"I am ready to appeal to the United Nations' International Court for justice if I lose the case for a fourth time," Azuma said.

He then stood up and made a deep bow before his audience at Shanghai Library.

His long, snow-white hair, surrounding his bald pate, almost touched the table. Once again, resounding applause broke out and he was engulfed in it for a long time.

Azuma compared the Nanjing Massacre by the invading Japanese troops to the Holocaust by the German Nazis to the Jews.

"These two were the most inhuman tragedies during the Second World War," said Azuma.

In 1937, Azuma was conscripted by force into the Imperial Japanese Army and was sent to China the same year. He documented in his diary his participation in the Nanjing Massacre.

In a few weeks after the invading Japanese troops captured Nanjing, then the capital of China, in December 1937, they killed more than 300,000 defenceless civilians and unarmed soldiers and raped more than 80,000 women between the ages of seven and 70.

After half a century of silent and violent inner remorse, Azuma published his wartime diary in 1987.

Since then, he was constantly molested by rightists in Japan. The persecution escalated and Azuma was later sued by a former soldier he described as a war criminal in the diary.

The diary recorded a Chinese civilian being forced, by the litigant, into a sack soaked with gasoline with grenades tied to it. Then he set the sack on fire and thrown it into one of the three ponds in front of the Nanjing High Court.

Three times Japanese courts ruled in the litigant's favour and judged that Azuma was guilty of fabricating material and libelling the litigant.

"I lost the case just because the whole process was puppetry by the Japanese Government which was manipulated by the die-hard, shameless and remorseless rightists.

"Their true goal has always been to deny the Nanjing Massacre," Azuma said.

On January 23, just two days after the Tokyo High Court found Azuma "guilty," a large, well-choreographed anti-China rally entitled "Nanjing Massacre - the largest lie of the 20th century," was held in Osaka, ironically Shanghai's sister city of friendship.

In order to tell the world the truth and seek moral support, a report team was formed in Japan that included Azuma, his backup committee and his lawyers. The report team had made speeches in Japan and the Philippines before it came to China. And this was also Azuma's sixth visit to China after the war.

"Nanjing people respect Shiro Azuma for his courage and integrity," said Zhu Chengshan, curator of Nanjing Massacre museum.

During Azuma's first visit to China after the war, Azuma knelt a long time before the memorial of the museum of Nanjing Massacre.

"It was snowing and finally the museum staff helped him up," Zhu said.

During this visit, Azuma paid his homage to the Nanjing Massacre museum, the Museum of the Anti-Japanese War in Beijing and the September 18th Memorial in Shenyang.

Azuma has appealed to the High Court to retry the case, now in its eighth year.

"I can see clearly, that under Japan's present political system, there is little chance for me to win the case," Azuma said. "But I will fight until I die."