Published on July 15, 2019.
Through records concerning the Shiro Azuma Nanking trial, this article discusses how left-wing activists and people under the influence of China and the Korean Peninsula tell lies in comfort women reporting and Nanking Massacre reporting.
It examines the Azuma diary, the mailbag incident, the defamation trial, the High Court ruling, and the reaction of Chinese reporters, criticizing the structure of the “devil’s proof,” in which those unable to present evidence demand that their opponents prove the contrary.

July 15, 2019.
The Azuma defense team formed the “Association to Support Shiro Azuma’s Nanking Trial,” and in order to prove that it did not constitute defamation, they tried to show that the mailbag incident was not unnatural.
In this chapter, I show that in the following court records lies the answer to how left-wing activists, or people under the influence of China and the Korean Peninsula, tell lies in comfort women reporting and Nanking Massacre reporting.
I will make this clearly known to Japan and the world.
To correct Japan and the world—that is my mission.
The following is a fact I discovered on the Internet just now and learned for the first time.
From Wikipedia.
The emphases in the text and the passages marked with ＊～＊ are mine.
I learned for the first time that, just as Seiji Yoshida existed in the comfort women issue, there was indeed a former Japanese soldier who, taking advantage of the postwar climate or under the influence of China and others, cooperated in the fabrication of the Nanking Massacre.
Shiro Azuma（Azuma Shiro, April 27, 1912 – January 3, 2006）was a Japanese soldier（conscripted soldier）, writer, and social activist.
As a superior private in the Kyoto 16th Division, Fukuchiyama 20th Regiment, he participated in the campaign to capture Nanking, and accused the Japanese army of the Nanking Massacre（Nanking Incident）in his book My Nanking Platoon.
He also continued apology activities in China, the United States, and other countries.
Regarding the descriptions in his diary, a defamation trial arose with a former superior officer, and the Supreme Court determined that the descriptions in the Azuma diary had no objective evidence and ordered damages to be paid[1][2].
Middle part omitted.
Each time Azuma visited China, he was warmly welcomed in various places as a hero[19].
Middle part omitted.
Azuma testimony recorded in textbooks.
Japan: Hitotsubashi Publishing World History B.
In 1993, Kasahara Tokushi quoted from Shiro Azuma’s memoir in the textbook World History B（Hitotsubashi Publishing）, saying that peasants in villages were killed so that soldiers could sleep peacefully[29].
“In setting up camp・・・they killed peasants and slept.
・・・They killed them because they might attack.
・・・” a Japanese soldier wrote in his diary.
— Kasahara Tokushi, Hitotsubashi Publishing World History B（1993 textbook authorization）.
Uesugi Chitose and the Sankei Shimbun argued that the Azuma diary was a false tale（a made-up story）and a dubious source, and therefore unsuitable for use in textbooks[30].
Itakura Yoshiaki protested that quoting from a book then in dispute in the Azuma trial was problematic, and the publisher replaced it with the diary of Division Commander Nakajima Kesago[6].
As teaching material in California public high schools.
In the United States, in 2015, Azuma’s testimony was used as teaching material in world history classes at public high schools in California[16].
The teaching material was The Century: America’s Time, a History Channel cable television program broadcast throughout the United States from 1999, and in that program Azuma said that during the war, whenever he found a Chinese woman, five men would always gang-rape her, and after the rape they would set her on fire and burn her[16].
Defamation trial.
On April 15, 1993, the former superior officer, who had been named in Azuma’s book as the former squad leader of the 1st Squad, 3rd Company, 20th Infantry Regiment, and accused of killing a Chinese person by putting him in a mailbag, filed a defamation suit in the Tokyo District Court against three parties: Shiro Azuma, Shimosato Masaki, and Aoki Shoten[31][6].
The trial is also called the Azuma Trial[24][32].
The plaintiff consulted Itakura Yoshiaki, and the “Association to Correct the Fabrication of the Nanking Incident” was established in the office of plaintiff’s attorney Takaike Katsuhiko[6].
Itakura stated that he wanted to use this lawsuit as a breakthrough to prove the falsehood of the atrocities of Infantry Regiment 20, restore honor, and further reveal the fabrication of the so-called “Nanking Massacre”[33][6].
Contents of the ruling.
Tokyo District Court ruling.
In April 1996, the Tokyo District Court’s first-instance ruling recognized the descriptions in the diary as fictitious and ordered Azuma and the other two parties to pay 500,000 yen[34][6].
The defendants appealed.
In the first-instance ruling, regarding the Nanking Incident, the court followed the ruling in the Ienaga textbook trial, saying that “many prisoners and noncombatant Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers” was a “generally undeniable fact,” but regarding the mailbag incident, it ruled that it should be called unnatural, that there was no objective evidence, that it was insufficient to recognize it as fact, and that it was “dangerous to the perpetrator and not feasible”[6].
