Takashi Uemura

Takashi Uemura (植村 隆, Uemura Takashi) is a Japanese academic and former journalist who, while a reporter for The Asahi Shimbun, wrote about comfort women. He later came under scrutiny for alleged inaccuracy of terminology and omissions of information. Rival newspapers attacked him for twisting the truth, and more far-right figures went so far as to accuse him of fabrication.

His mother-in-law is Yang Sun-Im, a Korean activist who heads the Association for the Pacific War Victims and plaintiff groups for lawsuits by former comfort women. Yang was charged with fraudulently misleading donors to her organization, but has been acquitted, according to Uemura. Critics say that these comfort women were never recruited "as a" volunteer corps in fact, which transliterates into Japanese as Kankoku Teishintai Mondai Taisaku Kyogikai and literally means "The Korean Council to Address the Issue of the Volunteer Corps". The fact that Uemura obtained access to hear the tape from this organization is plainly stated in his August 11 article.

Pressures and threats of harm

Uemura left the Asahi Shimbun in March 2014, to pursue a second career as university lecturer. Uemura has since initiated legal proceedings over the public accusation against its publisher, the Bungeishunjū publishing company. On March 12, 2021, the Supreme Court handed down a verdict dismissing all of Uemura's appeal finally.

On January 9, 2015, Uemura filed a defamation suit with the Tokyo District Court against Nishioka, then-professor of Korean studies at Tokyo Christian University, and Bungeishunjū, Ltd. (the publisher of Shūkan Bunshun) in response to the public accusations against him.

Explanatory notes