Focusing on the 1990s comfort-women coverage, the text links Asahi Shimbun reporting—including Takashi Uemura and Yoshiaki Yoshimi—to earlier scandals such as the coral fabrication incident.
It notes that Uemura’s defamation lawsuit was dismissed by the Sapporo District Court, questioning the credibility and trajectory of postwar compensation activism.
It argues that the forced-labor issue, like the comfort-women issue, was not purely initiated by Korea but shaped through collaboration among Japanese lawyers, activists, and some politicians.
The gathering of self-described human-rights lawyers in a parliamentary building and the activities of specific attorneys are cited as evidence of structural continuity between the two issues.

2019-01-04

These two lawyers file lawsuits that are consistently pro-Korea.
Takayama.
Speaking of the 1990s, in 1991 Takashi Uemura, then a reporter for Asahi, interviewed former comfort woman Kim Hak-sun and reported that during the Sino-Japanese War and World War II, under the name “Women’s Volunteer Corps,” Korean women had been taken to battlefields and forced into prostitution for Japanese soldiers, and that one such woman was living in Seoul, after which the “Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan” (co-representative Yun Chung-ok, sixteen groups, about 300,000 members) began hearings.
Come to think of it, when Yoshiko Sakurai said there were fabrications in Uemura’s series of articles, Uemura sued her for defamation, but the Sapporo District Court dismissed his claim.
In short, Uemura lost.
Also, in 1992, Yoshiaki Yoshimi, professor emeritus at Chuo University, copied materials on comfort women he had viewed at the Defense Agency’s National Institute for Defense Studies library and gave them to Asahi reporter Tetsurō Tatsuno, and they were published as a front-page article.
At that time, Asahi’s president was Toshitada Nakae, who actively pushed coverage of the comfort-women issue.
Later, when most of it was found to be erroneous and when President Kimura Itaru (then in office) was nearly forced out, Nakae also uttered words resembling an apology.
Otaka.
Why did Asahi so actively take up the comfort-women issue.
Takayama.
Before discussing that, in 1989 the coral fabrication scandal was exposed, wasn’t it.
Otaka.
On Iriomote Island, Asahi photographer Yoshirō Honda scribbled on coral himself, yet fabricated an exposé as if a third party were the culprit.
Takayama.
It was widely reported, and President Tōichirō Ichiyanagi lost his position.
From then on, Asahi began to resent Japanese people who had disgraced the newspaper.
Perhaps, in the spirit of avenging Ichiyanagi, they energetically took up the comfort-women issue to demean Japanese people.
Asahi is truly a newspaper with a twisted character (laughs).
Match-pump litigation.
Otaka.
One body with Korea (laughs).
Takayama.
In 1982, Asahi reporter Harufumi Kiyota published an article quoting Yoshida’s lecture titled “Korean Women—Taken Away, Me Too.”
And then it reached its peak in the early 1990s.
Otaka.
In the end, neither the forced-labor issue nor the comfort-women issue originated in Korea.
Japanese lawyers, activists, and some politicians have always colluded to create postwar-compensation narratives.
Religious figures are also included.
Regarding this forced-labor trial as well, one hundred Japanese human-rights lawyers gathered and criticized the Japanese government’s response.
It makes one want to ask which country’s lawyers they are.
If they call themselves human-rights advocates, why do they not raise their voices for the ongoing tragedies of the Uyghur, Tibetan, and Southern Mongolian peoples suffering inhumane repression by the Chinese government.
Takayama.
Moreover, those human-rights lawyers reportedly held their gathering in a conference room of the House of Councillors’ office building.
Otaka.
Yes.
The fact that there are lawmakers who provide parliamentary conference rooms to such lawyers is itself abnormal.
In this case, it seems lawyers Shiro Kawakami and Haruta Yamamoto are leading the movement.
Takayama.
These two lawyers file lawsuits that are consistently pro-Korea.
To be continued.