Published on August 30, 2019.
This article introduces Masayuki Takayama’s Shukan Shincho column titled “Gunimo Tsukanai.”
It examines the testimony of Gu Yeon-cheol concerning Gunkanjima, the reporting stance of the Nagasaki Shimbun, contradictions with the memories of former island residents, the story of Chinese workers allegedly being buried alive, Daisuke Tsuda’s treatment of the comfort woman statue as art at the Aichi Triennale, and the connection with the Asahi Shimbun’s fabricated comfort women reporting.

August 30, 2019.
The overall headquarters of the labor unions now driving the current anti-Japanese uproar is also called the “Labor Federation,” in the style of Sohyo.
At its rallies, an eighty-seven-year-old old man always appears and gives a speech.
His name is Gu Yeon-cheol.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column, published in yesterday’s issue of Shukan Shincho under the title “Gunimo Tsukanai.”
People all over the world now know the correctness of my assessment that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
At the opposite pole from him are Jun Matsuo of the Nagasaki Shimbun, mentioned in this chapter, Asahi Shimbun reporters, especially that Takahashi, a second Matsui Yayori, and the people who control NHK’s news department, as well as Arima, Kuwako, Takeda, Ōkoshi, and others.
Gunimo Tsukanai.
The national flag of the Yi Dynasty Korea had a yellow and white circle in the center of a deep crimson field.
It was a splendid flag with black frills attached.
Yet the present South Korean flag has a red and blue circle in the center of a white field.
It can be mistaken for the Rising Sun flag.
If they say they hate Japan so much, they should have used a Yi Dynasty-style design or some other design.
It is said that they nevertheless made it resemble the Rising Sun flag because somewhere they have admiration for Japan.
In the style of Aki Yashiro, feelings of “hatred” and “longing” intersect and cannot be cut off.
Therefore, somewhere in their behavior, “Japan” shows its face.
The overall headquarters of the labor unions now driving the current anti-Japanese uproar is also called the “Labor Federation,” in the style of Sohyo.
At its rallies, an eighty-seven-year-old old man always appears and gives a speech.
His name is Gu Yeon-cheol.
According to The Truth of Gunkanjima, produced by Yasuko Kato, Gu says he was born into an extremely poor family in South Gyeongsang Province.
His father went to Japan and found work on Hashima, or Gunkanjima.
He earned enough money to call his family over, and Gu, at the age of eight, came to his father.
He no longer had to worry about food.
He could also attend school.
It must have been like heaven.
So one might think that Gu would speak at the rally about gratitude toward Japan, but that was not the case.
He says,
“On the way to school, Koreans were begging for food.”
“From the classroom window, I could see Nakanoshima.
Smoke rose from cremating Koreans who had died in the coal mine.
The smoke increased almost every day.”
“On the day the war ended, the one thousand Chinese brought from Manchuria disappeared from sight.
It is said that they were locked inside the mine tunnels and buried alive after the tunnel mouths were blown up.
It was cruelty beyond the imagination of innocent Koreans.”
For the last part, it would still have sounded more plausible if he had said something like “cruelty that even cruel Koreans could not think of.”
In any case, Gu said that he had lived for six years on Gunkanjima, a hell on earth, and had witnessed dozens or hundreds of his compatriots being abused and killed.
With each word, the audience groaned, and before long the groans turned into angry shouts of “Beat the Japanese down, sumida.”
Gu recently “returned home” to Gunkanjima, and the Nagasaki Shimbun faithfully put into print the words of this living witness of hell.
But objections were raised to the article.
A classmate from the national school on Gunkanjima that Gu claimed to have attended said, “There were Lees, Kims, and Changs, but there was no one named Gu.”
“Nakanoshima is on the opposite side of the island from the school.
It cannot be seen from the school windows.”
“Gunkanjima was a highly modernized city.
There were dormitories and dining halls for each group.
There were living quarters and dining halls for Koreans as well.
There was not even any room for beggars to enter the island.”
Incidentally, for Koreans there was also a brothel called Yoshidaya.
Both the manager and the prostitutes were Koreans.
Gu’s story does not match a single memory of the residents of that time.
Although he says he was there for six years, no one knows him.
His name is not in the school register either.
On top of that, he also included the lie about “Chinese being buried alive.”
He feels no shame in deeply wounding the hearts of people who regard Gunkanjima as their hometown.
Jun Matsuo, deputy news editor of the Nagasaki Shimbun, which carried such a story by Gu, says, “I think the stories of the people of Hashima are also true.
At the same time, I think there is truth in the stories of the wartime laborers as well.”
So Matsuo weighed the two truths against each other and chose Gu.
He did not check the school register or listen to the people who had lived on the island at the time.
Journalist Matsuo is declaring that his insight goes that far.
There is a similar person.
It is Daisuke Tsuda, who was hired by the Aichi Triennale for 8.6 million yen.
He declared that the comfort woman statue made by the South Korean sculptor Kim Seo-kyung and her husband was art.
That was his judgment, but in truth the statue was created on the theme of an incident in which two junior high school girls were run over and killed by a U.S. military vehicle.
That is why it is sitting on a junior high school study chair.
They tried to place it in front of a U.S. military base and were shouted down, so it had been kept in storage for a long time.
Later, it was brought out as harassment against the Japanese Embassy.
Now it has been renamed and installed as the comfort woman girl statue.
The comfort women story was originally a fabricated story by the Asahi Shimbun.
On top of that, the statue is a repurposed object.
How, in any way, does it become art?
Why do all those who gather around South Korea come to resemble South Koreans?