this reason. In 1945 the Communist Party of China denounced Matsui as a war criminal because of his promotion of pan-Asianism, but no mention was made of the Nanking Massacre.^[127] Historian Masataka Matsuura notes that the focus within current scholarship on Matsui's role in the Nanking Massacre has distracted from the fact that his pan-Asianism was the defining characteristic of his life.^[116]

The Nanking Massacre

Following the fall of Nanking, Japanese soldiers in the city massacred POWs and engaged in random acts of murder, looting, and rape which are collectively known as the Nanking Massacre.^[62] Earlier Matsui and his staff officers in the CCAA had foreseen the possibility that their troops might misbehave upon entering Nanking, as many of them were poorly disciplined reservists,^[63] and they were especially intent on ensuring that the property and citizens of third party nations were not harmed in order to avoid causing an international incident.^[60] To forestall this possibility, Matsui tacked a lengthy addendum entitled "Essentials for Assaulting Nanking" onto the comprehensive operational orders that he passed down to all units on December 7.^[63][64] In "Essentials" Matsui instructed each of his divisions to only allow one of their regiments into the city itself in order to reduce the Japanese Army's contact with Chinese civilians, and he reminded all his subordinates that criminal acts like looting or arson would be severely punished.^[63][65] Ultimately, Matsui's orders were again disobeyed.^[63][66] Most of the buildings and civilian homes outside Nanking had been burned down by the Chinese Army to deprive the Japanese of shelter, so Matsui's subordinate commanders decided on their own that they had no choice but to station all their men within the city itself.^[63]
Nevertheless, Matsui's instructions said nothing about treatment of Chinese POWs.^[34][67] Matsui would inadvertently contribute to the atrocity in a major way when he demanded on December 14 that his triumphal entrance into Nanking be scheduled for the early date of December 17. At the time his subordinates in Nanking objected because they were still in the process of scrambling to apprehend all the former Chinese soldiers hiding in the city and had no facilities in which to hold them. Regardless, Matsui held firm, and in many cases his men responded to the conundrum by ordering that all their prisoners be executed immediately after capture. Most of the large-scale massacres that took place within Nanking occurred in the days immediately prior to Matsui's entrance into the city.^[68]

Iwane Matsui riding into Nanking on December 17

On December 16 Matsui spent the day recovering from his malaria at the hot springs in Tangshuizhen, a city not far from Nanking, and then the next day he rode into Nanking itself at the head of a large victory parade.^[69] It is not clear to what extent Matsui was aware of the atrocities perpetrated in Nanking. His former Chief of Staff in the SEA later testified that Matsui had been informed of "a few cases of plunder and outrage" shortly after entering the city,^[70] and Matsui's own field diary also mentions being told that Japanese troops had committed acts of rape and looting.^[71] Matsui commented in his field diary that, "The truth is that some such acts are unavoidable."^[72] When a representative from the Japanese Foreign Ministry came to investigate the matter, Matsui admitted that some crimes had occurred and he blamed his subordinate commanders for allowing too many soldiers into the city in violation of his orders.^[73] After the war, Matsui's aide-de-camp Yoshiharu Sumi claimed that not long after the capture of Nanking Matsui caught wind of a plan by some of his subordinates to massacre Chinese POWs and upon hearing of this he immediately put a stop to it.^[74] However researchers have since discovered that Sumi's testimony contained a large number of inaccuracies.^[75][76]
Matsui left Nanking on December 22 and returned to Shanghai, though reports of scandalous incidents perpetrated by Japanese soldiers in Nanking continued to filter in to his headquarters over the following month.^[77] When Matsui returned to Nanking on February 7, 1938 for a two-day tour he assembled his subordinates, including Prince Asaka and Heisuke Yanagawa, and harangued them for failing to prevent "a number of abominable incidents within the past 50 days".^{[71][78][79][80]}