Originally published on October 23, 2019.
Continuing from the previous chapter and based on an essay by Fujioka Nobukatsu, this article examines the true nature of Honda Katsuichi.
Through Tonooka Akio’s characterization of Honda as an “Asahi leftist,” an “appointment-order leftist,” and a “self-lost leftist,” Honda’s own theory of reportage, and his obedient posture toward the Chinese Communist Party in Journey to China, it portrays Honda as a “hollow man.”

October 23, 2019.
Following Honda’s own standard of evaluation, let us graciously call Honda, who wrote Journey to China, a “blind follower of the Chinese Communist Party.”
I think again.
Honda was indeed a person worthy of the name “hollow man.”
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Who was Honda Katsuichi?
There is no doubt that Honda Katsuichi was a leftist.
However, Tonooka Akio asks in the aforementioned book, “What kind of leftist was he?”
Honda was not a convinced leftist.
Tonooka supposes that he probably had not read Marx or Lenin.
Originally, “he was a simple mountaineer, adventurer, explorer, and student of cultural anthropology.
That was probably Honda’s true field.”
All of Honda’s actions were integrated with the personnel decisions and policies of the Asahi Shimbun.
Thus, Tonooka’s conclusion is that Honda was an “Asahi leftist,” an “appointment-order leftist,” and a “self-lost leftist.”
After Vietnam, Honda abandoned the “method of reportage,” and wrote relentlessly, disguising as reportage things that, by his own definition, could not be called reportage.
His past achievements, such as his ethnological research trilogy, were used as camouflage.
There is a reason why I make that supposition.
Honda himself wrote as follows about the reporting system in Vietnam, where seven or eight government guides accompanied him in his reporting.
“According to the reporting method I have taken until now in order to write reportage, this could never possibly be called ‘reporting.’
If one had to classify it, it would probably be closer to a ‘ceremony.’
Within a ceremony, the people do not speak their true feelings.
One cannot merely walk around listening only to official positions and then write a report as if it had been free reporting.
That would make one nothing more than what is called a ‘blind follower,’ and would be an act of suicide for a journalist.”
What Is Happening to Vietnam?, page 275.
What is this?
Honda himself has stated the entire core of the matter, has he not?
That settles it.
Following Honda’s own standard of evaluation, let us graciously call Honda, who wrote Journey to China, a “blind follower of the Chinese Communist Party.”
I think again.
Honda was indeed a person worthy of the name “hollow man.”