This article reveals how the activities of Yasutoshi Takami, a central figure behind a Nagasaki peace museum, were incorporated into South Korean legislation, North Korean-linked cultural exchanges, and Japanese media narratives, forming a transnational structure that propagated false historical claims about Hashima Island.

Takami’s activities were also utilized by South Korea.
2017-06-07
What follows continues from the previous chapter.
The museum was opened in October 2007 by Yasutoshi Takami, former representative of the civic group “Association for Protecting the Human Rights of Resident Koreans in Nagasaki” and honorary professor at Nagasaki University, together with colleagues, inheriting the wishes of peace activist and pastor Shoji Oka.
Regarding Takami, who passed away in April, the local Nagasaki Shimbun reported his death on its front page and published an appraisal on the social affairs page under the headline “Devoted to Clarifying the Reality of the History of Perpetration.”
In October 2015, Takami told South Korean students visiting the museum that “Koreans were always forced to live in the poor and damp housing conditions of Gunkanjima.”
The museum explains Hashima Island as follows.
“On this island isolated from the mainland, those forcibly brought here lived days of deadly struggle in unimaginably harsh labor conditions, subjected to cruel violence.
They called Hashima ‘Hell Island.’”
Takami’s activities were also utilized by South Korea.
In March 2004, the South Korean National Assembly enacted the “Special Act on the Investigation of the Truth of Damage from Forced Mobilization under Japanese Colonial Rule” and established a committee for truth-finding activities.
The report summarizing its findings was released in June 2016, and the names of Takami and the museum were explicitly listed as “overseas advisory members” supporting document collection and on-site investigations.
In its preface, the report compared the responses of Germany and Japan.
“Germany has reflected on the past and fulfilled its responsibility as a state by disseminating to the world the historical crimes committed by the Nazis.
However, Japan, the perpetrator nation in the Asia-Pacific War, has reached the present day without offering sincere apologies or reflection for the brutal acts inflicted upon victims of forced mobilization of Koreans.”
Takami also engaged in exchanges with North Korea.
In November 2016, he served as chair of the executive committee for the Nagasaki performance of the North Korean “Mt. Kumgang Song and Dance Troupe.”
According to Choson Sinbo, the organ of Chongryon, Takami stated that “the situation in which the Japanese government’s anti-North Korea policies and exclusionary policies toward Korean schools prevail must be overcome.”
Takami was also connected to Seung Seo, a specially appointed professor at Ritsumeikan University who was arrested in 1971 by South Korea’s Army Security Command as a “North Korean spy” and imprisoned as a political prisoner.
Takami was a member of the “Association to Rescue the Two Seo Brothers,” which sought the release of the imprisoned Seo and his brother.
After attending Seo’s lecture in Kyushu in 1994, Takami contributed the following statement to the opening of Can We Meet and Live Together as Human Beings? published the following year.
“Mr. Seo’s lecture was proof of the continuation of the movement aspiring toward unification, and at the same time demanded unvarnished reflection and a fundamental change in awareness from Japanese politics, which harbors malice beyond merely ‘not obstructing’ unification, and from Japanese sovereigns who still do not wish to ‘share the pain.’”
The student whom Seo called his “number one disciple” is now writing articles as a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun.