An examination of criticism directed at The Asahi Shimbun over its comfort-women reporting, focusing on the retraction of Seiji Yoshida-related reports, the conflation of the Women’s Volunteer Corps with comfort women, Uemura’s reporting on Kim Hak-sun, and the shift in terminology from “forcible recruitment” to “coercion.”

2020-08-17
How Can Criticism with So Much Basis Be Called “Unfounded”?

Abiru: Mr. Sugiura, whom we have just been discussing, wrote the following on the front page.
“In some opinion journals and on the Internet, there has arisen the unfounded criticism that ‘the comfort women issue was fabricated by The Asahi Shimbun.’”
Far from being unfounded, there are more than enough grounds and reasons for such criticism. Yet they write as if they themselves were the victims. They also say that they are retracting the articles concerning Seiji Yoshida, but that is mentioned only in small print on an inside page, with nothing about it on the front page. There is not even a headline. One can clearly read into this an intention from the outset to obscure the matter.
Kadota: It is not Asahi that has been subjected to unfounded criticism; it is the Japanese people. Comfort women statues have been erected around the world, and resolutions condemning Japan have been taken up in legislatures in various places. I wondered how Asahi would answer for this, but instead it has become defiant.
Sakurai: When I see the words “unfounded criticism,” I find myself wondering how they can possibly go that far. This is precisely a problem that The Asahi Shimbun fabricated. First, there is the issue of forcible recruitment, and second, the linking of the completely different Women’s Volunteer Corps with the comfort women. The claim that women of the Volunteer Corps were forcibly taken away shocked the world, and Asahi was the standard-bearer for that narrative.
If you imagine what “Women’s Volunteer Corps = comfort women” actually implies, it is staggering. The Volunteer Corps was a labor service corps made up of females ranging roughly from around twelve years old, after elementary school, to women of twenty-four or twenty-five. To write that the Japanese military forcibly took girls who had barely finished, or had not even finished, elementary school, along with young women in their early twenties, and made them “military comfort women”—if you write something like that, it is obvious that public opinion in South Korea would erupt in anger. And that is what was written. It would be stranger if Koreans did not become angry; their anger was only natural. As a result, Japan-South Korea relations, which might otherwise have been maintained on much better terms, were seriously damaged. In that sense as well, Asahi owes an apology to Koreans.
Abiru: Asahi acknowledged that it had confused comfort women with the Volunteer Corps, but wrote that the confusion had not been unreasonable because there was little research at the time. That does not make sense. It was the sort of thing you could have understood immediately simply by asking your parents or grandparents, “What was the Volunteer Corps?”
Kadota: It was a matter of common knowledge. The Women’s Volunteer Corps was something people understood at the level of ordinary common knowledge.
Abiru: This is not something for which one needs to invoke “research” in such grandiose terms. I want to make that point here.

How Was the Information That She Had Been “Sold” Evaluated?

Sakurai: Regarding Uemura’s article, the special feature says, “We found that part of the article contained factual errors,” and, “We regret that our corroborating investigation was insufficient.” But this is not something that can be disposed of merely by saying that corroboration was insufficient.
In the article Uemura published on August 11, 1991, the woman’s name was withheld. Three days later, on the 14th, however, she held a press conference in Seoul under her real name, Kim Hak-sun. There she stated, “My parents sold me for 40 yen,” and, “Three years later, when I was seventeen, my adoptive father sold me.” She later filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government, and the complaint clearly stated that “because of poverty, she was sold to become a gisaeng.” Uemura must have seen such statements. The special feature says many things, but how did he evaluate the important information that she had been “sold by her parents”?
After the lawsuit was filed, Uemura again prominently reported an interview with Kim on December 25, 1991. In that article too, he did not write that she had been “sold because of poverty.” Looking carefully at the circumstances before and after, I believe it would not be wrong to conclude that Uemura intentionally omitted the information that Kim had been sold. The same applies to the Volunteer Corps. He did not report the important information that the Volunteer Corps had nothing to do with the comfort women. I believe that is what we must conclude.
Abiru: One related point. Asahi’s current special feature says that the tape Uemura listened to did not contain the statement that she had been “sold to become a gisaeng.” Even assuming that to be true, Uemura’s August 1991 article said that she had been “taken to the battlefield in the name of the Volunteer Corps.” Did Uemura hear on the tape that she had been “taken to the battlefield in the name of the Volunteer Corps”? He probably did not. We must therefore say that there was an element of fabrication. If this is not fabrication, then what is? Asahi’s special feature does not make that point clear.

“Forcible Recruitment”: The Wording Changed Repeatedly Even in Asahi Editorials

Kadota: The special feature says that the original information came from the Seoul bureau chief, but why did Uemura of the Osaka City News Department have to make an overseas business trip all the way to Seoul to report the story? That too raises questions. An overseas trip is different from a domestic assignment. It is difficult simply to accept the claim that there was no special relationship with his mother-in-law.
Sakurai: I have the same question. It was a scoop. From a reporter’s point of view, it would be almost inconceivable for a Seoul bureau chief to hand his own scoop over to a reporter from another department. Regarding Uemura, the special feature quotes him as saying, “I never obtained special information by using my family relationship with my mother-in-law.” But it is certain that the article he wrote worked to the advantage of his mother-in-law’s position. That only raises further questions: Why did he not write the information that she had been “sold by her parents”? Why did he write an article linking her to the Volunteer Corps? The special feature provides no explanation at all on these points.
Kadota: Asahi itself presumably understands that forcible recruitment lies at the heart of the issue. Was there forcible recruitment or was there not? That is the central point behind the term “sex slaves.” If one uses the term “sex slaves,” there would have to be such acts as forcibly taking women away against their will, confining them, or compelling them through rape to engage in sexual relations against their wishes. Without forcible recruitment, it would be very difficult to call them “sex slaves.” If that point collapses, the question then becomes, “What, then, was all of The Asahi Shimbun’s reporting until now?” If it were established that there had been no forcible recruitment, I believe Asahi would face an existential crisis. That is why, I think, it is desperately trying to defend this point and still refuses to lower the banner that “there was coercion.”
There is far too little direct testimony in the special feature from Uemura himself or from the Seoul bureau chief. Conversely, the way the feature has been put together gives me the impression that Asahi is trying somehow to bring the matter to a close and get through the crisis.
Abiru: Looking at Asahi’s editorials, around 1992 they treated forcible recruitment as an obvious premise. Then, as the claim of forcible recruitment became increasingly doubtful, the wording retreated to “there was probably forcible recruitment.” Later they began writing that “whether or not there was forcible recruitment is not the issue,” and eventually they stopped using the term “forcible recruitment” itself.
Sakurai: It became “coercion.”
Abiru: This is clearly an attempt to obscure the issue. I also think it is an insult to Asahi’s readers. They are not trying to tell the truth. The Japanese public has suffered greatly as well, and I believe their response has been profoundly insincere.