Tsutomu Nishioka (西岡力) is a professor of Korean language at Tokyo Christian University and a comfort women denier. Nishioka is the author of many articles and booklets distributed by the Society for Dissemination of Historical Fact and appears in Yujiro Taniyama’s denier film, Scottsboro Girls. He is also the president of the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea (NARKN).
Nishioka is the chair of the Historical Research Laboratory at the right-wing Reitaku University and Vice President and Secretary General of the Historical Awareness Research Committee.
Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (国家基本問題研究所) is a conservative think tank founded and led by Yoshiko Sakurai. The Institute has close ties to Japan Conference, and many of its board members, advisors, and fellows are members come from Japan Conference and/or textbook reform movement. Its priorities include a revision of the pacifist clauses of Japan’s constitution, continued use of nuclear power, and comfort women denial.
Affiliated individuals include, in addition to Sakurai:
- Tadae Takubo (田久保忠衛), Japan Conference
- Shintaro Ishihara (石原慎太郎), fmr Tokyo governor
- Takashi Ito (伊藤隆), Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform
- Taro Yayama (屋山太郎), Nippon Foundation, Society to Improve Textbooks
- Kazuo Ijiri (井尻千男), Japan Conference, Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform
- Shohei Umezawa (梅澤昇平)
- Masato Ushio (潮匡人), Japan Education Rebirth Institute
- Koichi Sugiyama (すぎやまこういち), Committee for Historical Facts, Society to Improve Textbooks
- Tsutomu Nishioka (西岡力)
- Akira Momochi (百地章), Japan Conference
- Yuzou Kabashima (椛島有三), Japan Conference
Website: https://jinf.jp/
Yoshiko Sakurai (櫻井よしこ) is a journalist and comfort women denier who runs Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, a conservative think tank with close ties to Japan Conference. Through Genron TV: Sakura Live, her internet broadcasting platform and in publications, Sakurai promotes conservative social and economic policies as well as nationalistic military and foreign affairs policies.
Sakurai is a member of the Committee for Historical Truth which published paid opinion advertisements in U.S. media such as The Facts (2007) and Yes, we remember the facts. (2012). She paid or offered to pay a large sum of cash to Michael Yon to give a talk at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and to publish comfort women denial in Western media, before her support for Yujiro Taniyama’s film, Scottsboro Girls, led Yon to publicly criticize her.
Yoshiko Sakurai has no relationship to Makoto Sakurai of Zaitokukai.
Australia-Japan Community Network (AJCN) is a group formed by Japanese residents in Australia in opposition to an effort by Korean community to establish a comfort women memorial in Australia. The group was founded by Tetsuhide Yamaoka (山岡鉄秀), who was ousted from the organization in late 2019 and is currently led by Sumiyo Egawa (江川純世). It works closely with members of Happy Science including Tetsuya Sato (佐藤哲也), who was the director of Happy Science Oceania HQ during the anti-memorial campaign, but AJCN and HS have opted to obscure the involvement of HS, according to their right-wing allies in Japan.
Under the leadership of Yamaoka, AJCN pursued a two-faced strategy emphasizing in English the need for harmony among various ethnic communities in Australia, while in Japanese it boosted comfort women denial and anti-Korean racism. The two-faced strategy was apparent when AJCN criticized in English that Korean community’s effort to erect a comfort women memorial because it “threatens to undo” Japan-ROK Agreement (2015), while in Japanese it bashed the agreement and called for its nullification. Egawa even bragged about this “innovative” strategy in social media in Japanese. After Yamaoka returned to Japan, the group began publishing more transparently denialist and anti-Korean articles in English as well, such as “why do Korean children bully Japanese children?”.
In December 2016, Australia-Japan Community Network filed a complaint under Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 against the Uniting Church of Sydney, which has installed a memorial dedicated to the victims of Japanese military comfort women, claiming that the memorial “offends, insults, humiliates, or intimidates” Japanese Australians. Racial Discrimination Act however protects “artistic works, scientific debate and fair comment on matters of public interest” so long as they are expressed “reasonably and in good faith.”
