A 2019 essay on the comfort women issue examining Yoshiaki Yoshimi, the Asahi Shimbun, Kiichi Miyazawa, Yayori Matsui, Yuichi Kaido, Kenichi Takagi, and Etsuro Totsuka, and questioning responsibility for what the author regards as enormous economic losses and lasting damage to Japan’s honor and credibility.

2026-07-27
Yoshiaki Yoshimi, the Asahi Shimbun, Kiichi Miyazawa, and the Comfort Women Issue — Questioning Responsibility for the Damage to Japan’s Honor and Credibility
Originally published on January 18, 2019.
This article, written on January 18, 2019, addresses the comfort women issue through Yoshiaki Yoshimi, the Asahi Shimbun, Kiichi Miyazawa, and also Yayori Matsui, Yuichi Kaido, Kenichi Takagi, and Etsuro Totsuka.
I have continued to question responsibility for what I regard as the enormous losses suffered by Japan and the Japanese people, as well as the lasting damage to Japan’s honor and credibility.
The original article follows.
2019-01-18
A friend of mine, one of the most avid readers I know, handed me the page and said, “To put it in terms of the facial appearances you sometimes write about, they really are all people with faces like the Japanese character ‘へ.’”
That was the first time I had ever looked closely at a photograph of Yoshiaki Yoshimi.
Kiichi Miyazawa took pride throughout his life in being one of the elite graduates of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law.
Before going to South Korea, he should therefore have investigated what kind of person Yoshiaki Yoshimi was, and ultimately met him and confirmed it for himself before making that visit.
Had he known that the source was a man with such a “へ”-like face, favored by the Asahi Shimbun, he might never have committed the disgraceful and irreparable blunder of bowing his head eight times in South Korea.
It was also the first time I had looked closely at and become aware of the facial appearances of Yayori Matsui, Yuichi Kaido, Kenichi Takagi, and Etsuro Totsuka.
To think that, because of people with faces that look as though their mouths had been born before the rest of them, or faces resembling the character “へ,” Japan and the Japanese people suffered the enormous loss of having to pay more than 10 trillion yen to China and South Korea—countries that I describe as embodying unfathomable evil and plausible lies—and that Japan’s honor and credibility have been gravely damaged in ways that continue to this day!
Even if every Japanese citizen gave these people ten slaps, it would hardly be enough to settle the anger.
All of their assets deserve to be confiscated.