How was the 1993 Kono Statement formulated, and what effects did it subsequently have on Japan–South Korea relations and international perceptions of Japan?
This article republishes a discussion from the October 2014 issue of Seiron featuring Yoshiko Sakurai, Ryusho Kadota, and Rui Abiru, focusing on former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobuo Ishihara, interviews with sixteen former comfort women in South Korea, and the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on the comfort women issue.

2020-08-17
This article reproduces the section concerning the comfort women issue, the Kono Statement, and the Asahi Shimbun from the emergency roundtable discussion titled “Comfort Women, the Yoshida Testimony…The Grave Sin of Anti-Japanese Reporting That Will Not Disappear,” published in the October 2014 issue of Seiron.
Rui Abiru states that Yoshiko Sakurai was the first journalist to reveal in detail the process by which the Kono Statement was issued and the consequences that followed.
He refers in particular to Sakurai’s interview with former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobuo Ishihara, published in the March 1997 issue of Bungeishunju.
The following is an English translation of the original text.
【English Translation】
Seiron, October 2014
Emergency Roundtable Discussion
Journalist: Yoshiko Sakurai
Journalist: Ryusho Kadota
Sankei Shimbun Political News Department Editorial Committee Member: Rui Abiru
Rui Abiru: It was Ms. Sakurai who first revealed how the Kono Statement concerning the comfort women issue came to be issued and what effects it produced.
In the March 1997 issue of Bungeishunju, she interviewed former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobuo Ishihara and revealed in considerable detail, among other matters, that the Kono Statement was issued even though no corroborative investigation had been conducted concerning the interviews with sixteen comfort women carried out in South Korea.
At the time, I was a reporter in the city news department.
I read the article together with my superior, Mizuho Ishikawa, a former editorial writer, and we went to Mr. Ishihara’s home to conduct follow-up reporting and confirm the facts.
The Sankei Shimbun subsequently reported on the matter as well.
That was also what led me to become seriously involved in reporting on the comfort women issue.
Seventeen years have passed since then, and now, at last, the truth is beginning to come to light.
I feel a certain sense of emotion about that.
For two days beginning on August 5, the Asahi Shimbun published special articles reviewing its past reporting on the comfort women issue, but it offered no apology.
Nor did it make any reference at all to the adverse effects that its own reporting had had on Japan–South Korea relations.
It must be said that the review was extremely inadequate.
At the same time, however, I believe that it exposed the true nature of the Asahi Shimbun to public view.
Yoshiko Sakurai: I too feel a certain emotion when I think about how long I have been watching the Asahi Shimbun.
I began to think that “something is wrong with the Asahi” as far back as the 1970s.
For example, in its evening edition of April 19, 1975, an Asahi correspondent wrote of Pol Pot’s revolution in Cambodia as a “revolution possessing an Asian kind of gentleness.”
French and other media repeatedly interviewed refugees fleeing Cambodia at the border and, through reporting around the country, revealed that horrifying massacres were taking place.
Under circumstances in which it was inconceivable that all those accounts were fabricated, the Asahi alone was writing such things as, “the danger of purges is slight.”
Another article from 1986 remains in my memory.
In a column called “Shinkairyu,” editorial committee member Iwao Ishikawa wrote an article titled “Secretary Kim Jong Il on the Screen,” describing Kim Jong Il, the son and successor of President Kim Il Sung, as the most stylish man in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Kim Jong Il was forty-four at the time.
The article said things such as that he wore high heels to compensate for his short stature and that his dandyism was obvious.
It is a classic example of an article that now seems laughable.
It is by now widely known that the Asahi repeatedly portrayed North Korea favorably in comparison with South Korea.
The Asahi Shimbun consistently continued reporting based on the current of left-wing liberalism.
Its reporting on the comfort women issue can also be said to have emerged from that current.
There are also liberal forces in the United States—for example, figures such as historian Professor John Dower of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—who are known for anti-conservative and anti-Japanese statements and activities.
The Asahi continuously provided such people with material that could be used to denigrate Japan.
For decades, left-wing forces in Japan and the United States continued to cooperate across the Pacific.
That is the structure I see.
If one asks what contribution that made to our lives, I would say that it brought only unhappiness and dishonor.
I carefully read the recent special feature on the comfort women issue.
It consisted largely of self-justification, and there was no genuine reflection at all.
The only articles it withdrew were those concerning the testimony of Seiji Yoshida.
It did not withdraw, for example, the August 11, 1991 article by its former reporter Takashi Uemura, which it presented as the first testimony of a victim of the so-called “military comfort women.”
In the end, I can only conclude that the paper attempted to arrange matters in such a way that the Asahi Shimbun itself would not suffer serious damage.
This is a characteristic common among liberal figures in the left-wing camp, but they are generally cowardly.
They do not say, “We were wrong, and we are sorry.”
Rather, one senses no attitude of apology whatsoever.
Ryusho Kadota: I believe that the Asahi’s reporting posture, which has denigrated Japan and the Japanese people, has remained consistent.
Ms. Sakurai has just said that the Asahi merely tried to patch things over and showed no reflection.
To me, it appeared more like defiance.
For example, on the front page of the morning edition carrying the special feature, editorial executive Nobuyuki Sugiura wrote an article titled “Face the Essence of the Comfort Women Issue,” saying that “the essence of the problem is that women had their freedom taken away as comfort women and had their dignity as women trampled upon.”
The comfort women were among the many unfortunate women of that era who, for various reasons, had to sell their bodies.
Everyone recognizes that, and it is a painful subject for everyone, myself included.
That is a historical fact, and it was never the point in dispute.
Yet the Asahi is now replacing the issue by saying, “That is the essence of the problem.”
That is not the case.
The fundamental issue concerning the so-called “military comfort women” is the allegation of “forcible recruitment.”
The issue was created when the Asahi Shimbun reported that these women had been forcibly taken away by the Japanese military and Japanese authorities.
If they were taken away against their will, that would constitute “abduction.”
If they were confined in comfort stations, that would constitute “unlawful confinement.”
If they were forced to engage in sexual relations against their will, that would constitute “rape.”
Here lies the root of the accusations leveled against Japan around the world that it was a country that committed abduction, confinement, and rape.
The essence of the problem, in my view, is that those accusations arose from the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting.
One might have expected the newspaper to reflect on that point, but instead it shifted the issue elsewhere.
What troubles the Asahi most now, I believe, is that its reporting posture, which has denigrated Japan and the Japanese people, is beginning to be exposed before the entire public.
It therefore withdrew only those articles concerning Seiji Yoshida, who had described himself as the mobilization chief of the Shimonoseki branch of the Yamaguchi Prefecture Patriotic Labor Association, in an attempt to deflect criticism.
That, I believe, was the purpose of this special feature.
To be continued.