Drawing on essays published in Sound Argument (780 yen), this article examines the fabrications surrounding Asahi Shimbun’s “Travels in China” and the Nanjing narrative.
Documents and testimonies reveal a long-standing pattern of media distortion that diminished Japan in the postwar era.

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2016-10-06
When I looked into confirming the title of his serialized articles, the following paper came up.
In the morning, I proceeded to read the monthly magazine Seiron (780 yen).
There was a paper by Mizuho Ishikawa, a guest editorial writer for the Sankei Shimbun.
This paper as well demonstrated the value of this magazine costing 780 yen, as it was filled with papers that brought facts to light.

Reading the Asahi Shimbun means realizing acutely that one learns nothing about facts and is merely subscribing to the distorted ideology of its editorial writers.
That the Asahi Shimbun and the cultural figures who have aligned with it have continued to diminish Japan is now an undeniable fact.
Perhaps because of their distorted ideology, they not only continued to overlook the outright Nazism and fascism embodied in the anti-Japanese education carried out by South Korea and China, but also participated by mass-producing fabricated articles in the relentless anti-Japanese propaganda those countries have waged on the stages of the United Nations and the United States.
With regard to the Chinese fabrication known as the Nanjing Massacre, they elevated someone like Katsuichi Honda—without exaggeration one of the worst figures of the postwar period—into a major journalist,
sent him off eagerly without noticing the trap of invitation trips from the Chinese Communist Party, and serialized a major feature titled “Travels in China,” reproducing exactly the materials handed to him (something he himself admitted to be true in a public magazine debate with Professor Fujioka of the University of Tokyo), thereby misleading the international community into believing it was the truth.

When I looked into confirming the title of his serialized articles, the following paper came up.
Upon researching the author, I found, to my great pride, that he was a graduate of Sendai Second High School, my alma mater, and of the Faculty of Letters at Tohoku University.

The commentary that was supposed to follow at the beginning will be left for another day, and instead I will introduce a genuine paper by my senior.
It is from http://ironna.jp/article/769.

Kenichi Ara (Researcher of Modern and Contemporary History).
Born in Sendai City in Showa 19 (1944).
Graduate of Sendai Second High School and the Faculty of Letters, Tohoku University.
Researcher of modern and contemporary history.

All emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.

Incompatible with Japanese common sense.
At last, the Asahi Shimbun has retracted its article on the forced recruitment of comfort women.
It took thirty-two years to reach this point, and one cannot help but marvel at how brazenly they continued to stonewall, but if they retracted it in the thirty-second year, then I believe they could also retract the report from forty-three years ago.
Forty-three years ago, that is, Showa 46.
Needless to say, this refers to “Travels in China,” written by reporter Katsuichi Honda.

“Travels in China” was serialized in the Asahi Shimbun from August to December of Showa 46.
It was a reportage that took the form of Chinese people speaking about the Japanese army during the war, and in every installment a brutal and inhumane Japanese army was depicted.
It was so brutal and grotesque that one wondered whether a newspaper should be publishing such things at all, and there must have been Japanese readers who were stunned by that brutality and grotesqueness.

However, the actions of the Japanese army described were unimaginable from a Japanese sensibility, and any person of ordinary common sense would unhesitatingly doubt them.
Anyone who knew the actual conditions of the Japanese army would immediately refute them, and when compared against Japanese history, they can also be dismissed at once.
As recorded that “a torrent of letters fiercely criticizing the articles flooded into the Tokyo head office” (“Asahi Shimbun Company History”), even Asahi Shimbun readers rejected them.

Criticism also arose from within the company.
“Travels in China” was serialized in four parts, and the climax of the brutal and inhumane stories was the “Nanjing Incident,” but Nanjing as reported by journalists who had accompanied the army at the time was completely different from the Nanjing written about in “Travels in China.”

