Michael Yon is a former member of the U.S. Special Forces, military writer, and comfort women denier who has written extensively about U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2014, Yon received or was promised large payments from Japanese conservative leader Yoshiko Sakurai to speak at her Japan Conference-affiliated think tank and to publish articles in English media that challenge the history of comfort women, according to the right-wing magazine editor Kazuyoshi Hanada. Yon disputed some details of Hanada’s claim (e.g. whether or not Yon and his wife were flown first-class by the Japanese right-wing) but not the financial arrangement itself.
While his relationship with Sakurai has since deteriorated over his criticism of Yujiro Taniyama and some other members of the Japanese nationalist movements since then, Yon continues to publish many posts on his blog and social media characterizing the comfort women story as “lies” designed to divide important U.S. allies in East Asia (Japan and South Korea) and is working on a full-length book on the topic.
Yon is credited with calling attention to the IWG Report (2007) which he claims proves Japan’s innocence in relation to the comfort women system. Historians and the authors of the report disagree with his amateur interpretation.
In January 2021, Michael Yon was among the crowd that gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol as Trump supporters broke into the legislative building to halt the certification of President-Elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Yon claims that he stayed outside of the building and witnessed that Antifa, not white nationalist militias such as Proud Boys or Oath Keepers as other media have reported, “clearly led” the insurrection, in an interview with the conspiracy theory-laden Epoch Times. Media Matters has reported that the Epoch Times actually promoted the “Stop the Steal” Capitol rally that led to the riot.
Kent Gilbert is a former Mormon missionary and California lawyer turned television personality in Japan. Gilbert was a popular figure in Japanese TV variety shows during the 1980s, but in recent years became a mouthpiece for the Japanese far-right nationalism. Gilbert authored many books in the past few years in defense of Japanese nationalism, militarization, and historical record (i.e. war crime denial), including those co-written with fellow American Tony Marano.
Mariko Okada-Collins (岡田コリンズまり子) is a Japanese language lecturer at Central Washington University and comfort women denier. In published statements, Okada-Collins disclosed that she lectures about modern Japanese history “exposing the lies” of comfort women and Nanking atrocities, which have led to her being negatively reviewed by students and reprimanded by the supervisor.
In Spring 2015, Okada-Collins invited Yujiro Taniyama from Japan to screen his comfort women denier film, “The Scottsboro Girls.” The campus community put on multiple public events on the actual history of comfort women in protest, which were attended by hundreds of students and community members. See a series of articles about these events in the June 1, 2015 issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter.
In that Summer, Okada-Collins traveled to San Francisco to testify against the establishment of comfort women memorial there along with Koichi Mera, Yoshi Taguchi, and others.
As of the academic year 2018-2019 Okada-Collins is no longer employed at Central Washington University.
Yujiro Taniyama (谷山雄二朗) is a video producer, perennial fringe political candidate, and comfort women denier. He has produced the first feature-length English-language denialist documentary titled “Scottsboro Girls.” The title for the film comes from the “Scottsboro Boys,” nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping white women, suggesting that Japan is also falsely accused of forcing women into sexual slavery.
Taniyama was invited by Japanese language instructor Mariko Okada-Collins to screen his film at Central Washington University in Spring 2015. The campus community put on multiple public events on the actual history of comfort women in protest, which were attended by hundreds of students and community members. See a series of articles about these events in the June 1, 2015 issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter.
While Taniyama’s film was widely applauded by Japanese conservatives including Yoshiko Sakurai, American writer and comfort women denier Michael Yon dismissed the film as a “a disaster that needs to be edited with a chainsaw, or tossed out entirely” for anyone “who is serious about presenting the truth on the Comfort Woman issue to an educated western audience.”
Yoshi (Yoshiaki) Taguchi (田口義明) is a former San Francisco director and current New York director of Happy Science. Taguchi has organized followers of Happy Science in California and New Jersey/New York to mobilize against comfort women memorials. His past involvement includes: securing venues for comfort women denier events such as the Nadeshiko Action/Happy Science Events in California (2014), facilitating online petitions against comfort women orthodoxy, organizing members to attend hearings about comfort women, and speaking at such hearings himself.
During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign, Taguchi brought Happy Science followers (who are also Himawari Japan members) to volunteer at the Donald Trump campaign headquarters in the Trump Tower. Happy Science openly supported Trump, calling him a reincarnation of George Washington.
Mio Sugita (杉田水脈) is a member of Japanese House of Representative and a comfort women denier.
