Satoru Mizushima (水島総) is the founding president/director of right-wing television production company and internet station Channel Sakura and a comfort women denier.
In 2007, he spearheaded a protest letter against the U.S. House of Representatives for adapting H.Res.121 calling on Japan to formally acknowledge responsibility for the military comfort women system during the WWII. He signed on the letter as the director of the Japanese Citizens’ National Movement for the Historic Truth about the Comfort Women Issue (慰安婦問題の歴史的真実を求める日本国民運動の会), along with its affiliated groups.
Mizushima also signed onto an opinion ad by Committee for Historical Facts, Yes, we remember the facts. (2012) which was published in The Star-Ledger (New Jersey) in November 2012.
Shigeharu Aoyama (青山繁晴) is a conservative political commentator turned politician and a comfort women denier.
After visiting San Jose, California, Aoyama claimed to have heard first-hand testimonies about bullying experienced by Japanese children in the U.S. resulting from the construction of comfort women memorial in Glendale, California, which is over 300 miles away from San Jose. When the group of Japanese parents in San Jose who had sponsored Aoyama’s visit publicly contradicted his statement, he backtraced the comment, saying that the bullying stories were from elsewhere, even though he had not visited Glendale or anywhere near comfort women memorials in the U.S. by that time.
In June 2016, Aoyama ran for the House of Councilors and won a six-year term.
Sharon (Mikiko) Isac is a Japanese woman who lives in Canada. Isac is a member of far-right Canadian Patriotic Society and a frequent contributor to anti-Islamic hate sites. She is also a comfort women denier who spoke at a denier panel organized by Nadeshiko Action at the UN Commission on the Status of Women NGO Parallel Events (2016) and helped to translate (badly) Nadeshiko Action’s publication, “Comfort Women Issue: From Misunderstandings to Solution,” authored by Yumiko Yamamoto and Kiyoshi Hosoya.
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.
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.
