The following is from an article by Mr. Ara Kenichi, an exertion that rebukes society, which appears in the current issue of the monthly magazine WiLL.
As mentioned in this column, I am very proud that Mr. Ara is a senior at my alma mater.
It is a must-read not only for Japanese citizens but also for people worldwide.　
Emphasis in the text other than the headline is mine.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should erase the “Nanking Incident” from its homepage!
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which continues to tell lies without evidence, is fooling the people of Japan.

Strange Answer by Yoshimasa Hayashi　
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs website describes the Nanking Incident.　
“It is undeniable that there were killings and looting of non-combatants after entering Nanking.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been describing the incident since 2005, but there are no documents on which to base this description, according to the Ministry.

At an April 3 meeting of the House of Councilors’ Accounts Committee, Councilor Masamune Wada again asked the question, to which Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi responded.
How about Wada’s question?
“Are there any documents within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that serve as the basis for this statement?”　
Hayashi answered.
“We have not confirmed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs prepared this document.”　
Foreign Minister Hayashi admitted that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had described the statement as undeniable without any basis.　
That is not all.
At this point, a further problem was exposed.　
In his answer, Foreign Minister Hayashi cited two documents.
The first was the “Government’s Answer decided on April 24, 2007,” and the second was the “Military History Series, Army Operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1),
The former is described on the website, and the latter has the corresponding description on the website.
However, the former was a government response two years after the description on the homepage, so there is no way it could have been included.
The latter is nowhere to be found.　
Not only does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs state this on its website without any evidence, but it also responded similarly to the Japan-China Joint History Study and the UNESCO Memory of the World Heritage registration and is still lying at this juncture.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should immediately correct its homepage to show how much danger this attitude is putting Japan in.

Foreign Minister’s Answer that Mocks the People　
The former of the two documents is a response to a written question by Shingo Nishimura, a member of the House of Representatives, who asked what the government thought of the Nanking Incident, stating that “it is undeniable that there was killing or looting of non-combatants.　
Needless to say, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website cannot be used as a basis for a question-and-answer session two years later. Still, if one looks at the 2007 government response, the government’s answer traces the description on the website, and Foreign Minister Hayashi states the exact opposite.
Furthermore, Foreign Minister Hayashi explains that the 2007 government’s answer “was based on a comprehensive judgment based on the testimonies of related parties and various materials related to the case,” but since he merely traced the website, can it be said that he made a comprehensive judgment?
He also says it was based on various materials, but this story is without substance.　
In response to the government’s 2007 response, I asked it on December 1, 2016, to disclose the documents it based its decision on.
On January 31, 2017, I received a notice stating, “We have searched in the files where the subject documents may be stored but have not found any documents. We will continue our search.”　
Nine months later, on October 31, I received the final notice.　
“We have searched within the relevant files but have not been able to confirm the existence of the relevant documents.”　
In other words, there were no documents.　
Foreign Minister Hayashi explained that there were various documents but no documents as of 2017.
The fact that there were no documents from 10 years ago suggests that there were never any in the first place.
That is not the only reason why there were no documents.
The statements of Mr. Hiroshi Hashimoto, Director General of the Information and Culture Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on November 30, 1982, and of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa on November 26, 1991, regarding the Nanking Incident, also responded to my request for disclosure by saying that they had no materials on which to base their claims.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has absolutely no documents related to the Nanking Incident.
The committee meeting was broadcast live on TV for the public to watch, and yet these answers were given with impunity.
This article continues.