Originally published on October 23, 2019.
Continuing from the previous chapter and based on an essay by Fujioka Nobukatsu, this article examines Honda Katsuichi’s Journey to China.
It discusses Honda’s 40-day reporting trip to China at the invitation of the Chinese Communist Party, the testimonies of “storytellers” arranged by the Party, the conversion of unverified accounts into articles, and the influence of the book on Japan Teachers’ Union social-studies teachers.

October 23, 2019.
The Chinese side dragged Honda around various parts of China for 40 days on a forced schedule, and had “storytellers” prepared by the Communist Party tell Honda about the “damage” they had suffered at the hands of the Japanese military.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The absurdity of Journey to China.
Entering the 1970s, the final category of Honda’s achievements, his China-related works, finally began.
Against the background of the movement toward the restoration of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, in 1971 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party invited Honda and had him report inside China for 40 days.
The person who mediated with the Chinese Communist Party was Nishizawa Ryuji, also known as Nuyama Hiroshi.
Nishizawa was the son-in-law of Tokuda Kyuichi, and after the split of the Japanese Communist Party in 1950, he belonged to the current of those who “blindly followed” the Chinese Communist Party.
The Chinese side dragged Honda around various parts of China for 40 days on a forced schedule, and had “storytellers” prepared by the Communist Party tell Honda about the “damage” they had suffered at the hands of the Japanese military.
Honda simply wrote this down and turned it into articles.
From this setting alone, Honda was already a complete spokesman and speaking tube for the Chinese Communist Party.
Other than testimony handed to him as an allotted ration, there was no evidence, and not a single thing was verified.
To begin with, atrocities that Japanese people would never think of are described.
“At times, they tied together the hands and feet of the youths they had arrested with wire and hung many of them like bats from high-voltage electric wires.
The electricity was out.
Then they lit fires below them and burned them to death.
There were also times when they gathered people together and poured industrial sulfuric acid over them.
The groups of corpses that had writhed in agony had other people’s skin and their own skin exchanged, or bones and flesh separated.”
Journey to China, paperback edition, page 231.
Journey to China, published as a book in 1972 from the serialized articles, became a bible for Japan Teachers’ Union social-studies teachers.
Foolishly, they read what was written there as “fact.”
Japanese people come of age by assuming that human beings do not tell lies.
This ethnic attribute is exploited to the maximum.
This essay continues.