[2] Hasegawa recruited Yoshihiko Seki, a social scientist teaching at Tokyo Metropolitan University, to be the first editor of the new journal, which was to be published independently by a new company called Japan Echo Inc. founded in June 1974 by Jiji Press reporter Takeshi Mochida.

For instance the first issue of November 1974 included eighteen articles from periodicals including Chūōkōron, Shokun!, Jiyū, Shūkan Gendai, Bungeishunjū, and Seiron grouped into topics like the oil crisis, the Solzhenitsyn case, Japanese relations with southeast Asia where Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka's state visits had been greeted by mass protests, and the case of Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda.

[7] Throughout the journal's existence the Japanese government bought 70 percent of its print run, amounting to 50,000 copies annually, and distributing it free of charge to its embassies and consulates and then in turn to universities, libraries, and researchers.

[7][8] The Economist magazine concluded that the Foreign Affairs Ministry continued to sponsor Japan Echo because it presented "a view of the country that the Japanese government likes the world to see.

[2] Its 1987 special edition on Tokyo was described by a The Japan Times columnist as "one of the best pieces ever done" on the subject[14] and its coverage of the controversy over the Nanking Massacre was endorsed by the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun for its "focus on facts, rather than getting caught up in emotional bluster.

[20] The new online magazine would be released bimonthly in English and Chinese on a website owned by the Japanese Foreign Affairs Ministry, though as before the editors of Japan Echo Inc. had the final say over its contents "in order to keep the publication from being government propaganda.