The plaintiff testified in court, “I have never killed anyone in China.
I have never raped anyone.
I have never seen looting or corpses”[6].
The Azuma defense team formed the “Association to Support Shiro Azuma’s Nanking Trial,” and in order to prove that it did not constitute defamation, they carried out experiments in Nanking to recreate the mailbag incident with grenades, and experiments to measure the depth at which a person placed in a bag would sink in water, but the results of these experiments and the on-site investigations were also rejected in the ruling[6][35].
High Court（appeal）ruling.
The first hearing of the appeal began on September 26, 1996, and on December 22, 1998, the 7th Civil Division of the Tokyo High Court（Presiding Judge Okuyama Koetsu, Judges Sugiyama Masami and Sato Yoichi）handed down a ruling dismissing the appeal[36][37].
In the appeal trial, the original “diary” said to have been written by Azuma before the war was submitted to the court, but the original “diary” portions concerning the Nanking campaign were not submitted[38].
The Azuma side claimed that those parts of the “diary” had been written at the time in a “pocket notebook” and copied two or three years later, but that “pocket notebook” was not submitted to the court[39].
Furthermore, Azuma claimed that he had lent it to an exhibition and that it had not been returned, but that claim was denied by the person responsible for the exhibition[40].
Azuma countered that the diary was something he had “accurately recorded” from field notes and the like between 1940 and March 1944[41].
However, in the ruling, the court determined that there was also doubt as to whether the Azuma diary had been written before the war, that there was a possibility that additions had been made after the war, and that “Azuma’s statements cannot be fully adopted”[42].
The High Court also determined that “there are no pocket notebooks or other original materials concerning the period before March 1938（Showa 13）”[43], and judged that “the fact that appellant Azuma was unable to reproduce and testify to the specific facts compels the inference that he did not witness the act in question, that is, that the act in question was not carried out”[6].
In the trial, many descriptions in the diary were also pointed out as “raising doubts,” and it was stated that “there is no evidence supporting the main parts, and they cannot be recognized as true”[16].
Middle part omitted.
After the High Court ruling.
Plaintiff’s attorney Takaike Katsuhiko stated that this ruling made clear that Azuma’s book itself lacked credibility, and added that when people calling themselves mass media or critics expose misconduct by the former Japanese army, they have long reported only by one-sidedly interviewing the accuser, without verifying whether it is true or false, and by writing articles exactly as the accuser claims.
He said that this case was one such example, that the Azuma diary had been widely publicized, and that during the litigation many newspapers and television programs had almost never interviewed the plaintiff’s side, and he demanded fair interviews with both parties[10].
At the High Court ruling on December 22, 1998, reporters from the Chinese side included Beijing Central Television, Jiangsu Television, Nanjing Television, and Hong Kong Television[45].
The Chinese media were shocked and indignant that the judges appeared in court 13 minutes late, that the pronouncement of the ruling was too brief, and that the plaintiff did not appear at the press conference[10].
Furthermore, at the plaintiff-side press conference, Chinese reporters protested against a banner reading “Victory in the Nanking Massacre Fabrication Trial,” saying, “This banner deeply wounds the hearts of many Chinese people, so please remove it,” and “It is an insult to the Chinese people,” but it was not removed[10].
At the press conference, questions about the Nanking Massacre came one after another, and attorney Takaike Katsuhiko answered, “My personal view is that it was fabricated.
Because it was war, I do not think Japanese soldiers did absolutely nothing wrong.
（Omitted）However, the Nanking Massacre is not that kind of thing, is it?
For example, if there were three murders, you would not call it a massacre, would you?”[46].
When a reporter from Jiangsu Television protested that since it was Japan that caused the Nanking Massacre, Japan should present the evidence, Takaike rebutted, “If you say it happened, then the side making that claim should present the evidence”[10].
＊This Chinese way of speaking（propaganda）is common to the way Asahi, NHK, and others speak in the Mori-Kake reporting, and also to the “yakuza-like false accusation” brought up by anti-Tomari Nuclear Power Plant activists concerning faults on land and sea tens of thousands of years ago, and to the “yakuza-like false accusation” by anti-Ikata Nuclear Power Plant restart activists that if Mount Aso erupts, pyroclastic flows will reach Ehime Prefecture.
In other words, although they cannot produce evidence（naturally… because it is fabricated）, they uniformly use as their logic the devil’s proof, demanding that the opponent they are attacking produce evidence.
That Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and others are under Chinese influence should be clear even from this chapter of mine.＊
The rest omitted.