The contest was found to be just another sEnsalization propaganda during war for morale boost,there are no evidence they actually committed it,other than a pic of two officers standing before at the eastern gate of Changzhou, to the east of Nanking, in late November 1937. The newlet fabricated it by hiding the date of the photograph in their publication and used that as base for a contest that supposedly occured in dec 10,a month later.
View attachment 731518
Noda tsuyoshi's(one of the involved military personnel) sister discovered a letter from his brother , she found the following passage in the letter: “My military duty would never have allowed me to commit an act like the alleged 100-man killing contest.”
A countless number of publications have merely quoted the Tokyo Nichinichi Newspaper article series and its photograph( taken one month before from the said event) as evidence of the alleged killing competition in disregard of countervailing evidence like Noda’s letter.
The two soldiers were
extradited to China, tried by the
Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, On 28 January 1948, both soldiers were executed at the
Yuhuatai execution chamber by the Chinese government based on that new article ,so y'all got what you retribution,regardless of whether the case was the result of a mere propaganda or not .
My point was,beheading and killing during combat are totally different thing when cultural notion is included,katana have a cultural element ,it's generally a showpiece ,not use for beheading sport.
View attachment 731517
This is beheading and common practice during the tubulent period of china,this pic was on sale in Fengtian,those pic belong to the bandits executed in Nongan on 31st March 1923.