Katsuichi Honda
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Katsuichi Honda (本多勝一, Honda Katsuichi) is a Japanese journalist who is well known for his coverage of the Nanking Massacre. During the 1970s he wrote a series of articles on the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers during World War II (including the Nanjing Massacre) called "Chūgoku no Tabi" (中国の旅, "Travels in China"). The series appeared in the Asahi Shimbun.
Honda was a war correspondent in Vietnam from December 1966 through 1968. He published a book on the Vietnam War entitled Vietnam War: A Report through Asian Eyes in 1972. [1]
1999 saw the English language publication of Honda's The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (ISBN 0-7656-0335-7). The book was principally a translation of Honda's The Road to Nanjing (南京への道, Nankin e no michi, 1987) but was also supplemented with excerpts from his "Travel to China" and The Nanjing Massacre (南京大虐殺, Nankin Daigyakusatsu, 1997). The book, translated by Karen Sandness, was published by M.E. Sharpe in connection with the Pacific Basin Institute. Pacific Basin's founder, Frank Gibney, also edited the book, writing an introduction critical of Iris Chang and her more popular treatment of the massacre, The Rape of Nanking, which had been published two years prior.
Other works by Honda available in English include The Impoverished Spirit in Contemporary Japan: Selected Essays of Honda Katsuichi (Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0-85345-859-6) and Harukor: An Ainu Woman's Tale (University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-21020-4).
[edit] Responses to Honda's works
On August 23, 2005 a Tokyo District Court presided over by Judge Akio Doi ruled against the families of Toshiaki Mukai and Tuyoshi Noda, Japanese soldiers who had participated in a "killing contest", to see who would be the first to kill 100 Chinese, in 1937. The families had sued the Mainichi Shimbun, whose predecessor, the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, covered the story in 1937, as well as the Asahi Shimbun and Honda, for the latter's stories, published by the former, in 1971 and (in book form) 1981.[2] [3]
[edit] Further reading
- Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi. "The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt Amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971–75",The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol.26 No.2 Summer 2000.
