Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses a campaign by the right-wing and the government targeting the liberal Asahi Shimbun and especially its reporter, Uemura Takashi, on the "comfort woman" coverage. Uemura case is deeply connected to the suppression of press freedom, self-censorship, and promotion of revisionism.

Paper long abstract:

Revisionists have been intensifying their campaign to downplay Japan's responsibility for the system of sexual slavery involving the "comfort women." The right-wing media and intellectuals started to call their movement as "history wars." The collateral damage has been extensive, with an orchestrated campaign by the right-wing and the government targeting the liberal Asahi Shimbun for its role in detailing this sordid saga. The right-wing also vilified one reporter, Uemura Takashi, who wrote two articles on Kim Hak-sun, the first "comfort woman" to come forward to tell her story in 1991. Uemura was singled out for conservative denunciations, vilified as "the reporter who fabricated the 'comfort woman' issue." His university was pressured to sack him and his family received death threats, leading him to file lawsuits against his critics and their publishers for defamation. Based on my anthropological field research on both sides—the right-wing revisionists, and Uemura and his supporters—this paper discusses how the Uemura case is much more than a personal attack, and a part of the larger "history wars" that still continues even after the diplomatic"agreement" on the "comfort woman" issue between South Korea and Japan in December 2015. I also argue that the attack against Uemura is deeply connected to the suppression of press freedom, self-censorship on the part of the media, and promotion of nationalism and historical revisionism by the right-wing and the country's leaders.