Vautrin’s Diary

The Collection of Historical Materials on the Nanjing Massacre is a major scholarly project. Gathering and organizing the source materials, and translating, editing, and publishing documents in English, Japanese, German, Italian, Russian, and other languages, is an exceedingly complex and arduous undertaking. As a result, the volumes can only be published in batches over time. Similar source materials have sometimes had to appear in different volumes, and we ask readers for their understanding. We hope this collection will provide historians and readers in China and abroad with as much historical material as possible, rich in detail and comprehensive in scope. However, because the sources are so varied, including firsthand accounts and eyewitness testimony from perpetrators, victims, and third parties, as well as memoirs, archival documents, newspapers, and periodicals, accounts of the Nanjing Massacre do not always agree. Some are contradictory because of the authors' standpoints, perspectives, or limited understanding, and some contain mistakes or inaccurate views. This is hardly surprising. There could never be complete unanimity about a catastrophe of such world-shaking proportions. Preserving historical materials in their original form is a professional duty and scholarly standard for historians. Therefore, we have reproduced all source materials as they are, without alteration, for historians to examine and analyze and, in their use of them, draw sound conclusions consistent with the historical facts.