Published on July 12, 2019.
This chapter identifies Honda Katsuichi’s Travels in China as the clearest symbol of how the Asahi Shimbun, after President Hirooka Tomoo’s visit to China, became biased toward China and served as a vanguard of Chinese propaganda operations against Japan.
It further connects anti-nuclear reporting, China’s nuclear and railway export strategy, and the silence surrounding PM2.5 pollution, arguing that movements to weaken Japan’s nuclear technology ultimately benefit China and the Korean Peninsula.

July 12, 2019.
It is now an obvious fact that the clearest manifestation of the Asahi Shimbun not merely becoming biased toward China, but becoming the vanguard of China’s propaganda operations against Japan, was Honda Katsuichi’s Travels in China.
The following is a chapter I published on May 5, 2018.
On the closing day of that summer’s Koshien tournament, the Asahi Shimbun Company gave the closing address with an unusually dark expression.
Considering that high school baseball at that time was in the age of guts-based baseball dominated by baseball schools, perhaps it was a similar shape.
After President Hirooka Tomoo, even neglecting the general shareholders’ meeting, was invited by the Chinese government, stayed in China for more than a month, and then returned to Japan, the Asahi Shimbun Company not only became unbelievably biased toward China.
It is now an obvious fact that the clearest manifestation of its becoming the vanguard of China’s propaganda operations against Japan was Honda Katsuichi’s Travels in China.
It brought disgrace upon the honor of Japan and the Japanese people.
It was the Asahi Shimbun that contributed most to causing astronomical amounts of our tax money to be directed to China as ODA, and to the arrogance and unreasonable demands of what is today the world’s largest one-party communist dictatorship.
Since the Hirooka line began, probably all of today’s editorial writers have visited China.
The other day, it suddenly occurred to me that many of them must have visited within a close relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.
At the same time, I suddenly became convinced that the possibility that all of them have, first of all, fallen into honey traps is close to 100 percent.
As a person who visits Kyoto, I think I am probably number one in the world in terms of the number of visits.
In recent years, not only Kyoto but also Osaka has been flooded with an enormous number of Chinese tourists.
It is probably also a well-known fact that Koreans, in their original faces before cosmetic surgery, are often rather unattractive.
However, among Chinese people there are quite a few beautiful women who resemble Japanese women.
It is no exaggeration to say that the atmosphere the women give off is close to that of Japanese women.
After all, it is a country of 1.3 billion people.
Even speaking in terms of probability, it should not take much trouble to find beautiful women.
When I told this sort of story to a friend who is a great reader, he said, “That is only natural.”
“China is, so to speak, a country of mixed blood.”
“In ancient times, from neighboring countries.”
“Quite apart from examples such as princesses being presented from the Korean Peninsula, it is a country that has been conquered by different ethnic groups every few hundred years.”
“It is the custom that mixed blood does not produce unattractiveness,” he said.
Moreover, especially among the elite class, there has been a tradition expressed in sayings such as, “It is a man’s shame not to eat a meal already set before him.”
On page 8 of today’s Yomiuri Shimbun, large headlines leapt out: “Nuclear Power and Railways: Export Offensive,” “Infrastructure as a Pillar of ‘One Belt, One Road,’” and “Technological Power Improving, Domestic Production Advancing.”
It was probably a serial feature.
It was the second part of “Forty Years of Reform and Opening-Up,” titled “A Scientific Superpower.”
I immediately thought the following.
This conjecture of mine, like my other conjectures so far, is probably almost 100 percent correct.
The anti-nuclear movement advocated by figures such as Fukushima Mizuho, Kan Naoto, and Son Masayoshi, with the Asahi Shimbun Company acting as its flag-bearer.
When China positions nuclear power and railways as pillars of its export strategy, it goes without saying that Japan is not merely a thorn in its side, but its most formidable rival.
They want Japan, through a pseudo-moralism inferior even to that of kindergarten children, to let its nuclear technology decline.
If that happens, then in every possible sense, the countries that will rejoice, celebrate the great success of the operation, and regard the operation as complete are, needless to say, first China and second the Korean Peninsula.
Probably because China’s operations have spread throughout almost all the media, in recent years the mass media have reported nothing at all about the frequent PM2.5 pollution.
Even though one can tell simply by looking at the sky over Umeda from my house.
When I search China just to make sure, dark black marks indicating unbelievable PM2.5 pollution levels are scattered everywhere.
Even PM2.5 frequently comes flying over on the winds in the upper atmosphere.
When China, our neighboring country, is carrying out a plan to operate more than 100 nuclear power plants by 2030 and stand alongside the United States, my conjecture that all of the Asahi Shimbun’s editorial writers, who persistently advocate opposition to nuclear power, have fallen into some kind of Chinese trap must surely be 100 percent on target.
Nuclear Power and Railway Export Offensive.
Along a seaside road lined with thatched-roof houses, trucks go back and forth raising clouds of dust.
They are vehicles heading toward the Shidaowan Nuclear Power Plant, in Rongcheng, Shandong Province, near this port town where seafood farming is thriving.
Inside the nuclear power plant site, where many cranes can be seen, construction is underway on a demonstration reactor for a “high-temperature gas-cooled reactor,” which is expected to be a next-generation nuclear reactor.
Japan also has a research reactor for basic experiments, but this is the first demonstration reactor in the world to conduct power generation tests.
Liu Xuegang, 42, an associate researcher at Tsinghua University who is knowledgeable about nuclear power, expressed his expectations: “It will begin operating within this year. Various new findings will surely be obtained.”
China had lagged behind Japan, the United States, and Europe in nuclear power plant construction, and the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Zhejiang Province finally began transmitting electricity in 1991.
There were even times when an on-site inspection group from a Japanese electric power industry organization gave guidance on know-how such as how to tighten pipe bolts.
However, China introduced technologies from the United States, France, Russia, and other countries, and also devoted effort to training human resources.
According to the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, as of January 2018, China had 37 nuclear reactors in operation.
Excluding Japan, where most reactors were stopped due to stricter regulations after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, China ranked third in the world after the United States and France.
Aiming to become a “nuclear power superpower,” China is accelerating the pace of construction in order to meet domestic energy demand and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
By 2030, it plans to operate more than 100 reactors and stand alongside the United States.
This article continues.