How China Uses the United Nations for Propaganda: Yoshiko Sakurai’s Examination of the “400,000 Comfort Women” Claim
February 10, 2024 China Uses the United Nations as a Propaganda Tool for the Chinese Communist Party This reveals how China uses the United Nations as a propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party. February 5, 2022 I am republishing the chapter distributed on October 30, 2020, entitled “Su Zhiliang: Participating in Various UN-Related Committees as China’s Representative.” This chapter explains why Western media—perhaps as a result of Chinese or South Korean influence operations—call Naoki Hyakuta, who is engaged in some of the most important work of our time, “right-wing” and attach other absurd labels to him. The following is from Yoshiko Sakurai’s official blog, which I have just read online. https://yoshiko-sakurai.jp/2016/04/28/6348 Yoshiko Sakurai is a “national treasure” in the sense defined by Saichō. Indeed, she is a “national treasure” of the highest order. Only after reading this truly substantial essay did something finally make sense to me. When Haruki Murakami wrote the absurd claim in a new book several years ago that there had been 400,000 comfort women, Naoki Hyakuta responded with fierce criticism, displaying a genuine intellect quite unlike Murakami’s mind, shaped by Asahi Shimbun editorials and the like. In his novel, Murakami presented the figure of 400,000 comfort women as a reliable account heard from a trustworthy person, and Hyakuta refuted that nonsense. The person Murakami had “heard” it from was, astonishingly, Professor Su Zhiliang of Shanghai Normal University—in other words, it was Chinese propaganda. What a man. What kind of Japanese person is Haruki Murakami? “China’s Claim of 400,000 Comfort Women Spreads Around the World” Shūkan Shinchō, April 28, 2016 issue Japan Renaissance, No. 702 “China’s new anti-Japanese propaganda campaign has begun in earnest. They are compiling materials claiming that there were not 200,000 but 400,000 comfort women, and that the true victims were Chinese comfort women, and are using these materials to persuade Western societies.” Professor Shirō Takahashi of Meisei University made these remarks on April 15 during the internet broadcast program Genron TV. Takahashi introduced an article carried by the Chinese media outlet FOCUS-ASIA on December 16, 2014. Citing statistics from the Research Center for Chinese Comfort Women, the article stated that “approximately 300,000 women, a number equivalent to the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, died after being violated by Japanese troops, accounting for 75 percent of the total.” If 300,000 were killed and that represented 75 percent of the total, the total number of comfort women would be 400,000. “The figures of 400,000 in total, 300,000 dead, and 200,000 Chinese comfort women are complete fiction and form one of the pillars of the historical campaign against Japan. The institution giving this fabrication an academic appearance and enhancing its credibility is the Research Center for Chinese Comfort Women mentioned in that article. The center is located within Shanghai Normal University, and its central figure is Professor Su Zhiliang. In 2014, Su published an English-language book, Chinese Comfort Women. Since then, he has attended various UN-related committees as China’s representative.” ＊Murakami thus played a part in this Chinese scheme. Or rather, he was probably a target of Chinese influence operations.＊ The inscription of the “Nanjing Massacre” on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register on October 10 last year is still fresh in our minds. The International Advisory Committee decided on the inscription, and Su also attended that meeting as China’s representative. His Chinese Comfort Women is a collection of the oral histories of twelve women. Having read the book repeatedly, Takahashi found that its contents lacked corroboration and that, even where supporting material was offered, hearsay that would have no credibility in Japan was presented as if it were significant documentary evidence. In short, the book is entirely unworthy of trust, but Takahashi says it contains a built-in escape route. “Rape Centers” “It identifies itself as oral history, a collection of spoken recollections. They are probably calculating that minor errors of memory will be considered acceptable. They skillfully publicize the suffering of these unfortunate women, and Western societies receive it as a legitimate appeal.” Su’s book acquires an aura of authority from the fact that its publisher is Oxford University Press. The back cover also carries an endorsement by Ms. McDougall, regarded as one of the authorities on the comfort women issue. She wrote a report on the issue in 1998 as a UN special rapporteur. Following Ms. Coomaraswamy’s report, McDougall produced a report that was even harsher and more emotive, describing comfort stations as “rape centers.” Takahashi pointed out: “In her endorsement of Su’s book, McDougall writes in praise of it: ‘Reading the testimony of Chinese women who survived brutal treatment in Japanese comfort stations causes profound anguish. Yet these stories must be passed on. This book makes a major contribution to understanding the victims of the terrible abuses committed in territories controlled by the Japanese military during the Second World War.’” With his authority enhanced by publication through Oxford University Press and an endorsement from a UN special rapporteur, Su became internationally known and appeared on CNN on December 31 last year. The program followed the December 28 agreement between the Japanese and South Korean governments on the comfort women issue. Takahashi