Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning urged Japan on Friday to face up to and reflect deeply on its wartime crimes, saying the Nanjing Massacre was a brutal atrocity committed by Japanese militarism and must not be distorted.

Mao made the remarks in response to reports that Nagasaki city plans to complete an update of exhibition panels at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum within 2026, and that wording related to the Nanjing Massacre, in which many civilians and prisoners of war were killed, is expected to be changed from massacre to the Nanjing Incident.

"The Nanjing Massacre was a brutal crime committed by Japanese militarism. The evidence is irrefutable and history must not be tampered with," Mao said.

The Tokyo Trial clearly established that the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Nanjing constituted a "massacre", not a so-called incident, she said.

Mao said the judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East devoted a special section to the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Nanjing. Drawing on extensive survivor testimonies, records from third-party foreign nationals and Japanese military archives, the tribunal determined, in the form of an international judicial ruling, the heinous crimes committed by the invading Japanese army in carrying out the Nanjing Massacre.

"History must not be overturned," she said.

Mao also said many Japanese atomic bombing survivors, Nagasaki civic groups and people of insight in Japan have called for Japan's crimes and history as an aggressor under militarism to be reflected correctly and fully.

"We urge Japan to deeply reflect on its wartime crimes and make a clean break with militarism," Mao said.