Published on August 2, 2019.
This essay introduces a detailed article by Jason Morgan and Michael Yon published in the monthly magazine Sound Argument, examining the American left-wing academic network behind UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye’s reports on Japan.
It discusses Kaye’s ties to Alexis Dudden, Mindy Kotler, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, suspicions surrounding FOIA requests, and hostility toward the Sankei Shimbun and Japanese conservatives.

August 2, 2019.
Our investigation brought to light that he has a strong pipeline to Professor Alexis Dudden of Connecticut State University, notorious for her criticism of Japan.
The following is from a painstaking work by Jason Morgan and Michael Yon, published in the monthly magazine Sound Argument, released yesterday, under the title “Special Rapporteur Kaye, Supported by American Left-Wing Scholars.”
This month’s issue of Sound Argument proves that if one subscribes to the Asahi Shimbun and watches NHK, one understands nothing of the truth.
Every Japanese citizen must immediately take 900 yen and go to the nearest bookstore to purchase it.
I saw this name for the first time in a long while.
I refer to David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression.
Kaye submitted a report on Japan on June 24, the opening day of the UN Human Rights Council.
In his survey report on Japan, published in May 2017, Kaye wrote that freedom of speech and expression in Japan had been chilled by government pressure, and in this year’s report as well, he pointed out that concerns remained about media independence.
He also pointed out the possibility that Japanese reporting had been chilled by the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets and other measures, and he stated that pressure by the authorities on protests against the relocation of U.S. military bases in Okinawa was continuing, requesting that freedom of assembly and freedom of expression be respected.
Furthermore, he said that of the eleven items he had recommended in his 2017 report, including revision of the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets and abolition of Article 4 of the Broadcast Act, which provides the basis for ordering broadcasters to suspend broadcasts, nine had not been implemented.
Before the publication of Kaye’s report this time, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide stated as follows at a press conference on June 5 of this year.
“Regarding the various points raised in the report, the Japanese government has repeatedly and carefully explained its position on many occasions. Nevertheless, the content does not sufficiently reflect the Japanese government’s position, and this is extremely regrettable. It contains many inaccurate and groundless points and is unacceptable.”
I would like to discuss this report later, but first I will explain Kaye and the network surrounding him.
Was he suitable because he was unknown?
Since the report was issued in 2017, we have been investigating who Kaye is.
That is because we do not understand why a person such as he, who appears to have little knowledge about Japan, suddenly appeared on the international stage of Japan-bashing, or how he was chosen as Special Rapporteur on Japan.
Kaye’s title is “clinical professor at the law school of the University of California, Irvine.”
“Clinical professor,” translated into Japanese as “tokunin kyoju,” is the lowest rung on the career ladder of American law schools.
One wonders why the United Nations did not choose someone with a more academically reputable career.
However, seen another way, Kaye’s obscurity may have served a useful purpose.
That is because Kaye did not create the report by himself, but fulfilled his “mission” in cooperation with a Japan-bashing network.
Kaye, who could operate without attracting much attention, may have been suitable.
It may be said that Kaye’s waving of the anti-Japanese flag on the UN stage is deeply connected with a certain person.
Our investigation brought to light that he has a strong pipeline to Professor Alexis Dudden of Connecticut State University, notorious for her criticism of Japan.
Dudden, together with Professor Jordan Sand of Georgetown University, is one of the figures who led the movement demanding a full apology from the Japanese government over the comfort women issue, triggered by descriptions in a high-school world history textbook published in 2014 by the major American educational publisher McGraw-Hill, headquartered in New York, which described the “forced recruitment” of comfort women and “200,000 sex slaves.”
They also led a petition by scholars in the United States.
After Kaye returned to California from Japan in April 2016, where he had visited to prepare the UN report, Dudden appeared on stage with him at a meeting held at Irvine, the school to which Kaye belongs.
Because we came to have deep concerns about the relationship between a UN Special Rapporteur and a “political activist” known as one of the most anti-Japanese figures in the United States, we began our investigation and, in November 2018, submitted a disclosure request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the University of California, Irvine, which employs Kaye.
In February of this year, Irvine disclosed about seventy-five pages of Kaye’s email exchanges.
However, as the school itself admitted, the disclosed documents were only a small portion of the records subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
The university refused to disclose records concerning Kaye’s UN activities, saying they were not public information.
We asked the university which state or federal agency had determined that UN activities were not subject to public information disclosure, but there was no answer.
It appears that the university made this decision on its own authority.
Although Kaye is a great defender of freedom of expression and the press, once we began investigating him, his employer immediately built a wall of silence.
The leaked FOIA request.
