2015-12-16

The author condemns a paper by Yeong-hae Jung as a text built on fabricated reporting by the Asahi Shimbun and filled with pseudo-moralism, a self-denigrating view of history, left-wing ideology, anti-Japanese ideology, and numerous falsehoods—unworthy, in his view, of being called a scholarly paper.
Yet the very fact that such a paper could be openly published in a journal issued by a Japanese university research institute, while its author continued working as a university professor, is presented as powerful evidence of Japan’s world-class freedom of speech and academic freedom.

The people who most need to read the following paper are the members of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
However, I am not saying that they should read it because its contents are correct.
Quite the opposite.
In my view, this paper is built upon fabricated reporting and erroneous historical narratives disseminated for years by the Asahi Shimbun, including those concerning the comfort women issue, and is filled with pseudo-moralism, a self-denigrating view of history, left-wing ideology, anti-Japanese ideology, and every manner of error arising from them.
Moreover, anyone anywhere in the world with sufficient discernment to examine historical sources, argumentation, and logic calmly should be able to see at once that this text is not worthy of being called a scholarly paper.
This is not a scholarly critique of Japan in any meaningful academic sense.
In my view, it is anti-Japanese propaganda built upon fabricated reporting and given the outward form of an academic paper.
What I want the world to understand is not the argument advanced by this paper.
Rather, it is the fact that even a paper of this kind can be openly published in an academic journal issued by a university research institute in Japan, while its author can continue teaching and conducting research as a university professor.
The paper is Yeong-hae Jung’s “Sexual Violence, Colonial Rule, and the Japan-U.S. Alliance — A System of Domination That Abuses Women,” published in Ritsumeikan Studies in Language and Culture by the International Institute of Language and Culture Studies at Ritsumeikan University.
At the time, Yeong-hae Jung was a professor at Otsuma Women’s University.
In Japan, even a text that seeks to denigrate the nation, its history, and Japanese society by building anti-Japanese propaganda upon fabricated reporting can be openly published in an academic journal.
Moreover, the author of such a text can continue teaching and conducting research as a university professor.
What could demonstrate more eloquently how thoroughly Japan protects freedom of speech and academic freedom?
Would it be equally possible in China or South Korea to openly publish, in a university academic journal, a paper as intellectually deplorable as this—one that relies on fabricated reporting in order to denigrate one’s own country, government, and national historical narrative—and still continue working as a university professor?
This paper does not merely “criticize” Japan.
In my view, it takes falsehoods created and disseminated by the Asahi Shimbun and others, portrays Japan as the perpetrator on that basis, and packages anti-Japanese propaganda in the form of an academic paper.
It is, quite literally, a mass of falsehoods presented as scholarship.
And yet it can be published in a university academic journal without the author’s speech itself being suppressed by state power.
That is the reality the United Nations Human Rights Council should confront first.
At the same time, people such as Hideaki Uemura have spoken on human-rights issues concerning Japan, or from positions appearing to speak for Japan, even though almost 100 percent of Japanese people did not know who they were.
The same was true of Shigeki Sakamoto, who was selected within the United Nations human-rights system despite being virtually unknown to almost the entire Japanese public.
Japan, alongside the United States, stands at the world’s highest level in freedom and intellectual achievement.
If the United Nations repeatedly issues human-rights recommendations to Japan, then it has an obligation to disclose how and through what procedures such individuals were selected.
Rights are always accompanied by duties.
Perhaps you consulted organizations such as the Asahi Shimbun and selected these individuals on the basis of their recommendations.
If so, that process should also be disclosed.
At the same time, Japan and the Japanese people must immediately investigate the circumstances and procedures by which these individuals were selected.
For a serious nation, and for a nation that should help lead the world, this is naturally a task that must be undertaken without delay.
The United Nations Human Rights Council should have this paper translated into languages around the world and let people everywhere read it.
Not in order to spread its arguments.
But in order to show the world that Japan is a country with freedom of speech and academic freedom at the highest level in the world—a country in which even a paper such as this can be published freely.