I've already mentioned that I subscribe to Shukan Shincho for the sake of reading the columns by Masayuki Takayama and Ms. Yoshiko Sakurai at the end of the magazine.
But last night, while casually reading another page, I found the following article.
It is a critical article.
This article is critical because it shows that the problems that democratic societies are facing today, or what is being touted as a crisis of democracy and the division of public opinion within the country (especially in the United States), is since the Nazi nations of China and South Korea continue to practice Nazism in the name of anti-Japanese education and that the Nazis who grew up with this education are the ones who are making the West (especially the United States), Japan, and the United Nations their primary targets.
It is because it proves that it is anti-Japanese propaganda being carried out by the Nazi states of China and South Korea, which continue to carry out Nazism in the name of anti-Japanese education, and by the Nazis who grew up with this education, using the West (especially the United States), Japan, and the United Nations as their main stage.
The UN.
SDGs, global warming, etc., are a Chinese strategy.
If you have time to tout and preach a trick, you should immediately advise China and South Korea to abolish Nazism education.
The UN's continued neglect of China and South Korea to this day has led to a crisis of democracy and has encouraged the tyranny of totalitarian states.
It is no exaggeration to say that the United Nations is now entirely dominated by China.
It is no exaggeration to say that the UN, which has brought about such a state of affairs, is the main culprit in destabilizing democracy.
This article is a must-read for the Japanese people and people worldwide.
The Japanese people and everyone else in the world must remember that the people who call themselves scholars in the following article are the enemies of intelligence, freedom, and humanity.
The Japanese people must never forget the name of the person this article is the first time they have seen, Sayaka Chatani, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore.
It is hard to believe that such a person is a university professor in the first place.
The following is an exclusive memoir by weekly Shincho.
The Harvard Professor Who was turned into an 'ostracism' Reveals
The abnormal bashing of his "comfort women = professional prostitutes" thesis
Japanese Researchers Move to 'Exclude' Instead of 'Disprove
Korean scholar's "thesis withdrawal" prominent movement
The lie of the Asahi Shimbun "Seiji Yoshida" that goes through overseas
The fact that the Japanese military did not coerce prostitution
Harvard Law School Professor J. Mark Ramseyer
The article "Prostitution Contracts in the Pacific War," published at the end of 2020, was heavily denounced in South Korea and the United States because it rejected the theory that comfort women were sex slaves.
However, this was a politically motivated movement that trampled on academic freedom.
One year has passed since the uproar, and the whole story of the personal attack is so terrible.
My articles and books have rarely attracted attention.
I write inconspicuous articles and books read-only by a minimal number of specialists.
The same is true for my paper on comfort women that I published in the second half of 2020, which no one paid much attention to except for one economic website that lightly commented on it.
However, a year ago, in late January 2021, the Sankei Shimbun published an excellent paper summary.
It appeared on the Sankei Shimbun website on Thursday, January 28, and in the paper on Sunday.
On Monday, February 1, I woke up, as usual, breakfasted, drank coffee, and checked my email.
I began to receive harassing hate mail slandering me.
The Korean media had picked up the Sankei article on my paper.
I received 77 hate emails on Monday, all of which were hostile, anti-Japanese, and mostly insane.
Every day after that, I received more hate mail, and it continued for two months.
The hate mail prompted me to check the website of The International Review of Law & Economics, which published my article, and found that the publisher, Elsevier, had posted a tweet about the report, saying It turns out that there have been 1,200 tweets about my paper.
It is bizarre.
No one had ever tweeted about my paper before, not even once.
I didn't even know how to read the tweets.
With the help of my son, I registered a Twitter account and was taught the search function.
It turned out that a group of American academics had read the Korean media article and were outraged.
The first one seemed to be Hannah Shepard, a young scholar currently teaching Japanese history at Yale University.
She tweeted on Monday morning, "I'm completely speechless where to begin. An hour later, she tweeted, "I could ignore this article, but it's on the front page of the Korean media, with the name of his organization on it. But with his name on the front page of the Korean media, can I ignore it? Can I ignore it?"
Among the top tweeters were Amy Stanley (who teaches Japanese history at Northwestern University) and David Ambaras (a professor at North Carolina State University), who tweeted back and forth throughout the day. Paula Curtis, a young scholar, joined them.
By Tuesday, the tweeters had concluded that they should stage a protest to demand the paper's retraction.
In fact, Stanley and Shepherd had each asked the journal's publisher to retract the article on Monday.
Shepherd had posted her request on Twitter so that others could refer to it.
