The Japanese beheading competition.

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It’s one of the lesser known facts of history but  in 1937, two Japanese officers named Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda held a contest over who was the first to succeed in killing a 100 people with his sword (Magoroku)

Mukai and Noda were both two young second lieutenants in the Katagiri Regiment’s Toyama Battalion and their contest was held during the Japanese invasion of China. The winner was announced on 10th of December 1937, only a couple of days before the Japanese Army entered Nanking (now Nanjing). Nanking, then the capital of the Republic of China (now of the Jiangsu province) was captured by the Japanese army on December 13, 1937 and in a total spree of six weeks over 200,000 residents were murdered and thousands of women were raped. It would become known as the Nanking Massacre and Rape of Nanking.

The issue first emerged from a series of…