The book is not banned in Japan. It has not been published in Japan due to a controversy between Ms Chang and the publisher before her death. Her book was to be published along side another book which questioned the accuracy of her book. She did not agree to those terms.
Also, the "Nanking Massacre" has been discussed and researched thoroughly in Japan, despite what has been alleged by many on this board. Broadly speaking the scholarship in Japan concerning the Nanking incident can be broken up into three groups: One group alleges that a massacre did not occur at all. This group concludes that all the people killed in Nanking at the time were Chinese soldiers or Chinese soldiers who disguised themselves as civilians and who were later killed by the Japanese military. The second group acknowledges that a massacre took place but the number of innocent Chinese civilians killed ranged in the neighborhood of 10,000 - 20,000 innocent civilians killed. The third group of scholarship alleges that the massacred victims was much greater and in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand civilians. There have been over a hundred books in Japanese published in Japan about the Nanking Incident.
An excellent review of this scholarship can be found in a reseach paper done by the Australian scholar, David Askew.
You will discover the most advanced and meticulous research on this subject has been done in Japan.
By the way, I have read Iris Chang's book and I was deeply moved. I am also currently reading "Chinese in America" one of her other books. She is a gifted writer and certainly knows how to tell a story. I have also done a little research on her and I am very much aware that she is/was a very fervent activist. Her frequently mentioned number of 360,000 civilians massacred in Nanking is directly in line with the official Chinese government's account of the massacre.
It is true, sadly, that much of contemporary Japan is in near total denial about the events of WW II, even though Japanese scholarship may be focusing on it.
FYI.. Iris Chang was interviewed on C-span's "Booknotes" after the book came out. It was a marvelous program. I believed it's archived on the website, and if so, I recommend that you view it. Regards..
Kind of like the Ramboulette agreement forced on the Serbs.......knowing full well it could never be accepted.
Your comment about the banning is rather disengenuous, IMHO.