Furthermore, we requested that the university disclose Kaye’s emails in accordance with federal law.
This was to confirm his independence and whether he had any relationship with foreign governments.
Then, on February 15, Japan time, a few days after our second request, the Nelson Report, an influential American newsletter specializing in East Asia, reported the matter.
Although we had not disclosed to anyone that we had made a FOIA request, the Nelson Report described its contents in detail.
The person who wrote in the Nelson Report was Mindy Kotler.
She is a collaborator of Dudden and one of America’s anti-Japanese activists.
Kotler is especially loud in comfort women propaganda, and her network includes the academic establishment, the media, and major anti-Japanese activists in Washington.
Kotler is also known as a political brain of Mike Honda, a Japanese-American who served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Her résumé states that she “advised on the drafting and advocacy of Congressman Honda’s 2007 comfort women resolution” in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The headline of Kotler’s post carried in the Nelson Report was “Japan’s Right Is Trying to Silence American Scholars by Using FOIA,” and its content claimed that “deniers of Japanese history” had tried to silence American scholars.
Moreover, it described us as follows: “Both are American men who appear to be closely aligned with Nippon Kaigi or Happy Science. Their English-language articles appear on the Sankei Shimbun’s English website, Japan Forward.”
We have absolutely no relationship with Nippon Kaigi or Happy Science.
I do not know where that false information came from, but because Kotler cites sites written in English, I suspect that she probably does not sufficiently understand Japanese-language information.
In any case, why did Kotler know of the existence of the FOIA request?
To investigate this, we again requested disclosure of email records between the public records office of Irvine, especially records officer Tia Brock, and Kaye.
That is because Brock is suspected of having leaked our FOIA request to the Nelson Report.
Unfortunately, Kaye’s employer does not seem to share our concerns about such journalistic activity and freedom of speech.
What was disclosed in response to the request consisted mostly of incomplete email records and the like.
However, this time there was a new development.
To our surprise, the university claimed that the emails exchanged between Brock and Kaye could not be disclosed because of “attorney-client privilege.”
Surprised by this new excuse, we asked whether Kaye was Brock’s lawyer.
We asked for some evidence, but once again there was no response.
Irvine has not withdrawn this claim, but if it is false, it can be said that all those involved tried to deceive journalists and public opinion.
It could also affect Kaye’s reputation in the legal world.
Emails between Kaye and Dudden.
Although Irvine tried with all its might to obstruct journalists’ inquiries, the small amount of information the school disclosed supported the cooperative relationship between Kaye and Dudden that we suspected.
We learned that, in the process of preparing the report on freedom of speech in Japan that he submitted to the United Nations in 2017, Kaye relied heavily on Dudden.
Kaye forwarded to Dudden emails from certain groups, and she, in response, categorized groups she disliked as “conservative” or “far right” and warned Kaye about them.
For example, in an email dated May 3, 2017, Dudden warned Kaye and two others about the Japanese conservative group “Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact” as follows.
“This group, led by Mr. Hideki Kase, sic—the correct name is Kase Hideaki—is directly connected to the Abe Shinzo administration.”
On another occasion, Dudden was guiding Kaye.
On May 11, 2016, Kaye emailed Dudden, asking her to help identify a person who had inquired about his UN work: “I don’t know this person. Do you?”
On the same day, Dudden replied to an email that said “Fujisankei Communications International” with “Ms. Kitajima.”
It stated that “Ms. Kitajima is a central figure in far-right reporting seeking to prevent the establishment of comfort women statues in California,” and also wrote “Wacky.”
It is unclear whether “Wacky” described the situation at the time or referred to Ms. Kitajima, but Kaye appears not to have tried to clarify that point.
In public, Kaye criticizes attacks on journalists, but although this was a private exchange, he did not react even though a journalist may have been slandered.
On May 10, the day before this exchange, Dudden had emailed Kaye a warning concerning Komori Yoshihisa, a visiting Washington correspondent for the Sankei Shimbun.
She wrote about Komori that he had “served for many years as the Washington bureau chief of the Sankei Shimbun and does nothing but fabricate.”
On the same day, Dudden again emailed Kaye about “a ridiculous article written by Komori of Sankei.”
Kaye also received support from Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.
He is one of the editors of the far-left socialist magazine Dissent and is close to Dudden.
Wasserstrom also does not like the Sankei Shimbun.
On May 10, 2016, he received an email from Dudden.
That email was also copied to Kaye, and its content stated that “David” was receiving “merciless, ridiculous treatment” in a Sankei article.
In other email exchanges, Wasserstrom helped both Kaye and Dudden determine whether people contacting the three of them about UN activities had politically good intentions.
To be continued.