Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Yasuhiko Asaka launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanking.

The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part of World War II, and often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century and has been described as The Asian Holocaust, in reference to the scale of Japanese war crimes against Chinese civilians, similar to the European ones. It is known in China as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

The Battle of Nanking was fought in early December 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China.

The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From 1910 to 1945, it included the Japanese archipelago, the Kurils, Karafuto, Korea, and Taiwan. The South Seas Mandate and concessions such as the Kwantung Leased Territory were de jure not internal parts of the empire but dependent territories. In the closing stages of World War II, with Japan defeated alongside the rest of the Axis powers, the formalized surrender was issued on September 2, 1945, in compliance with the Potsdam Declaration of the Allies, and the empire's territory subsequently shrunk to cover only the Japanese archipelago resembling modern Japan.

Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was the founder of a collateral branch of the Japanese Imperial Family and served as a general in the Imperial Japanese Army during the Japanese invasion of China and the Second World War. He was the son-in-law of Emperor Meiji and uncle by marriage of Emperor Hirohito. He is most notable for being the commander of Japanese forces outside Nanjing in December 1937, when he presided over the mass murder and rape of hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians in during the Nanjing Massacre.