This essay traces how Seiji Yoshida’s testimony was academically discredited, yet continued to circulate uncritically in mass media, shaping global perceptions.
It analyzes the impact of Professor Ikuhiko Hata’s research, the logic behind the Kono Statement, and the controversy surrounding the Asian Women’s Fund, revealing how Japan lost the public relations and diplomatic battles despite winning the scholarly debate.

2016-07-02

What follows is a continuation of “Forces seeking to create cracks within the liberal bloc are surely smirking with satisfaction.”
Emphasis within the text is mine.
After two rounds of controversy,
a historic paper was published in the June issue of Seiron, released on May 1, 1992.
Professor Ikuhiko Hata announced the results of his investigation on Jeju Island in South Korea, where Seiji Yoshida had testified that he conducted “comfort-women hunts” (“The Seasons of the Military Comfort Women,” special supplement issue, p.139).
The contents were also introduced in the April 30 edition of the Sankei Shimbun.
From then through 1993, when the Kono Statement was issued, Seiron, Bungei Shunju, and Shokun! (now discontinued) actively disseminated arguments that the claims of the “forced recruitment of comfort women / Japan condemnation” camp, including the Asahi Shimbun, were factually incorrect, and at the expert level even the Japan-condemnation side could no longer rely on Yoshida Seiji’s testimony.
Meanwhile, on television and elsewhere, footage of Yoshida’s testimony continued to be broadcast uncritically.
While investigating the comfort women issue, the Japanese government was being pressed by South Korea to acknowledge that there had been “coercion” in recruitment.
However, no matter how extensively the materials of the time were examined, no evidence of forced recruitment could be found, and in the end, a new logic was devised—namely, that “if it was against the individual’s will, it constitutes ‘coercion’”—leading to the announcement of the Kono Statement on August 4, 1993.
Furthermore, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono stated at a press conference, regarding forced recruitment that had not been acknowledged in the statement itself, “That such facts existed. That is fine.”
It was only natural that this would create the misunderstanding that the Japanese government had admitted and apologized for the forced recruitment of comfort women.
In other words, although the camp denying forced recruitment had won the scholarly debate, Japan lost the public relations battle, the battle of public opinion, and the diplomatic battle, resulting in the further spread of the impression that the Japanese military had committed crimes of a magnitude that would remain in human history.
In Japan–South Korea relations, yielding to the demands of the Kim Young-sam administration—which had said, “If coercion is acknowledged, we do not need money”—by issuing the Kono Statement brought diplomatic closure, and when the South Korean government began providing living assistance to former comfort women, it appeared as though the issue had been fully resolved.
However, the Murayama administration’s decision to establish the Asian Women’s Fund and to give each former comfort woman “atonement money” along with a letter of apology from the Prime Minister of Japan became a new source of conflict.
Because compensation issues had been settled at the time of the conclusion of the Japan–South Korea Basic Treaty, the funds for the “atonement money” were drawn from donations by the Japanese public.
In response, South Korean support groups for comfort women criticized this, saying that “donations from the public do not constitute a genuine apology by the Japanese government,” and pressured former comfort women to refuse acceptance of the “atonement money.”
In December 1996, the “Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform” was established, and controversy once again intensified when it challenged the inclusion of “forced recruitment of comfort women” in all middle school history textbooks scheduled for use beginning in April 1997.
The Sankei Shimbun also began criticizing the self-deprecating descriptions in textbooks and clearly opposing the theory of “forced recruitment of comfort women.”
At last, within Japan it became widely understood that no organized, state-driven forced recruitment of comfort women had been proven.
The descriptions of forced recruitment of comfort women in textbooks gradually disappeared through this process, and normalization began to take place.
To be continued.