CHENGDU, Aug. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- China published a war diary of a Japanese solider on Friday, which wrote an ineffaceable page of Japan's invasion history in the nation.

    The diary, published by the People's Literature Publishing House three days prior to the 60th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, recorded the experiences of Ogishima Shizuo, a soldier in charge of cremation in a Japanese troop, in the time span between August 1937 and March 1940.

    The original copy of the diary, in seven books and with an album of 208 pictures, is now held by a Chinese collector named Fan Jianchuan, who is based in Chengdu, capital of southwestern Sichuan Province.

    Fan bought the diary from an antiquary in 2004.

    The pocket diary books were made in Japan and were special for army men in the Chinese battle zone.

    Military rules, translations for daily Chinese expressions and maps of some Chinese provinces were printed on the head pages of these diary books.

    Jiao Yin, editor of the book, said she was stunned by the diarycontents about looting, poisonous gas, germ warfare and comfort women, and decided to publish it when she first saw it.

    "Though I knew no Japanese, I could tell what the diary is about when I saw Chinese characters such as killing and poisonous gas among Japanese kanas in the diary," she said.

    The Japanese written language is a mix of Chinese characters and kanas, or Japanese letters.

    "It is 10 o'clock in the morning. We can find no enemy soldiers but some villagers, all of whom we then loot," Ogishima Shizuo so writes in the diary about his experiences in a village called Huaikou.

    "At dusk, we hack all the enemy soldiers we capture in the daytime to see if our sabers are sharp enough," his diary reads.

    The Japanese soldier also writes in the diary that one night his troops set all villagers near a temple on fire, and "the flamenearly scorches the curtain of night."

    Editor Jiao Yin said all these accounts serve as a vivid, tangible evidence of Japanese militarists' barbarity.

    "I wonder what those Japanese politicians who are now attempting to deny history would say if they could read the manuscripts of the very Japanese man who took part in the crimes,"she said.

    In 1987, Azuma Shiro, a retired Japanese solider, had his diaryabout Nanjing Massacre published, which then triggered Japanese rightist politicians' charge of "lying".

    Azuma Shiro was brought to court and lost the lawsuit.

    Japanese intruding troops occupied Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937, and then launched a six-week long massacre. Historical records showed that more than 300,000 Chinese people, not only disarmed soldiers but also civilian victims, were slayed in the holocaust.

    Li Hua, a researcher of Japan's invasion history with the municipal cultural bureau of Chongqing, southwestern China, said that Ogishima Shizuo's diary gives Japanese rightists a hard blow.

    "If Azuma Shiro's testimony could not make them feel ashamed, the irrefutable evidences in Ogishima Shizuo's diary can make their chicanery totally groundless," the historian said.

    Bookstores in major Chinese cities begin to sell the diary Friday afternoon. Enditem