Quoting Masayuki Takayama, this chapter examines how China strategically protected the journalist Kazuo Asami, author of the infamous “Hundred-Man Killing Contest” article, and how the episode became embedded in the narrative surrounding the Nanjing Massacre. Through the actions of Liao Chengzhi, it explores the geopolitical and propaganda dimensions behind historical controversies.

February 16, 2019.
In other words, they laid down a preventive line in advance.
All one can say is that it was remarkably calculated.
The following is from page 98.
Everyone who read this chapter must have exclaimed, “Takayama is extraordinary!”
Every Japanese citizen who can read printed text should immediately go to the nearest bookstore and purchase this book.
People around the world must realize, through my translation, how little they have known about the truth of these matters.
● China’s cunning in sheltering the journalist of the “Hundred-Man Killing” story.
Takayama.
The Chinese can be as ruthless as Americans.
They calmly carry out schemes that ordinary Japanese would never even imagine.
A clear example was the maneuvering of Liao Chengzhi in the 1960s.
The Cultural Revolution began in 1966, but even before that Liao Chengzhi realized that among the Japanese journalists invited to China was Kazuo Asami.
In 1937 Asami had written an article in the Tokyo Nichi-Nichi Shimbun with the headline “Hundred-Man Killing Contest! / Two Lieutenants Already at 80,” claiming that First Lieutenants Tsuyoshi Noda and Toshiaki Mukai were competing to see who could kill one hundred people with a Japanese sword before entering Nanjing.
After the war, based largely on Asami’s article, the two lieutenants Noda and Mukai were executed by shooting despite their innocence.
This “hundred-man killing” story later served as supporting material for the narrative of the Nanjing Massacre that was constructed by China and the United States.
The man who wrote it was this Asami.
At that time he was apparently serving as a labor union official at the Mainichi Shimbun.
Liao Chengzhi immediately invited Asami and his family—his wife and daughter—to China.
He provided them with favorable employment conditions, and the daughter was admitted to Peking University.
Why would he do such a thing.
Because even by gathering every possible piece of evidence, the “hundred-man killing” story was known to be false.
If Asami had remained in Japan, there was a clear possibility he might one day confess and apologize, saying “It was false” and “I am sorry.”
In fact, Tomomi Inada later filed a lawsuit challenging that story.
If Asami’s lie had been exposed, the fabricated narrative of the Nanjing Massacre would also unravel one after another.
It would have become the small hole that collapses the dam.
If the Nanjing narrative collapsed, it is doubtful whether the large-scale ODA from Japan that flourished during the Deng Xiaoping era would have been possible.
Seeing that far ahead, Liao quickly secured the Asami family.
Kazuo Asami was a pillar supporting a valuable lie.
That is why China took him in.
When the hundred-man killing issue resurfaced in Japan in the 1970s, Asami came from Beijing, testified that the story was true, and then returned to Beijing.
Asami’s daughter graduated from Peking University, and afterward the Beijing government continued to take care of her.
By chance I once met that daughter.
She was running a tea house in a corner of a facility for Japanese tourists.
Inside the shop there was a framed calligraphy by Liao Chengzhi inscribed “To Kazuo Asami.”
When I asked her about it, she replied, “Yes, that is my father.”
I then asked whether she realized that her father’s absurd article had led two lieutenants to be executed for crimes they did not commit.
She calmly replied, “Whether they were innocent or not is something my father knows,” and added, “My father also suffered.”
I pointed out clearly, “If someone causes the deaths of others, suffering afterward is only natural.”
But she showed no reflection whatsoever.
What struck me was the astonishing foresight of Liao Chengzhi.
Already in the 1960s he had decided to preserve this story as a useful narrative.
Such cunning calculations rarely occur to Japanese people.
Beginning in 1979 China would draw enormous ODA from Japan.
They fully understood that if Asami ever confessed, everything would collapse, and so they laid down a preventive line in advance.
All one can say is that it was remarkably calculated.