Japan NGO Coalition against Racial Discrimination (JNCRD) is a fake human rights coalition comprised of far-right organizations that share nationalist, historical revisionist, and anti-indigenous philosophies. It was founded in 2018 to defend Japan against what they perceive as unfounded criticisms of its human rights records at the 10th and 11th periodic review of Japan by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

Members of the NGO Coalition include:

• Academics’ Alliance for Correcting Groundless Criticisms of Japan
• Citizen’s Committee for Reexamining Municipal Position on Comfort Women Issue
• Citizen’s Group against Local Autonomy Basic Ordinance
• Grass Roots Action about Fabricated Comfort Women Issue
• HANADOKEI, the Patriotic Women’s Association
• Indigenous and Minority Rights of Japan
• Japan Association for Fostering the Seeds of Historical Truth
• Japanese Citizen’s Group against the Suffrage of Foreigners
• Japanese Volunteer Association to Rectify the Fabricated Comfort Women Issue
• Nadeshiko Action (“Japanese Women for Justice and Peace”)
• Meeting in Hokkaido Aiming at a Solution of a Forgery Problem of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women”
• Okinawa Policy Research Forum of Japan
• Research Group on Political Rights
• Study Group on Freedom of Expression
• Society for Dissemination of Historical Fact
• Soyokaze
• The Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women
• The Study Group for School Education
• Toronto Seiron
• True Japanese Society
• Veteran’s Voice Memorial Project

JNCRD should not be confused with the NGO Network for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Japan (ERD-Net) which is a coalition of actual human rights groups.

Academics’ Alliance for Correcting Groundless Criticisms of Japan (不当な日本批判を正す学者の会, AACGCJ) is a group of conservative scholars founded in May 2017 to refute criticisms of Japan’s human rights records and historical responsibilities at United Nations and beyond, including U.N. special rapporteur David Kaye’s report on the suppression of freedom of press in Japan as well as various U.N. committees’ finding on the comfort women issue. Academics’ Alliance is a member of Japan NGO Coalition against Racial Discrimination (JNCRD), a fake human rights coalition of far-right groups.

Alliance board member and secretary general Eiji Yamashita (山下英次) frequently accompanies overseas delegations of the Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women.

Officers include:

• Hidemichi Tanaka (田中英道), president
• Eiji Yamashita (山下英次), board member and secretary general
• Takashi Ito (伊藤隆), board member
• Keiichiro Kobori (小堀桂一郎), board member
• Kanji Nishio (西尾幹二), board member
• Toshio Watanabe (渡辺利夫), board member
• Terumasa Nakanishi (中西輝政), board member

In August 2018, Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women sent its delegation to Geneva, Switzerland to attend the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which met to conduct the member state review of Japan over such issues as the rights of indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, burakumin, and victims of military comfort women.

Over the last few delegations, the Alliance has expanded its mission to deny the indigenous status of Ainu and Okinawans at United Nations meetings, bringing members such as Hokkaido prefectural assembly member Masaru Onodera (小野寺まさる) and Satoru Nakamura (仲村覚) of Okinawa Policy Research Forum of Japan (日本沖縄政策研究フォーラム). During a lunch briefing at UNCERD, Nakamura gave a speech demanding the U.N. to retract the recognition of Okinawan people as an indigenous people.

The delegation included, among others:

• Yumiko Yamamoto, Nadeshiko Action
• Satoru Nakamura (仲村覚), Okinawa Policy Research Forum of Japan
• Eiji Yamashita (山下英二), Academics’ Alliance for Correcting Groundless Criticisms of Japan
• Shunichi Fujiki, Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat
• Masaru Onodera (小野寺まさる), member, Hokkaido prefectural assembly
• Mio Sugita, member of Parliament

United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) NGO Parallel Events are a series of events held around the United Nations building by non-governmental organizations from around the world working on women’s rights while the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women meets at its headquarters in New York.

Japanese right-wing groups first infiltrated the NGO Parallel Events in 2016 under innocuously named panels to promote Japanese nationalism and comfort women denial, after which they were banned from participation for an year.

When the ban expired in 2018, comfort women denier group Global Alliance for Historical Truth returned to the NGO Parallel Events with a panel titled “The Role of Women in Japan Now” on March 19, 2018. Presenters included Koichi Mera, Keiko Kawasoe, Moe Fukada (深田萌絵), and Shizuko Culpepper (カルペッパー静子).

According to Kiyoshi Hosoya of Global Alliance for Historical Truth, Kawase argued at the panel that Japanese women are not seeking gender equality or careers, but simply desire to become full-time homemakers, and the Japanese government’s policy is focused on fulfilling such wish of the vast majority of Japanese women.

Along with the panel at the NGO Parallel Event, Kawasoe held a separate lecture in Japanese on March 21, 2018 co-sponsored by Global Alliance for Historical Truth and New York Historical Issues Study Group.

In March 2018, Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women sent its delegation to Geneva, Switzerland to attend the United Nations Human Rights Council, taking advantage of the UN consultative status of the International Career Support Association.

At the UNHRC, Sharon Isac of the Alliance gave a speech calling the historical accounts of comfort women “depraved highly defamatory myth.” In addition, former member of the Parliament Takashi Tanuma (田沼隆志) simultaneously refuted the UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye’s report describing curtailing of press freedom in Japan by the government and also argued that there is a pervasive censorship of any conversations critical of China or Korea on the internet.

