Journalist Takayama Masayuki analyzes why Shukan Shincho immediately apologized after writer Fukasawa Ushio protested his column: the publisher feared conflict with an award-winning Zainichi author and bowed to pressure from a growing bloc of Japan–China–Korea writers promoting “Japan was at fault.”
Major newspapers reignited the “Sōshi-Kaimei” narrative, portraying it as colonial oppression, despite historical evidence that many Koreans voluntarily adopted Japanese names for social mobility.
The incident forced the long-running column Henken Jizai to be suspended, revealing the distorted power dynamics of Japan’s media environment.

Why did they apologize so quickly?
However, Fukasawa lodged a protest against the column.
At the end of the column I wrote, “You are free to dislike Japan and the Japanese, but then at least stop using a Japanese name,” and she claimed that this “spread reckless assertions and incited social discrimination.”
On August 1, her lawyer, Tsukuda Katsuhiko, informed Shinchosha that a press conference protesting the column would be held at the House of Representatives Second Members’ Office Building on August 4.
Indeed, on the 4th, the conference was held.
At the press conference, Fukasawa declared, “My heart has been shattered. A column filled with factual errors—based on racism and amounting to discriminatory incitement—was published by the very publisher that launched my career. This is not a matter I can resolve alone.”
She demanded that Shinchosha issue a written apology and provide space in the magazine for her rebuttal.

That same day, Shinchosha posted on its official website a statement titled “Apology and Future Measures Concerning the Shukan Shincho Column.”
It strongly resembled the uproar surrounding Shincho 45 in 2018.
Back then, Diet member Sugita Mio remarked that same-sex couples “have no productivity.”
A storm of condemnation followed, and the magazine was forced to cease publication.
Shinchosha should have clarified Sugita’s true intent in print, but did not.

The reason Shukan Shincho apologized so quickly this time is as follows.
As mentioned earlier, Fukasawa won Shinchosha’s “R-18 Literary Prize for Women by Women” with her story about a Zainichi woman, Kaneo no Obasan, and another source told me that the publishing division wanted to avoid a confrontation with her.
In addition, I have heard that a growing circle of contemporary writers—Japanese, Chinese, and Korean—have begun rallying around the shared theme “Japan was in the wrong.”
It is entirely plausible that such forces pressured contributors writing for Shincho, frightening the publisher into submission.

The Asahi Shimbun’s distorted historical narrative
What accelerated the situation further was that, on the day after the press conference—August 5—Asahi, Mainichi, Tokyo, and Sankei all reported on the incident.
I have repeatedly written that “Asahi, Mainichi, and Tokyo do not conduct proper reporting and should not call themselves newspapers,” and once again, none of them contacted me for comment or verification.
Their coverage was mostly brief side-notes, but one thing caught my eye in the Asahi article.
After reporting that “Fukasawa, who was named in the column, has protested to Shinchosha,” it continued: “The column titled ‘Sōshi-Kaimei 2.0’ invoked the 1940 policy that forced Koreans to adopt Japanese-style names…”
And then it questioned why Japanese names were being demanded “once again.”

Asahi went further by revisiting the issue in its August 11 editorial, and Mainichi followed with its own editorial on August 14.
The target of attack was once again “Sōshi-Kaimei.”

Asahi ran the headline “Will Names Be Taken Away Again?” and wrote:
“Discrimination related to names runs deep. Japan once forced the people it colonized to assume Japanese-style names in order to control even their innermost selves.”

What is malicious about the Asahi is that, buried under such lofty rhetoric, it is attempting to implant outright falsehoods.
For example, the history of Sōshi-Kaimei is long.
From the moment of the 1910 annexation, Japanese-style “Tsūmei” (public names) rapidly became popular.
Japan had introduced a formal household registry system on the peninsula, and because people were changing names freely, authorities required them to file proper notices with the police.
Even afterward, many Koreans desired Japanese names.
Large numbers of poor Koreans left the peninsula for Manchuria and China, adopting Japanese names in order to gain greater freedom in their new surroundings.
The reason was simple: while Chinese held a degree of respect toward Japanese, they looked down on Koreans.

This fact is rarely conveyed in Japan, but reading Kō Toshimyo’s The Seven-Year-Old Prisoner makes it clear.
The author was an orphan rescued in North China by the Japanese Army’s Hikari Unit.
He fought alongside the unit through the mainland penetration operations into Central and South China, then through French Indochina to Bangkok, where he saw the end of the war, and afterward became the adopted son of a Japanese military doctor.
Out of obligation toward China, he tacked on a passage about “brutal Japanese troops,” but the rest of his account is honest.
During battles, he was entrusted to various caretakers discovered by the unit; one of these was a Korean who used a Japanese name.
A seven-year-old Chinese boy mocks him openly, and the Korean—who had adopted a Japanese name—responds with foul language.
Such exchanges are described vividly.

By hiding such realities and instead claiming that Sōshi-Kaimei was “forced” or that it aimed to “control hearts,” Asahi’s editorialists lie without hesitation.
The fact that they have ignored my repeated criticism to “at least do some reporting for once” proves the point.

The editorial distorts another historical fact: the notion of “colonial rule” over Korea.
Asahi has repeated this claim since the war.
But colonial rule, as seen in places like French Indochina or the U.S.-ruled Philippines, was entirely different.
In Indochina, Vietnamese could not even leave their villages freely; if they did, they were taxed, and escape meant execution by guillotine.
During the Russo-Japanese War period, 200 Vietnamese volunteers stowed away to study in Japan, and the colonial government issued warrants for all of them; capture meant death.
Ho Chi Minh became a sailor on an ocean-going vessel to reach France, where he managed to take an examination to become an official in the colonial government—an extraordinary exception.

Yet, according to Fukasawa’s own account, her grandfather came alone to work in Japan and later brought her grandmother over.
Such freedom of movement between colony and “metropole” is unheard of under true colonial rule.
Nevertheless, Asahi continues to label Korea’s relationship with Japan as “colonial domination” without shame.

When Asahi writes something, Shinchosha trembles, and Koreans take heart.
In the end, Shinchosha, responding to this uproar, told me to suspend my long-running column Henken Jizai, which had reached its 1,145th installment.
I told them to ignore the irresponsible claims of a newspaper that still has not corrected its lies about the comfort-women issue, but it was useless.
They decided not on suspension, but on termination.
Shinchosha seemed delighted.

(To be continued.)