Originally published on July 21, 2019.
This article discusses then-Asahi Shimbun president Tomoo Hirooka’s visit to China, Katsuichi Honda’s serialized Journey to China, the Japan-China Journalist Exchange Agreement, witnesses prepared by the Chinese side, and the formation of the Nanjing Massacre reporting.
It examines how the Asahi Shimbun spread the Nanjing Massacre narrative and how that reporting influenced China’s application to register the issue with UNESCO’s Memory of the World program.

2019-07-21
It is a fabricated story that Tomoo Hirooka, then president of the Asahi Shimbun, had Katsuichi Honda write while doing exactly as the Chinese government wanted.
Now, let us introduce the details of that process.
This is a chapter I published on November 5, 2017, titled, “It is a fabricated story that Tomoo Hirooka, then president of the Asahi Shimbun, had Katsuichi Honda write while doing exactly as the Chinese government wanted.”
In addition, the following article is also posted.
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/nagatachoucafe7/e/54c2756a11c6ef1030acc1da4e9205f2
It is a laborious work titled “The Grave Sin of Asahi Shimbun President Tomoo Hirooka.
He Had Katsuichi Honda Write the ‘Nanjing Massacre.’”
Journey to China, written by Asahi Shimbun reporter Katsuichi Honda, contains material about the “Nanjing Massacre.”
This story is a fabricated story that Tomoo Hirooka, then president of the Asahi Shimbun, had Katsuichi Honda write while doing exactly as the Chinese government wanted.
Now, let us introduce the details of that process.
“Another postwar responsibility that the Asahi Shimbun cannot avoid.”
President Hirooka visited China, even skipping the shareholders’ meeting.
In Showa 39, China concluded the “Japan-China Journalist Exchange Agreement” with various Japanese mass-media companies,
and under the condition that they would “not report anything unfavorable to China,” each company dispatched correspondents.
However, over reporting on the Cultural Revolution and other matters, Japanese news organizations were expelled from the country one after another,
and by Showa 45, the mass media stationed in China were withdrawing from China one after another.
Amid this, then-Asahi Shimbun president Tomoo Hirooka stayed in China for a whole month from March to April of Showa 45,
even skipping the shareholders’ meeting over which he was supposed to preside.
While correspondents from other companies were being expelled from the country one after another, President Hirooka received extraordinary hospitality, including a meeting with then-premier Zhou Enlai.
As a result, only the Asahi Shimbun was permitted to remain stationed in Beijing.
After returning from China, President Hirooka instructed reporter Katsuichi Honda to cover China.
Reporter Honda spent forty days covering China from June of the following year, Showa 46,
and the result was Journey to China.
Reporter Honda’s Journey to China was serialized in the Asahi Shimbun from August of Showa 46.
However, in that series of reporting, the News Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had prepared “witnesses” locally in advance, and reporter Honda merely swallowed whole the stories of the “storytellers” prepared by China and turned them into articles.
Later, when reporter Honda received protests from readers who had read Journey to China, he gave the astonishing reply, unimaginable as the words of a journalist: “I merely conveyed exactly what the Chinese side said, so if you wish to protest, could you please do so directly to the Chinese side?”
There was no need to search for witnesses, and reporter Honda testified about this effortless reporting as follows.
“The reporting itself can be called, in a sense, easy reporting.
The rails are laid, and the people to be interviewed are gathered by the other side without us having to search for them.
Therefore, the issue becomes how to draw out as much as possible from the other party in a short time, and moreover how to draw it out accurately.”
In other words, reporter Honda did no “corroborating investigation” at all on the Japanese side, which was made out to be the perpetrator, and simply turned the Chinese side’s testimony into articles as it was.
Journey to China is still read today as evidence that passes down to the world the brutality of the Japanese.
Furthermore, based in part on Journey to China and the series of “Nanjing Massacre” reports by the Asahi Shimbun,
China has applied to register the “Nanjing Massacre” with UNESCO’s Memory of the World program.
Now that verification of the “comfort women” issue has begun, the final reckoning that the Asahi Shimbun must undertake is a thorough investigation of this “Nanjing Massacre fabrication incident.”
＊This article was posted on January 23, 2015, on the Internet, the greatest library in human history.＊