Japanese media star fights against anti-China bias

For the past 45 years, since Beijing and Tokyo normalized relations, Yasuhiro Tase, a leading Japanese media professional, has always sought to bolster the often-fraught ties.

On Oct 8, 1944, Tase, son of a Japanese medical-corps solider, was born in Heihe in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province. The city, which borders Russia, was part of a Japanese puppet state known as Manchukuo, in the area of Manchuria, at that time.

In April 1945, the corps to which Tase's father belonged to suddenly retreated to Japan to prepare for a "decisive battle" with the United States on Japanese soil. Tase's mother learnt about it from others after her husband left home.