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.
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.
Kiminobu Kimura (木村公宣) was the New York chapter director of Happy Science. As a representative of the non-existant front group “Society to Promote Correct Historical Views,” Kimura was one of the main speakers in Texas Night in NYC (2015), a comfort women denier event.
In September 2018 Fujii made international news when he was caught kicking a statue dedicated to victims of Japanese military “comfort women” system in Tainan, Taiwan. The surveillance camera footage shows Fujii raising his foot several times to kick the bronze statue while an accomplice with snaps shots of his feat.
Shunichi Fujiki (藤木俊一), who also calls himself “Shun Ferguson,” is a comfort women denier and a business owner in Japan. Fujiki runs the “Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat,” which represents and promotes retired American youtuber Tony Marano as the Texas Daddy in publications and appearances in Japan.
Tony Marano, a.k.a. “Texas Daddy,” is a retired salesperson, American YouTuber, and a comfort women denier. After posting videos criticizing environmental group Sea Shepherd’s campaign against Japanese whaling, Marano was recruited by Japanese businessman Shunichi Fujiki (a.k.a. “Shun Ferguson”) to be the American mouthpiece for Japanese ultra-nationalism, even though he does not speak Japanese. Marano has several books published in Japan (he does not seem to know some of what is being published under his name over there) and tours Japan regularly. Reuters describes Marano as a “right-wing darling in Japan.”
Yumiko Yamamoto (山本優美子) is the former vice president and secretary general of far-right racist group Zaitokukai (在特会) and the founder of comfort women denier group Nadeshiko Action (なでしこアクション) which calls itself “Japanese Women for Justice and Peace.”
Yamamoto left Zaitokukai in late 2011 (according to her) or early 2012 (according to Zaitokukai press release) after members of her group have been prosecuted for violent assaults on Korean elementary school and other targets. In her book “Josei ga mamoru nihon no hokori (女性が守る日本の誇り)” published in 2014, Yamomoto explains that the reason for leaving the organization was not because of any disagreement with its activities, but because she felt confident that the organization had grown strong enough that she could focus her effort on comfort women denial.
Kiyoshi Hosoya (細谷清) is a comfort women denier and self-styled “researcher” of modern Japanese history, even though his background is in business development and management. Hosoya is the secretary general of the Researchers of History on Modern Japan (HMJR, 日本近現代史研究会) and a board member of Global Alliance for Historical Truth (GAHT), both denier groups. He is also affiliated with the Japan Family Value Society (FAVS, 家族の絆を守る会), part of Japan Conference’s anti-feminist network.
Mera was born in 1933 in Seoul, Korea, which was under Japanese rule at the time. He received his bachelor’s degree in engineering/architecture from University of Tokyo and Ph.D from Harvard University (urban planning) which he attended as a Fulbright scholar. He has since worked for the World Bank, University of Tsukuba, Tokyo International University, and University of Southern California. He retired from USC in 2008.
In 2006 Mera founded the Study Group for Japan’s Rebirth (日本再生研究会), a monthly Japanese-language study group on modern Japanese history for Japanese residents in Southern California. Members of the study group protested the 2013 establishment of a comfort women memorial in Glendale, California. In 2014 Mera founded GAHT to sue the City of Glendale in federal district court.
After moving to the East Coast, Mera founded “Princeton Institute for Asian Studies” to promote revisionist historical views about comfort women, Nanking massacre, as well as Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The “institute” was immediately rebuked by Princeton University, which it has no affiliation with, and renamed “Pacific Institute for Asian Studies.”
Mera passed away in December 2019.
Selected Publications
マッカーサーの呪いから目覚めよ日本人! (Wake up from MacArthur’s Curse, Japanese People!). 2012. Co-authored with Yasuo Inoue (井上雍雄) and Sadao Imamori (今森貞夫)
