The elevation of Katsuichi Honda—who propagated fabricated claims of the Nanjing Massacre—reveals the fundamental corruption of Asahi Shimbun’s postwar journalism.

2016-02-10

Katsuichi Honda, one of the lowest figures in postwar Japan, sensationally broadcast to the world the fabricated claim of “300,000 victims in the Nanjing Massacre” as a major scoop.

The fact that such a man was treated as a star reporter by the Asahi Shimbun clearly proves what the Asahi Shimbun truly was.

Recently, during a published debate in Weekly Bunshun with former University of Tokyo professor Fujioka, Honda casually confessed, “I conducted no verification whatsoever. I simply wrote exactly what the Chinese side handed to me.”

This admission alone is sufficient to expose both the man himself and the newspaper that elevated him.