says he watched the broadcast closely. “The program emphasized that there had been 400,000 comfort women in total, half of them Chinese women forced into prostitution without pay, presenting this information as the account of Professor Su Zhiliang of Shanghai Normal University.” On January 3 of the new year, similarly appalling material appeared in the Canadian local newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen. “Perhaps drawing on the 400,000 figure advanced by Su and others, it put the number of comfort women at 410,000. It carried outrageous claims: that many victims were girls aged fourteen to eighteen, that the Japanese military sought virgins, that resisting family members were sometimes killed, and that only forty-six survivors remained. The lies of China’s historical campaign against Japan are spreading across North America through English-language media. The Japan–South Korea agreement and Chinese comfort women are fundamentally unrelated, but China is steadily placing Su on the world stage.” It is well known that, following last year’s inscription of the “Nanjing Massacre,” China is preparing to seek the inscription of comfort women materials on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Can the Japanese government prevent it? The reality offers little reassurance. Even six months after the inscription of the “Nanjing Massacre,” the Japanese government has seen only an inventory. Even when Japan requests the materials, China provides only that inventory. The Memory of the World program exists to preserve important historical materials in a form accessible to everyone. Yet China’s failure to provide anything beyond an inventory after six months runs counter to UNESCO’s stated purpose. ＊This reveals how China uses the United Nations for CCP propaganda. At the same time, it demonstrates that the UN is a thoroughly incompetent and disreputable organization, easily exploited for propaganda by totalitarian states—China and South Korea, whose activities can fairly be described as dominated by propaganda—and by people styling themselves NGOs who suffer from an infantile leftist disorder.＊ Furthermore, although UNESCO’s fourteen-member International Advisory Committee examined the Nanjing submission, not one of its members had seen the materials. The substantive examination was conducted by the Register Subcommittee, a subordinate body of the International Advisory Committee, but only one person on that subcommittee had seen the documents submitted by China. Takahashi continued: “Neither the subcommittee nor the parent International Advisory Committee includes a historian with even some knowledge of the Nanjing Incident. They are professional archivists.” The Foreign Ministry Is the Root of the Problem China is preparing to coordinate with five other countries to submit comfort women materials for inscription. The deadline is the end of May. Even if Japan refutes the materials they are preparing point by point, “it is already too late,” Takahashi says. Instead, Japan must challenge the irrationality and absurdity of the registration system and change the system itself. That is the Foreign Ministry’s responsibility. Yet former House of Representatives member Mio Sugita stresses that such action cannot be expected from the ministry in the first place. Sugita has argued at the United Nations and elsewhere that comfort women were not forcibly taken away. She has given the same explanation to representatives of anti-Japanese NGOs gathering at UN headquarters. “From the perspective of someone like me, a member of what might be called a conservative NGO, the Foreign Ministry’s actions are beyond comprehension. The ministry jointly sponsors events with NGOs centered on the Japan Federation of Bar Associations that engage in anti-Japanese rhetoric and activities. Naturally, the comfort women issue is also presented there in an anti-Japanese manner.” ＊All Japanese citizens must understand that this is why Sugita’s remarks are constantly picked apart and why she continues to be attacked by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan—a party that can fairly be described as betraying the country and, in particular, as acting as a proxy for the Korean Peninsula—and by media outlets such as the Asahi Shimbun and television stations that betray Japan. When we knew nothing of the activities of people calling themselves NGOs, who were disparaging Japan at the UN, promoting all manner of dubious groups, claiming that Okinawans were an Indigenous people and insisting that the Ainu were Indigenous to Japan in an effort to divide and weaken the country, Sugita was fighting alone for Japan and its people. She is constantly attacked by people suffering from an infantile leftist disorder whose minds have been shaped merely by subscribing to and closely reading the Asahi Shimbun and watching NHK and similar broadcasters. NHK has never once reported the truth behind this. In other words, it is no exaggeration to say that attaching “South Korean” or “Chinese” to NHK’s name would better reflect the broadcaster’s true character.＊ Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has already stated clearly in the Diet that there is no evidence of forcible abduction of comfort women, that “sex slaves” does not reflect the reality, and that the figure of 200,000 has no basis. Is it not the Foreign Ministry’s duty to communicate information based on the prime minister’s statements? Why does it sympathize with these NGOs and disseminate information different from the prime minister’s Diet statements—information that can reasonably be called anti-Japanese? This only strengthens my conviction that the Foreign Ministry itself is the root of the historical controversies.