For these reasons, it was thought that no Japanese would take the series seriously, but in reality many Japanese accepted it.
Half a year after the serialization, it was published as a book, and before long it began to be used as a supplementary reader in schools, and moreover the Ministry of Education did not oppose it.
More than ten years later, when a massacre memorial was built in Nanjing, politicians one after another appeared to lay flowers there.
Similarly, when the People’s Republic of China began to raise the Nanjing Incident—something that had not even been discussed at the time of normalization of relations—the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accepted it without offering any rebuttal.
If one were to ask them why they accepted it, they would answer that it was because it had been published in the Asahi Shimbun.
They refrain from judging based on common sense and instead believe the Asahi Shimbun.
It is puzzling why they do so, but it shows just how trusted the Asahi Shimbun was.

Numerous records demonstrating the falsity of “Travels in China.”

Once again, I will show that “Travels in China” is filled with falsehoods.

Focusing on the “Nanjing Incident,” the Japanese army entering Nanjing is described at the beginning as follows.
“The Japanese army rushes in.
Facing the chaotic crowds and defeated soldiers, the Japanese army fires indiscriminately with machine guns, rifles, and grenades.
Starving military dogs are also released and attack Chinese people in order to eat them as food.
The broad avenues of Zhongshan North Road and Central Road leading to the two gates are covered with corpses and blood and turn into roads of hell.”

That this description is literally false is shown by numerous facts.

The Japanese army entered Nanjing city on December 13, Showa 12, and in order to protect third-country nationals within the city, Japanese diplomats also entered the following day.
The diplomat’s name was Atsuyasu Fukuda, who after the war became a member of the House of Representatives and served as Director-General of the Management and Coordination Agency, among other posts.
Fukuda, then a vice-consul who dealt with third-country nationals in the bustling center of Nanjing, testified as follows.

“I have never once seen a scene where corpses were lying all over the streets.”
(“The Showa History of One Hundred Million People,” Mainichi Shimbun Publishing).

In the center of Nanjing there were branch offices of Japanese newspapers and news agencies.
Yuji Maeda, a war correspondent for Domei News Agency (now Kyodo News and Jiji Press), entered the city on the 15th.
Using the branch office as his base, Maeda conducted interviews, and he described the conditions around the branch office at that time as follows.

“The shops were still closed, but many livelihoods had survived, and peace was beginning to breathe again.”
(“Amid the Flow of War”).

There were no corpses, nor was everything covered in blood.
Nanjing was a completely calm city.

Given that “Travels in China” is based solely on Chinese accounts, Japanese testimony might be deemed insufficient, so I will present testimony from third-country nationals.

There were several dozen third-country nationals in Nanjing, and some of them formed the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone to protect the city’s residents.
They sent letters and requests to the Japanese diplomats who came to Nanjing, and on the 14th, the day Vice-Consul Fukuda entered the city, a letter was promptly sent.
The opening of the first letter reads as follows.

“Respectfully, we are grateful for the admirable manner in which your artillery units did not bombard the safety zone.”
(“Complete Translation and Study of ‘Records of the Nanjing Safety Zone’”).

The Japanese army did not massacre the citizens of Nanjing.

There is no need even to bring up evidence from third-country nationals.
The Asahi Shimbun reported the conditions in central Nanjing on the 14th as follows.

“Even while at the temporary branch office of our company on Zhongshan Road, no gunshots or cannon fire can be heard anymore.
Hearing the horns of automobiles and the sounds of vehicles running along the main roads on the morning of the 14th creates the illusion that one is in a normal, peaceful Nanjing, having completely forgotten the war.
Although it was said that not a single resident remained in Nanjing city, tens of thousands of refugees still remain.
Here too, Nanjing is breathing back to life.
Soldiers pass by chatting cheerfully.”
(“Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, December 16”).

The image of a hell covered with corpses and blood is a complete falsehood.

As for the claim that military dogs were released, one can only laugh until one’s sides ache.
Military dogs are used for communication between the front lines and the rear, but also for reconnaissance, rescuing wounded soldiers, and transporting military supplies.
For that purpose they are bred and trained repeatedly, and there is no possibility that they would eat human beings.

The false descriptions do not end at the opening.
They continue with depictions of a world of death such as “the riverbanks were covered with corpses floating on the water’s surface, and even the massive muddy flow of the Yangtze River was stained red with blood,” and “wherever you went, the air was filled with the stench of death.”

“Travels in China” was filled from the outset with such falsehoods and laughable claims, and that continued all the way to the end.
To be continued.