She added, "Ramseyer's article simply repeats the views of Japan's far-right denialists in an echo-chamber fashion in an academic journal.
My critics seemed to be enjoying the festivities on Twitter.
Curtis tweeted, "Hey, at least five women say they've sent a letter of request to the editor about this terrible paper by Ramseyer.
Curtis tweeted, "How many male academics have protested? She continued.
Within two weeks, Shepherd, Stanley, Sayaka Chatani (assistant professor at Singapore National University), and Chelsea Sendy (professor at Aoyama Gakuin University) - all Japanese studies scholars in the School of Humanities - had sent a 30-page letter to the journal demanding a retraction of my article. Within a week, my colleagues at Harvard University, Andrew Gordon, a Japanese historian, and Carter Eckert, a Korean historian, submitted a letter to the journal's publisher asking for a retraction.
The five scholars argued that there were many misattributions in my paper, and Gordon and Eckert claimed they had not seen me or the actual contract.
The five scholars argued that there were many misattributions in my paper, and Gordon and Eckert claimed I had not seen the actual contract.
They both accused me of gross academic dishonesty.
Pressure on my organization
At Harvard Law School, Jinny Seok Ji-young, a colleague of mine, submitted a critical article to The New Yorker (apparently a popular magazine among the intelligentsia).
Although she had little knowledge of Japanese or Korean history, she contacted some of my critics (Ambaras and Gordon, for example) and repeated their arguments.
As a matter of fact, there were only three mistakes in my 30+ page paper, excluding page numbers and the like; none of them were severe mistakes.
Gordon and Eckert claim that I have not seen the actual contracts, but there are numerous references to Korean and Japanese comfort women working under contract.
Almost every Japanese book on the subject mentions contracts.
Japanese government documents, memoirs, newspaper advertisements, diaries, and others also contain descriptions of contracts.
Concurrently, Michael Choi, a Korean-American political scientist at UCLA, organized a petition drive among political scientists and economists to have my article withdrawn from publication, eventually gathering over 3,000 signatures.
Many of the signatures were in Korean surnames.
I don't think many of those who signed the petition have a deep knowledge of Japanese or Korean history.
It came as a shock to me that a scholar would sign a petition to have a paper on a subject he is ignorant of withdrawn from publication.
But in fact, many academics did sign the petition.
American professors began the old-fashioned and very ruthless ostracism.
Harvard University has a Japanese Studies Program (called the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, after the former ambassador to Japan and Harvard professor), of which I am a member.
On the Institute's website, other professors of Japanese studies immediately posted the criticisms of Gordon and the five scholars, which continued for nearly six months.
I am on the boards of several academic groups, and one of my critics pressured the board to convene a special committee to consider removing me from the board.
The critics also attacked my editor.
Several publishers were planning to publish my other papers. All of them had nothing to do with comfort women.
Nevertheless, my critics urged the editors to cancel the articles.
Humanities Department with Many Far-Leftists
The series of developments was bizarre.
The theory that the Japanese military forced Korean women to become comfort women is not a reasonable one.
Every military base has brothels in the vicinity, and some prostitutes are willing to work there.
Many women seek out these jobs for the money.
In such a situation, did the Japanese military forcibly gather Korean women (who had Japanese nationality, to begin with) and force them to work? Unfortunately, such a story does not make sense.
However, the controversy over the comfort stations is deeply related to "politics. It should be evident to readers of this magazine that politics is behind the attacks from South Korea.
Voters' support for the current South Korean government is based on strong anti-Japanese sentiment and criticism of Japan.
The Japanese military's theory forced Korean women to go to comfort stations forms part of the voter support.
This theory helps the current administration maintain its power, and the attacks on me come from the dynamics of the election.
South Korea is a democracy, but it is a democracy limited to the extent that it does not dispute and debate the comfort women issue.
Scholars who deny forced entrainment may be forced out of college. Sometimes it even develops into a criminal procedure.
It seems that scholars like Michael Che want to bring such unacceptable behavior to American universities.
It may be difficult for readers of this journal to understand the political background of Japanese studies scholars in the United States, such as Gordon, Stanley, Ambaras, and the other five.
A hint of this can be found in a recent article Curtis wrote.
According to her, "privilege, institutions, and networks of the haves contribute to the abuse of power by some groups; usually, white males in elite organizations in senior positions,"
And researchers like her are struggling to "liberate and reform" universities from "senior white men" like me.
Curtis's comment reflects the strange political situation in contemporary American universities' humanities departments.
Most humanities departments are uniformly center-left, and many are far left.