The delegation included, among others:

• Shunichi Fujiki, Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat
• Sharon Isac, Seiron Toronto
• Takashi Tanuma (田沼隆志), former member of the Parliament

In September 2017, Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women and its affiliated groups sent its delegation to Geneva, Switzerland to attend the United Nations Human Rights Council, taking advantage of the UN consultative status of the International Career Support Association. Shunichi Fujiki spoke in a meeting about press freedom to accuse the U.N. Special Rapporteur David Kaye’s report critical of Japanese government of “bias,” while Mio Sugita attacked the government of South Korea for financing anti-Japan propaganda and “brainwashing” its citizens to foster hatred toward Japan.

In addition, the group held a side event titled “How have the United Nations’ limited resources been EXPLOITED? Stop Bashing Japan in the name of Human Rights.”

The delegation included, among others:

• Shunichi Fujiki, Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat
• Mitsuhiko Fujii, Rompa Project
• Mio Sugita
• Hiromi Edwards
• Toshiaki Okano (岡野俊昭), Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women

Masanori Kaneko (金子正則) is the founder and president of International Career Support Association, a non-governmental organization with the special consultative status with the United Nations. ICSA partners with the Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women, providing a platform to far-right Japanese nationalists and comfort women deniers at various United Nations meetings.

In addition to being a conservative ideologue, Kaneko is an alternative medicine advocate. His latest research (as of May 2017) on the miraculous benefits of green sap (“aojiru” in Japanese) was published in a journal considered among “potential, possible, or probable predatory” publications by the so-called Beall’s List. On social media, Kaneko posits that aojiru could “eliminate breast cancer at once.”

In 2015 Kaneko ran for the Nara Prefectural Council from the Party for New Generations, which is now known as the Party for Japanese Kokoro. He lost the election after receiving less than three hundred votes.

International Career Support Association (国際キャリア支援協会) is a non-governmental organization registered in Nara, Japan. It has the special consultative status with the United Nations and uses it to provide a platform for far-right Japanese nationalists and comfort women deniers at various United Nations meetings through Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women.

ICSA was founded by Masanori Kaneko (金子正則), who ran for the Nara Prefectural Council from the Party for New Generations, which is now known as the Party for Japanese Kokoro. He lost the election after receiving less than three hundred votes.

In June 2017, Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women and its affiliated groups sent its delegation to Geneva, Switzerland to attend the United Nations Human Rights Council, taking advantage of the UN consultative status of the International Career Support Association. Mitsuhiko Fujii of Rompa Project (Happy Science) spoke at the meeting demanding a re-evaluation of the 1996 report by the UN Special Rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy.

The delegation included, among others:

• Shunichi Fujiki, Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat
• Mitsuhiko Fujii, Rompa Project
• Mio Sugita
• Kaoli Koyasu, Japan Mahoroba Station and Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat

Memory of the World Register is a project of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that was founded to “facilitate preservation […] of the world’s documentary heritage,” “assist universal access to documentary heritage,” and “increase awareness worldwide of the existence and significance of documentary heritage.”

In 2014, People’s Republic of China submitted “Documents of Nanjing Massacre” for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register and they were inscribed in 2015. Japanese nationalists, many of whom consider Nanking atrocities to be a hoax or vastly exaggerated, became enraged and began calling for the government of Japan to suspend its financial obligation to UNESCO or to withdraw from it altogether. Bowing to their pressure, the Shinzo Abe administration announced in October 2016 that Japan had suspended its payment to UNESCO.

The Japanese government has criticized that the Memory of the World Registry had become too politicized and strayed away from its original goal of fostering dialogue and cooperation. However, Japan has itself nominated and inscribed documents related to the internment of Japanese nationals by the Soviet Union after the WWII and their repatriation to Japan in the same year China submitted documents on Nanking atrocities.

In the 2016-2017 cycle, a coalition of 14 civic groups from Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, and the United Kingdom submitted “voices of comfort women,” a collection of materials from private and public archives that document Japanese military comfort women system and the postwar struggles by its victims to demand justice. Predictably, Japanese right-wing nationalists protested UNESCO and coalition members, and at least one Japanese organization involved in the effort have received a bomb threat.

Anticipating the submission of “voices of comfort women,” a coalition of right-wing comfort women denier organizations also submitted their own set of documents, “Documentation on ‘Comfort Women’ and Japanese Army discipline.” Members of the right-wing coalition are the Alliance for Truth About Comfort Women, the Study Group for Japan’s Rebirth (Koichi Mera), and Nadeshiko Action (a.k.a. Japanese Women for Justice and Peace). In the submission, they claim (as they always do): “[C]omfort women enjoyed a certain amount of freedom, even in battle zones, and were paid handsomely. They were decidedly not sex slaves.”

Each country is allowed up to two submission per cycle, but this restriction is waived for joint submissions involving groups from multiple countries. The right-wing submission was permitted because one of the sponsors, the Study Group for Japan’s Rebirth, is technically located in the United States, even though all of its businesses are conducted in Japanese by and for Japanese residents in Los Angeles. Both parties’ submissions are pending review.