AJCN’s complaint was dismissed in January 2017, but the organization filed yet another complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Website: http://jcnsydney.blogspot.com/
Japan Education Rebirth Institute (Nippon Kyoiku Saisei Kiko, 日本教育再生機構) is a right-wing Japanese group promoting revisionist history and civil textbooks that do not mention the comfort women system and other atrocities committed by the Japanese military while offering narratives glorifying Japanese expansionism. It was founded by Hidetsugu Yagi (八木秀次) after he and others left the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform due to an internal division. Board members include Shiro Takahashi and others who are affiliated with the powerful Japan Conference. As of 2018, the Institute’s website disappeared, and it is unclear whether the Institute still remains active.
Website: http://www.kyoiku-saisei.jp/
“Yes, we remember the facts.” is a paid advertisement published in the November 6, 2012 edition of The Star-Ledger, a daily newspaper in New Jersey, by a group of Japanese comfort women deniers calling itself the Committee for Historical Facts. It is a revised version of The Facts (2007) ad, published in the June 14, 2007 issue of The Washington Post.
The ad recycles the same old comfort women denier arguments. The publication took place six months after Palisades Park, New Jersey turned down Japanese officials’ offer of one hundred cherry blossom trees in exchange for removing a small plaque memorializing comfort women.
Committee for Historical Facts is made up of:
The ad also included a long list of endorsements.
From Democratic Party of Japan (民主党)
- Nobuyuki Fukushima (福島伸享)
- Hiroki Hanasaki (花崎宏基)
- Yoichi Kaneko (金子洋一)
- Jin Matsubara (松原仁)
- Noboru Miura (三浦昇)
- Koichi Mukoyama (向山好一)
- Takashi Nagao (長尾敬)
- Masanao Shibahashi (柴崎正直)
- Kenji Tamura (田村謙治)
- Shu Watanabe (渡辺周)
- Izumi Yoshida (吉田泉)
From Liberal Democratic Party (自由民主党)
- Shinzo Abe (安倍晋三)
- Haruko Arimura (有村有子)
- Seiichi Eto (江藤晟一)
- Keiji Furuya (古屋圭司)
- Tomomi Inada (稲田朋美)
- Yoshihiko Isozaki (磯崎仁彦)
- Yoshitaka Ito (伊東良孝)
- Yasushi Kaneko (金子恭之)
- Kouichi Kishi (岸宏一)
- Nobuo Kishi (岸信夫)
- Seigo Kitamura (北村誠吾)
- Yutaka Kumagai (熊谷大)
- Hirokazu Matsuno (松野博一)
- Shoji Nishida (西田昌司)
- Hiroshige Seko (世耕弘成)
- Hakubun Shimomura (下村博文)
- Yoshitaka Shindo (進藤義孝)
- Sanae Takaichi (高市早苗)
- Naokazu Takemoto (竹本直一)
- Ichiro Tsukada (塚田一郎)
- Michiko Ueno (上野通子)
- Junzo Yamamoto (山本順三)
- Yuji Yamamoto (山本有二)
- Eriko Yamatani (山谷えり子)
- Hiroyuki Yoshiie (義家弘介)
From the Sunrise Party of Japan (たちあがれ日本)
- Takeo Hiranuma (平沼赳夫)
- Kyoko Nakayama (中山恭子)
Professors:
Political commentators:
Journalists:
Movie & TV Producer:
Himawari Japan, a group of nationalist Japanese women in New York/New Jersey area led by Yoko Nagato, held its first-ever public event on August 23, 2016. The event was held in Japanese.
Speakers:
Also see: Comfort Women Denier Activities in the United States
In April 2015, language lecturer Mariko Okada-Collins invited filmmaker Yujiro Taniyama to screen his lengthy comfort women denial film, “Scottsboro Girls” at Central Washington University where she teaches Japanese. However, after Michael Yon warned Okada-Collins that the film’s content could be highly offensive, she asked Taniyama to shorten the film to allow room for additional speakers. Koichi Mera was invited to give a speech along with Taniyama, and Jason Morgan Skyped in as well.
Campus community strongly protested the historical revisionist event, and multiple counter-events were organized by students and the faculty. See a series of articles about these events in the June 1, 2015 issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter.
For information about Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat (テキサス親父日本事務局), see Shunichi Fujiki.
