Japanese Far-Right Activities in the United States and at the United Nations: Conflict and Coordination between Japanese Government and Fringe Groups

“Japanese consul general: Brookhaven memorial is ‘symbol of hatred’” stated the headline of an article published on 23 June 2017 by Reporter Newspapers, the publisher of several local newspapers in Georgia, a mere week before the planned unveiling of a “comfort women” memorial in Brookhaven, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Citing a recorded interview with Shinozuka Takashi, Japan’s Consulate General for Atlanta, journalist Dyana Bagby reported that Shinozuka not only stated that the memorial dedicated to the victims of WWII-era Japanese military sexual slavery was a “symbol of hatred,” but also argued that “there is ‘no evidence’ that the military sexually enslaved women,” and that the women were, in fact, “paid prostitutes.” This shocking statement was a testament to how far Japan’s organized effort to distort history and attack victims and survivors of Japan’s wartime atrocities had advanced. After Shinozuka’s comment received widespread condemnation from across the world, he and the Japanese government clarified that the Consulate General had not actually used the phrase “paid prostitutes.” But in the recording released online by Bagby, Shinozuka can be heard stating that “in Asian culture, in some countries, we have girls who decide to go to take this job to help their family.” In the context, “this job” clearly refers to voluntary forms of prostitution, so Bagby was correct to interpret his statement as arguing that “comfort women” were voluntary “paid prostitutes.” Shinozuka was, of course, not criticized for using the specific phrase “paid prostitute” but for negating the historical fact that many women and girls were forced to serve as “comfort women” under various combinations of force, fraud, coercion, or debt bondage, and for suggesting that these “girls,” as Shinozuka calls them, voluntarily became “comfort women” as a career choice. I was shocked not by the fact that someone like Shinozuka holds such a repugnant view, which I already know that many Japanese officials share, but by the increasing boldness of the Japanese government, where officials no longer even feel the need to conceal their true feelings on this issue. This is an important shift that has taken place over the last several years during which I have