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Takashi Uemura

Takashi Uemura, the former Asahi Shimbun reporter who first brought the Japanese military comfort women issue to public debate in 1991 with a report quoting survivor Kim Hak-sun under her real name, has now published a book.

Now a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Korea, the 58-year-old Uemura spoke with reporters at a round-table at Seoul’s Purun History Academy on Sept. 16 to commemorate the publication of the book’s Korean edition. Originally titled “Truth: I Am Not a Fake Reporter,” the book was translated from the Japanese by Gil Yun-hyung and published by Purun History.

“The distortions by Japanese right-wingers like [Tokyo Christian University professor Tsutomu] Nishioka, who have tried to paint my reporting as a ‘fraud,’ are nothing more than fault-finding by historical revisionists,” he said. “But those things then spread over the internet, and the result was a growing vilification of me. It’s to battle that that I‘ve filed a defamation suit against Nishioka and others.”

Uemura also said his book was “a record of the ‘Uemura attacks’ and the fight to disprove them,” as well as an “autobiography of my relationship with South Korea to date.”

For the past two and half years, Uemura has faced what he called a “bitter ordeal.” In late Jan. 2014, the major Japanese weekly Shukan Bunshun began branding Uemura a “fake reporter” - citing claims by Nishioka - and attacking the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. In Apr. 2014, he signed an employment contract at Kobe Shoin Women’s University, which he applied for through open recruitment after quitting the Asahi Shimbun. He then found himself kicked out before he even started work.

Uemura’s daughter, now 19, was terrorized by abusive and threatening comments that appeared online at the time. “How many Japanese have suffered because of this bitch’s dad? . . . We ought to hound her until she kills herself,” one person wrote. Another threatened her life outright, writing, “I will kill her. Even if it takes a few years, I‘ll kill her. No matter where she runs, I’ll kill her. I must kill her.”

“That‘s the part that makes me angriest,” Uemura said. “It’s been really hard for me because of my daughter.”

Takashi Uemura

Uemura went on to say it was “one of their [his critics’] tactics to use the smallest of things to twist the entire message.”

“Their labeling me as a ‘fabricator’ was the real fabrication,” he added.

At the same time, he said, “Their attacks against me aren’t aimed at killing me personally.”

“Their real goal is to pressure the free press and force them to remain silent [on historical issues such as the comfort women],” he explained. “In that sense, they’ve been somewhat successful. Even the Asahi doesn’t write as much about those issues as it used to. The reporters are scared off, knowing that if they write those articles they could end up like Uemura.”

But Uemura also noted a growing movement of resistance and firing back against right-wing attacks.

“A number of citizens, lawyers, scholars, and journalists and Japan have offered their support, calling the ‘Uemura attacks’ suppression of press freedoms, and there has been support from South Korea as well,” he said.

In early August, a court ordered a middle-aged man who threatened to kill Uemura’s daughter to pay the 1.7 million yen (US$16,900) in damages claimed by the plaintiff, calling his actions a “malicious character attack against a minor.”

Uemura said he hopes to “continue serving as a bridge for the younger generations in Japan and South Korea to form friendly relations through the truth.”

“As a journalist, I intend to approach the comfort women issue a bit more proactively,” he added.

By Han Sung-dong, senior staff writer

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