This essay explains why the author presented the Japan–Korea Basic Treaty to a global audience, examining Asahi Shimbun’s role in fabricating the comfort women narrative and the resulting burden placed on Japanese taxpayers. It addresses the 1 billion yen payment tied to the agreement and the enormous sums of public funds, including aid to China, that followed decades of distorted reporting.

June 15, 2016
The reason I presented the Japan–Korea Basic Treaty to the world is as I have already written.
It was because Tetsuya Hakoda, an editorial writer at The Asahi Shimbun, published on May 17 a full-page article that vividly demonstrated the extent to which he is a person whose being a Japanese citizen is almost impossible to believe.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, needless to say, reached the Japan–Korea agreement as a political settlement in light of the political circumstances surrounding the international community.
However, Tsutomu Nishioka, a genuine scholar who has properly examined as an academic the process by which the so-called “comfort women” issue was revealed to be a complete fabrication and falsification, published his outstanding paper in Bungei Shunju in 1992, yet at the time almost no Japanese citizens—including myself—were aware of it.
It goes without saying that the greatest responsibility for fabricating this issue lay with The Asahi Shimbun.
As an unavoidable political settlement, the Japanese government decided to contribute 1 billion yen on the condition that the statue, said to be installed in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and illegal under both international treaties and South Korean domestic law and fabricated through falsehoods, would be removed, and needless to say, this money was taxpayers’ money.
The Asahi Shimbun elevated a mere newspaper reporter named Katsuichi Honda—who could be described without exaggeration as one of the worst of the postwar era—into a major figure, serialized what amounted to anti-Japanese propaganda handed over by the Chinese Communist Party as major scoop articles, and succeeded in establishing them internationally.
As a result, the enormous sum of approximately 30 trillion yen, most of which was paid to China as grant aid, was also, needless to say, taxpayers’ money.
In August of the year before last, The Asahi Shimbun finally acknowledged its errors regarding the comfort women issue, held an official press conference to apologize, and its president resigned to take responsibility.
However, with regard to the reporting on the Nanjing Massacre by Katsuichi Honda and others, no apology has yet been made.
Nevertheless, the full-page article written by Tetsuya Hakoda on May 17 contained not the slightest trace of reflection.
Naturally, there was not even a shred of remorse regarding the fact that the 1 billion yen of taxpayers’ money paid as the settlement for the comfort women issue should properly have been paid by The Asahi Shimbun itself.
Therefore, I first decided to present to the world the content and history of the Japan–Korea Basic Treaty, something that most Japanese citizens are still unaware of (and which I myself knew nothing about until a few years ago), and which the rest of the world could not possibly know.
To be continued.