"History is a set of concerted lies." - Napoleon Bonaparte Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original EssayIn this quote, Napoleon Bonaparte is projecting his belief that history is simply a lie that people agree upon, implying that most historical knowledge present today is a product of fiction that individuals in the past accepted to transcribe as factual knowledge. The motives behind the fabrication of historical knowledge can range from personal gain to hiding a country's embarrassing past. However, this raises an interesting question about what, about the event, leads historical figures to document false information. It is possible that these figures simply chose all the negative and significant events to falsify. However, through the shared knowledge of history and the existence of evidence of numerous events such as massacres, wars, battles, etc., it is obvious that the nature of the event itself is not sufficient to falsify information about the same. The emotions of the authorities can play a considerable role in this, because they are the ones who attribute their thoughts to historical knowledge. So, this begs the question: How does emotion influence someone's willingness to document knowledge in history, truthfully or falsely? To investigate the role that emotion plays in this process, it is more prudent to do so using an event that affected a large group of people. individuals on an emotional level. For the purposes of this essay, the Nanjing incident serves as an example. To quickly summarize, the Nanjing Incident was an act of mass murder and rape committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing, China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It has different names. For example, in China it is called “The Rape of Nanjing” and in Japanese textbooks simply “Nanjing Incident”. The diction of the titles themselves impart a different nuance to their respective readers. A Chinese reading this event would be affected more strongly than a Japanese, since “rape” sounds much more serious and specific than “accident.” The Japanese refuse to acknowledge the wrongdoings of their soldiers during this period, they even refuse to fully explain them in textbooks. It is often reduced to a simple paragraph about the “Nanjing Incident,” while in China the same event is taken quite seriously, which is not an irrational thing since the Chinese people were probably affected very deeply by such a horrible event. Therefore, the variations in the ways Japan chooses to represent this event could be considered a falsification of historical knowledge, as by changing the wording of the title they were able to reduce its significance as a historical event. The Japanese may have done this to protect their image in the nation, or even because they are too embarrassed to admit that their soldiers went and did these terrible things. This is evidence that if an event has high emotional impact or significance, it is more likely to be altered when it is documented as historical knowledge, where the nature of the alteration depends on the context of the environment in which it is discussed. While reducing the significance of events like the aforementioned Nanjing incident is an example of a country altering a historical event due to its high emotional value, there are many other cases where the opposite has happened. For example, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in India during the British occupation, where over 400 Indians were killed simply for, 10(3), 335-356.