The extreme nationalist Korean narrative about comfort women seems to fit this political thinking.
Anyway, when the comfort women issue comes up, critics like Stanley and Ambaras seem to censor it decisively and thoroughly.
In mid-November 2021, a prominent South Korean economist, Lee Woo-Yeon, wrote an article in the diplomatic journal The Diplomat.
He, like me, disagreed with the theory that the Korean comfort women were sex slaves.
Ambaras posted a screenshot of the article on Twitter, declaring, "The comfort women deniers are hideous," and asking, "Why would The Diplomat publish this piece of garbage? He continued.
Stanley retweeted the contribution, and Chaya joined in the writing.
Within a few hours, Mitchie Nunn, a reporter from The Diplomat, replied, "We're responding. I'm sorry," he replied, and shortly after, "We have removed the contribution. I am truly sorry for such an unpleasant and unacceptable mistake," he wrote.
In case that apology wasn't enough, he added, "We sincerely apologize for the way we posted this contributed text on our website. The text has been removed," The text has been removed," he added to apologize.
But Ambaras didn't stop there. Singh wrote back, "The editors should tell the public why they allowed this to be published in the first place and what measures they will take to prevent similar mistakes in the future."
Singh replied, "I will make a statement on our official account. But, again, I have no excuse. As the chief reporter for Korea and North Korea, I will be in closer contact with the editors and will do my best to review all outside contributions.
Ambaras said, "Thank you. We all have a mountain of work to do in dealing with negativity, don't we?
Singh continued to apologize and said, "Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to those who have contacted me directly to point out this issue and ensure that it is addressed promptly by The Diplomat and me. Please continue to review our communications as much as possible and provide us with your insights. Thank you," he added.
The source of information is still "Seiji Yoshida.
What actually happened in Korea is, of course, very simple.
To minimize venereal disease, the Japanese government expanded the previously existing domestic prostitution licensing system to include foreign countries.
The military did not need to force women into prostitution.
Prostitution was a well-paying job for the poorest women, and many poor women in pre-war Japan and Korea competed for this job.
The military could not afford to use soldiers to force prostitution on unwilling women in the first place. After all, the soldiers were fighting a war.
However, about 40 years after the war, a man named Seiji Yoshida published a book titled "My War Crimes," in which he wrote that he and his soldiers went to Korea and "hunted women" to be sent to comfort stations.
As soon as the book was published, elderly Korean women began to claim that they had been forcibly taken by Japanese soldiers and started demanding money and apologies from the Japanese government.
The women, who had previously said that they had entered the workforce of their own volition, now began to claim (after the publication of Yoshida's book) that they had been forced into the workforce by Japanese soldiers.
Women who used to say that their parents pressured them to take jobs now claim that they were forced to do so by Japanese soldiers.
The same goes for the famous UN criticism of Japan (the Radhika Kumaraswamy Report). In her report, she explicitly cited Yoshida's book.
However, as readers of this magazine already know, Yoshida later confessed that her book was a complete lie.
There is no evidence that the Japanese military forced Korean women into prostitution in the 1930s and 1940s.
There is virtually no evidence that the Japanese military forced Korean women into prostitution in the 1930s and 1940s.
There is virtually no mention of the Japanese government forcing Korean women into prostitution in publications before 1985 in Korea.
And many of the women who have changed their claims live in nursing homes owned by women who were indicted for massive financial fraud.
How much of this history is understood by American scholars is a mystery.
In 2003, Gordon published another book based on an English-language source based on Yoshida's made-up book.
In 2003, however, it was well known in Japan that Yoshida's book was false.
Nevertheless, in the U.S., a professor of Japanese history at Harvard University wrote a book on comfort women in 2003, using Yoshida's book as a source of information.
In Japan, anyone who reads newspapers knows that the women began claiming forced labor shortly after the publication of Yoshida's book.
American researchers, however, make no mention of this book at all.
They quote many women's words but rarely mention that their stories have changed (in some cases, many times).
He also rarely mentions the fact that Yoshida's falsehoods caused the controversy.
What really happened on the Korean peninsula in the 1930s is evident.
The Japanese military did not force Korean women into prostitution, it simply did not happen.
Sometimes, however, the more obviously wrong their claims are, the more scholars will attack them for pointing out the simple truth.
On this subject, American scholars of Japanese history are surprisingly militant.
They have not attempted to disprove my paper.
They asked for an injunction against the publication of the paper itself.
It is Stalinism in academia.
And it does not bode well for the future of Japanese studies in American universities.
