One week ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, the atrocities are fully exposed in a new book published on December 6, offering new perspectives and more rationality.

"The most significant feature of the Complete History of the Nanking Massacre lies in its rationality, as scholars wrote this book from the perspective of human beings," said Zhang Xianwen, professor of Nanjing University.

The book, published by Nanjing University Press, describes the massacre across three volumes, considered to be the most complete work on the event. Most of the book's content comes from historical documents published from 2005 to 2010.

"A rational perspective leads to a more strict way of selecting material. We would rather abandon unreliable material," said Zhang, who is also chief editor of the book.

"Efforts to discover the truth have arrived in a new era with the publishing of the book," said Sun Zhaiwei, another of the book's writers and a researcher at the Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.

Japanese troops launched a six-week-long massacre in Nanjing, capital of China at that time, since December 13, 1937 when they conquered the city.

Books and papers on the massacre published in the 1980s focused to fight against the denial claims from the Japanese right-wing scholars, said Zhang Lianhong, deputy chief editor of the book and a history professor at Nanjing Normal University.

Divergence of opinion emerged in some issues, he said, citing differing accounts of the number of victims as an example.

Zhang Lianhong said scholars believed the number was no less than 300,000. They did not give a specific death toll in the book, but provided evidence of the number of victims in multiple chapters.

"We only offered evidence. We would like to let the readers think about it themselves," he said.

"Actually, the precise number of victims is not the most important thing. What really matters is that the Nanking Massacre was a violent invasion on a large scale. A staggering number of civilians and prisoners of war were killed," he said.

The Chinese historians hope people from both China and Japan will draw lessons from the real facts of the history and avoid a repeat of the tragedy.

"The ultimate intention of the book obviously not lies in fanning hatred between the people of the two countries, but to help people find a way to live in peace," Zhang Xianwen said.

The English and Japanese versions of the book are set to be released over the next two years, while other editions will be published in eight different countries.

(CNTV.cn, Xinhua News Agency December 6 2012)