Fujiwara’s name became widely known in 1955 when his book Shōwa Shi that he co-authored with fellow historians Shigeki Tooyama and Seiichi Imai became a bestseller.
The writer Katsuichiro Kamei famously criticized the fundamental Marxist outlook of the book which divided Japanese society into a war-mongering ruling class and heroic anti-war resisters while ignoring the wavering majority who did not fit neatly into either.
[1] This dispute wound up involving many intellectuals including writers and historians and out of it the book Shōwa Shi Ronsō ("Controversies of Showa History") was developed.
Tokushi Kasahara has deemed that his research made a detailed re-examination of the atrocity applying methods and theories of historical research against his own experience in the army fighting on the battlefield, and analyzing it in the context of Japan’s military history, making special reference to the historical idiosyncrasies of the Japanese army and the latent contempt and discriminatory attitudes of the Japanese people towards China which reinforced them.
Fujiwara Akira had deemed the photo to be of poison gas and he was introduced as “a historian and former army officer who is putting forward proof-positive research of chemical warfare in the Sino-Japanese War”.
However, in Shōwa Shi Fujiwara and his co-authors wrote, “On the 23rd American Air Force fighter units stationed in Japan massed at Kitakyushu.