Asahi Shimbun elevated Katsuichi Honda—who admitted to publishing unverified materials handed over by the Chinese Communist Party—as a star reporter and broadcast his work worldwide as a major scoop. From the fabricated Nanjing Massacre narrative to urban redevelopment driven by corporate self-interest, this essay argues that Asahi Shimbun systematically undermined Japan’s honor, credibility, and national interests.

2016-03-30
The following continues from the previous chapter.
They elevated Katsuichi Honda—one of the greatest and worst fools of postwar Japan, on par with Yayori Matsui, and a man who can without exaggeration be called a traitor to the nation—into a leading reporter.
As the Chinese Communist Party’s one-party rulers carried out sustained anti-Japan propaganda to legitimize their regime, Asahi Shimbun cooperated fully by using Honda as its instrument.
This included the so-called “Hundred-Man Killing Contest” and, above all, the greatest and most malicious fabrication of all: the Nanjing Massacre.
Honda himself openly stated that he wrote exactly what was handed to him by the CCP, without any verification whatsoever.
Articles by this man—unfit to be called a journalist in any sense—were disseminated by Asahi Shimbun to the world as major scoops.
That was not all.
Asahi Shimbun also strongly supported the provision of 30 trillion yen in ODA to China.
The same Asahi Shimbun then intervened in Osaka’s most critical urban redevelopment project—one that held the fate of the city’s revival.
To shore up its newspaper business, which was beginning to be eroded by the internet, the company staked its corporate future on securing government approval to raise the floor-area ratio of its Nakanoshima property from 1,000 percent to 1,600 percent, launching the so-called Nakanoshima Twin Tower project.
This project overlapped directly with the North Yard redevelopment.
In terms of location, Nakanoshima and North Yard differ as drastically as the moon and a mudskipper.
The fact that everything I have consistently argued about the North Yard was one hundred percent correct is now proven beyond dispute.
In the most recently announced official land price survey, the highest-priced location in Osaka is the South Tower of Grand Front Osaka, the first phase of the North Yard development.
It was once common knowledge that Hankyu Department Store occupied the top position.
The North Yard has now been proven by facts themselves to be a location of far superior value.
Readers may proceed with complete confidence that every one of my arguments is entirely correct.
“Civilization’s Turntable,” in the strongest sense of the term, is an unprecedented and unparalleled body of work.