Before joining LDP in late 2017, Sugita visited California in December 2013 as part of the three-member delegation of Japan Restoration Party (日本維新の会), which later became the Party for Japanese Kokoro (日本のこころを大切にする党). While there, Sugita and her colleagues met with local Japanese American leaders who had endorsed the comfort women memorial in Glendale. Failing to convince them that the history of comfort women was fabricated, she later dismissed the Japanese Americans as “typical left-wing extremists” in an interview with a Japanese publication.
Since losing her re-election in December 2014, Sugita traveled around the world extensively to promote comfort women denial at the United Nations level, speaking at the United Nations Human Rights Council (2015) and at the UN Commission on the Status of Women NGO Parallel Events (2016) along with people like Shunichi Fujiki, Koichi Mera, and Kiyoshi Hosoya. She also participated in Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women Geneva Delegation (June 2017).
In the book “Women Fight the History War” (Rekishisen ha onna no tatakai), co-authored with non-fiction writer Keiko Kawasoe, Sugita proposes bombing comfort women memorials in the U.S. When asked if she was encouraging terrorism, she responded that she would leave the interpretation to the readers.
Sugita joined the board of Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, a historical revisionist organization in 2017.
In the October 2017 election, Sugita ran for Shugiin (House of Representatives) from the Liberal Democratic Party at the urging of Yoshiko Sakurai and won.
This encyclopedia is a project of Japan-U.S. Feminist Network for Decolonization (FeND) to share information about the right-wing Japanese nationalist movement in the U.S. and beyond. Here are links to some of the contents (but there’s a lot more!):
Individuals
Organizations
Events
Media and Publications
Other stuff
Hideaki Kase (加瀬英明) is a foreign affairs commentator and the director of Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women, a revisionist group. He also leads Society for Dissemination of Historical Fact and is a leader of Japan Conference. Kase was interviewed in a 2007 documentary film about Iris Chang, the author of “The Rape o Nanking,” in which he argued that Nanking massacre did not take place.
Kase is said to be the author of “Minikui Kankoku-jin (Ugly Koreans),” which was published under the name of a fictitious Korean journalist. The book glorified the Japanese colonial rule of Korean peninsula, criticizing Korean people for their faulty remembrance of history. Some of his books are published by the Happy Science.
Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi, 日本会議) is a powerful conservative organization described by New York Times as “largest nationalist organization, which rejects postwar pacifism, embraces the imperial system and defends Japan’s past wars in Asia.” In addition, Japan Conference opposes policies aimed at promoting gender equality as the organization views them as a threat against traditional Japanese families. Many leaders of Japan Conference, including Shiro Takahashi, Hideaki Kase, and Yoshiko Sakurai are also active in comfort women denial.
Japan Conference has an affiliated parliamentary caucus within the parliament (Nippon Kaigi Kokkai Giin Kondan Kai, 日本会議国会議員懇談会) with hundreds of members, mostly from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. In 2014, 15 out of 19 members of the administration of Shinzo Abe were members of the Japan Conference caucus including Deputy Prime Minister (and former Prime Minister) Taro Aso (麻生太郎), Minister of Internal Affairs and Communication Sanae Takaichi (高市早苗), and Cabinet Minister Yoshihide Suga (菅義偉) in addition to Abe himself.
Website: http://www.nipponkaigi.org/
Shiro Takahashi (高橋史朗) is a conservative education scholar and one of the most prominent intellectual leaders of Japan Conference, a powerful conservative establishment group. Despite the fact Takahashi has been a lifelong critic of policies aimed at promoting gender equality, which he views as a threat against traditional families, he was appointed to the Council on Gender Equality by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2013 shortly after Abe’s return to power.
In the past few years, Takahashi has focused his efforts on challenging historical orthodoxies regarding crimes committed by the Japanese military during the WWII, especially the comfort women system and the Nanking atrocities. He is also actively working to stop the establishment of comfort women memorials in the U.S. and elsewhere, traveling abroad frequently and organizing conservative Japanese expats.
As an operative of Japan’s conservative establishment (that supports LDP and Abe), Takahashi tends to keep himself at a distance from the more extremist elements of the conservative movements (which view LDP and Abe as too soft), but he sometimes shares the stage with members of the latter group including Koichi Mera, Yumiko Yamamoto, and Mio Sugita.
Takahashi is the founder and president of Historical Awareness Research Committee, a founder of Channel Sakura, and a board member of Japan Education Rebirth Institute.
