This article exposes how Japan’s bar associations and UN committees promoted unverified claims of “forced recruitment” and “sexual slavery” regarding the comfort women issue, despite the 2015 Japan–South Korea agreement confirming a final and irreversible resolution. Drawing on a 2017 Sankei Shimbun front-page report, it examines political activism within legal circles, the role of UN terminology, and the serious consequences for Japan’s international credibility—facts that all Japanese citizens, the global community, and the United Nations must confront.

A truth that all Japanese citizens, people around the world, and the United Nations must know.
2017-04-07
The following is from yesterday’s front page of the Sankei Shimbun.
A truth that all Japanese citizens, people around the world, and the United Nations must know.
All emphasis within the text other than the headline, and all passages marked –, are mine.
Part 1: Legal professionals rushing into political struggle — 72 years after the war, the bar association refuses to correct statements that demean Japan.
In November 2016, Nobukatsu Fujioka (73), secretary of the conservative group “The National Movement for the Truth about Comfort Women” and a visiting professor at Takushoku University, along with others, visited former Chair of the House of Councillors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Satsuki Katayama (57).
Their purpose was to deliver approximately 11,000 signatures demanding the dismissal of Yoko Hayashi (60), a lawyer serving as chair of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
In March of that year, the committee published a critical opinion on the “Comfort Women Agreement” (December 2015), in which the Japanese and South Korean governments confirmed a final and irreversible resolution of the issue, claiming it was “not victim-centered.”
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga (68) rebutted this, stating that major countries and then–UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had welcomed the agreement, and that the committee’s view completely ignored Japan’s explanations.
The group then launched a signature campaign seeking Hayashi’s dismissal.
The document calling for signatures pointed out that “the Japan Federation of Bar Associations has long engaged in anti-Japan activities at the United Nations, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommended Ms. Hayashi, a member of the JFBA, as a committee member.”
Katayama reportedly told Fujioka and others that “greater attention will be paid in the future to candidates recommended by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
Raising claims of “forced recruitment of comfort women” without evidence.
Submitted to UN committees.
In 2004, the JFBA first raised the comfort women issue before UN committees, aiming to realize compensation.
Since then, it has actively issued declarations and statements regarding comfort women.
According to JFBA insiders, one of those who led these efforts was Koken Tsuchiya, who served as JFBA president in 2006 and 2007 (deceased in 2021).
Tsuchiya served as counsel for Chongryon in the sale of its central headquarters building and pursued Japan’s responsibility regarding the comfort women issue.
Those with discerning eyes who have read my essays will surely have become convinced of the correctness of my arguments. At the same time, they must have felt a chill of horror.
In March 2013, in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, he met women claimed to have been former comfort women and, with tears in his eyes, promised, “While you are still well, I will somehow make an apology and compensation a reality.”
In a declaration issued in October 2007 during his presidency, the JFBA stipulated that “comfort women were forcibly taken.”
In a presidential statement the following November, he stated:
“NGOs, including the JFBA, have demanded compensation from the government on the grounds that the comfort women issue constitutes ‘sexual slavery.’”
“The UN term ‘sexual slavery’ refers to cases in which women were systematically abducted by the Japanese military and forced into prostitution.”
For the first time, I learned that there are people who have exploited such an absurd notion as ‘UN terminology’ and used it to their advantage.
To be continued.