How were the lawsuit concerning Koreans who remained in Sakhalin, commonly called the “Karafuto Lawsuit,” the testimony of Seiji Yoshida, the comfort women lawsuits and the Asian Women’s Fund connected?
Citing a dialogue between journalists Masayuki Takayama and Miki Otaka published in the monthly magazine WiLL, this article presents their contention that Yoshida’s testimony was used to portray Koreans who had travelled to Sakhalin as people “forcibly taken there by Japan.”
This July 15, 2020 republication re-examines the roles played by postwar-compensation campaigns, the former Japan Socialist Party, lawyers, the Asahi Shimbun and NHK.

2020-07-15

How the Retrospective Narrative of “Forced Mobilization” Was Constructed: The Karafuto Lawsuit, Seiji Yoshida’s Testimony, the Comfort Women Issue and Postwar Compensation
SEO Summary
How were the lawsuit concerning Koreans who remained in Sakhalin, commonly called the “Karafuto Lawsuit,” the testimony of Seiji Yoshida, the comfort women lawsuits and the Asian Women’s Fund connected?
Citing a dialogue between journalists Masayuki Takayama and Miki Otaka published in the monthly magazine WiLL, this article presents their contention that Yoshida’s testimony was used to portray Koreans who had travelled to Sakhalin as people “forcibly taken there by Japan.”
This July 15, 2020 republication re-examines the roles played by postwar-compensation campaigns, the former Japan Socialist Party, lawyers, the Asahi Shimbun and NHK.
Text
They needed, at all costs, a retrospective explanation claiming that the Koreans had been “forcibly taken by Japan.”
That was why Mr Yoshida was brought forward as a witness to the alleged forced mobilization.
This article is a corrected republication of a chapter originally issued on August 21, 2019, with typographical errors and paragraphing revised.
That chapter itself had republished an article issued on May 13, 2019, under the title, “Kensuke Okoshi, Who Studied at the University of Tokyo, Declared with Conviction on NHK’s Nine O’Clock News That Forced Mobilization Had Occurred.”
Its original source was a chapter issued on January 4, 2019, concerning Japanese anti-Japan activists who, in my view, provided South Korea with the ideas used to make repeated demands upon Japan.
The following passages are drawn from a special dialogue between journalists Masayuki Takayama and Miki Otaka, published in the previous month’s issue of WiLL.
I regard the dialogue as essential reading for all Japanese citizens and for people throughout the world.
The Karafuto Lawsuit, the comfort women issue and wartime labour lawsuits followed one after another, creating what appeared to be a continuing series of demands against Japan.
Were anti-Japan actors inside Japan operating behind those campaigns?
Were financial interests connected with the compensation payments?
The following quoted passages present the views of Mr Takayama and Ms Otaka.
The passages enclosed by asterisks contain my own opinions.
How Seiji Yoshida Was Used
Takayama
Ah, here comes a former Miss Japan.
Otaka
That is embarrassing.
Takayama
Not at all.
You are as beautiful as ever.
To begin, in your 2017 book, I Will Remove My Father’s Apology Monument: The Confession of the Son of Seiji Yoshida, the Origin of the Comfort Women Issue, you thoroughly investigated Yoshida’s life and the course that led to his false testimony.
Otaka
Yes.
Takayama
South Korea has once again produced an outrageous ruling in the wartime labour cases.
Otaka
In 1983, Seiji Yoshida erected a monument at the Hill of Longing in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, apologizing for the alleged forced mobilization of Koreans.
He prostrated himself at the unveiling ceremony, but the monument said nothing about comfort women.
That was because the comfort women issue had not yet emerged at that time.
I believe that people connected with Sakhalin may have used Yoshida’s testimony as the foundation for engraving the claim of forced mobilization in stone and extracting money from the Japanese government indefinitely.
Takayama
So the existence of the wartime labour issue had already been discussed long before the recent court rulings.
Otaka
Yes.
I believe it began with questions concerning the treatment of Koreans who remained in Sakhalin during and after the war.
Takayama
During the period when Japan governed the Korean Peninsula, Koreans holding Japanese nationality travelled to Sakhalin together with Japanese workers, either seeking employment or through wartime labour mobilization.
Otaka
In the year before the publication of Yoshida’s book My War Crimes: The Forced Mobilization of Koreans, which described alleged comfort-women hunting on Jeju Island, Yoshida spoke about such hunting at public lectures.
In September and November of that same year, he appeared twice in court during the lawsuit seeking the return of Koreans who had remained in Sakhalin, commonly known as the Karafuto Lawsuit.
On the first occasion, he testified about the alleged hunting of Korean men for Sakhalin.
On the second, he testified about the alleged hunting of comfort women on Jeju Island.
Some readers may not immediately understand how Yoshida was connected with the Karafuto Lawsuit.
However, without understanding these circumstances, the essential nature of the comfort women issue cannot be seen.
The Karafuto Lawsuit involved Hiromi Igarashi of the former Japan Socialist Party, who later became Chief Cabinet Secretary.
Lawyer Kenichi Takagi, who was also involved in South Korean comfort women litigation, served as secretary-general of the plaintiffs’ legal team in the suit against the Japanese government.
The legal team argued that Japan had forcibly taken 43,000 Koreans to Sakhalin and had abandoned the Koreans there after the war, and that the Japanese government should accept responsibility.
The Koreans living in Sakhalin, however, had travelled there voluntarily in search of better pay.
When that was the case, no Japanese compensation obligation would arise.
A retrospective explanation claiming that they had been “forcibly taken by Japan” was therefore required at all costs.
That was why Mr Yoshida was brought forward as a witness to the alleged forced mobilization.
Takayama
I see.
So that was the connection.
And the Asahi Shimbun then reported his testimony.
