During the 1970s he wrote a series of articles on the atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese soldiers during World War II called "Chūgoku no Tabi" (中国の旅, "Travels in China").
[2] During the 1970s Honda 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").
These references disappeared from about 1955 with the stigmatizing of Marxist historians who were critical of "imperial myths and morals" during the Cold War.
Among the more intense rebuttals to the text was that of Yamamoto Shichihei [ja], a World War II veteran and popular commentator, who attacked in particular an account recorded by Honda of the hundred man killing contest.
[7] 1999 saw the English language publication of Honda's The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame.
Pacific Basin's founder, Frank Gibney, also edited the book, writing an introduction critical of Iris Chang and her popular treatment of the massacre, The Rape of Nanking, which had been published two years prior.