The Connection between the Comfort Women Issue and Karafuto
Otaka
As a result, the Japanese government provided more than eight billion yen from the national treasury for the return of Koreans remaining in Sakhalin.
The Sakhalin assistance payments continued afterwards, and approximately 100 million yen was reportedly allocated even in the previous year.
I believe that most Japanese citizens, like me, will be learning this fact for the first time.
Two years after the conclusion of the Karafuto Lawsuit, comfort women litigation suddenly began in 1991.
The Asian Women’s Fund, established in 1995 after the formation of the Murayama Cabinet, received approximately 4.8 billion yen from the national treasury before its dissolution in 2007.
Enormous sums of money moved through both the Karafuto litigation and the comfort women issue.
Behind this series of lawsuits, in my view, was the weakening and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, which had been a source of support for the former Socialist Party and other left-wing forces.
Given the reported financial relationship between the Soviet Union and the Socialist Party, I believe that possible foreign funding or influence involving influential Okinawan newspapers should not be dismissed without investigation.
China seeks control of the Senkaku Islands, and Chinese and Korean Peninsula interests have supported arguments separating Okinawa from Japan.
For this reason, I believe the possibility of influence operations directed at Okinawa must be examined.
I also believe that reporting by the Asahi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun and NHK has, in effect, supported some of these narratives and movements.
Certain political and academic figures have promoted the claim internationally that the people of Okinawa constitute an indigenous minority.
I regard that claim as false and harmful.
The possibility that influence operations have sought to reinforce policies preventing Japan from maintaining conventional military deterrence should also be investigated.
When Hong Kong citizens faced the loss of freedom, more than 900 accounts or sites reportedly connected with Chinese information operations were identified as disseminating false or manipulated information.
Given the importance China attaches to shaping opinion in its own favour, it would be unreasonable, in my view, to assume that it conducts no influence operations concerning Okinawa, a strategically important island distant from Japan’s main islands.
My position is that a Chinese government pursuing regional and ultimately global hegemony would naturally seek influence over major Japanese and Okinawan media institutions.
Propaganda performs a central function in a one-party communist system.
I criticize such a system for placing power, money and control above culture and artistic life.
Otaka
Those who could no longer expect support from the former Soviet Union may have turned to postwar compensation as a new source of money and developed methods for drawing funds from Japan.
In other words, the comfort women issue may have been prepared as the next method by people associated with the Karafuto Lawsuit to obtain postwar compensation from the Japanese government.
The comfort women issue is connected at its foundation with the Sakhalin issue.
It may therefore be said that Yoshida was used for the convenience of those who gathered around what became a postwar-compensation interest.
After the Soviet Union established effective control of Sakhalin, many Koreans were left there.
I believe that lawyers and academics, including Mr Takagi and Yasuaki Onuma, who was involved in establishing the Asian Women’s Fund, used the concept of “forced mobilization” to construct the issue as a responsibility of the Japanese government.
While presenting NHK’s nine o’clock news, Kensuke Okoshi, a graduate of the University of Tokyo, stated with conviction that forced mobilization had occurred.
I strongly criticize that editorial position.
I also have serious questions about NHK’s institutional culture, misconduct involving some employees, and whether the activities of figures including Eriko Ikeda have, in effect, repeated or advanced North Korean narratives.
Takayama
In reality, did the Koreans not settle there on their own initiative?
Otaka
That is correct.
From the beginning of the 1990s, Socialist Party legislators repeatedly raised forced labour mobilization and the comfort women issue in the Diet in an effort to turn them into major political questions.
The Diet records from that period make this clear.
According to Sawako Arai, author of Why Could the Koreans in Sakhalin Not Return Home?, Mr Takagi was then legal counsel to the former Socialist Party.
His law office was reportedly located in the same commercial building as the office of Takako Doi.
The Asahi Shimbun’s Response
Takayama
Speaking of the 1990s, in 1991, Takashi Uemura, then a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, interviewed former comfort woman Hak-sun Kim.
He reported that a Korean woman allegedly taken to the battlefield under the name of the Women’s Volunteer Corps and forced to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers had been found alive in Seoul, and that the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery had begun interviewing her.
That was the article.
Mr Uemura later sued journalist Yoshiko Sakurai for defamation after she argued that his series of reports contained fabrications.
The Sapporo District Court dismissed Mr Uemura’s claim.
In other words, Mr Uemura lost the case at that stage.
In 1992, Chuo University Professor Emeritus Yoshiaki Yoshimi gave Asahi Shimbun reporter Tetsuro Tatsuno copies of materials concerning comfort women that he had examined at the National Institute for Defense Studies library.
The materials then became a front-page story.
To be continued.
Note on This Republication
The central argument of this article is that the entire comfort women controversy cannot be understood merely by treating Seiji Yoshida’s testimony as an isolated false account.
According to the interpretation presented by Miki Otaka, Yoshida’s testimony was used in the Karafuto Lawsuit to support a narrative of “forced mobilization” capable of establishing a Japanese government obligation to pay compensation.
After the conclusion of the Karafuto Lawsuit, people with overlapping political, legal or ideological backgrounds allegedly developed comfort women lawsuits and related postwar-compensation campaigns.
From this perspective, the Karafuto Lawsuit, Yoshida’s testimony, the reporting of the Asahi Shimbun, the comfort women litigation and the Asian Women’s Fund should not be treated as completely separate events.
They should be examined as parts of a broader structure in which a narrative of “forced mobilization” was created and expanded across politics, litigation and the media to obtain continuing apologies and compensation from the Japanese government.
The dialogue quoted here contains the interpretations and inferences of its participants.
The passages marked with asterisks contain my own opinions and criticism.
It is necessary to distinguish those opinions from independently established facts while re-examining what claims were made, by whom, and how Japanese public funds were ultimately spent.