TARGET

In August 1991, Takashi Uemura, a former reporter of Asahi Newspaper, wrote an article on the testimony of a former comfort woman in Korea. In the report she claims, “I was taken to the battlefield under the name of “Women's Volunteer Corps” and was forced into prostitution for Japanese soldiers.”  

Yoshiko Sakurai, a notable conservative commentator, and Tsutomu Nishioka, former university professor, denied the involvement of Japanese government and the military in the recruitment of comfort women.  In 2014, 23 years after the article, they claimed Uemura’s report was a fabrication and people began to attack Uemura as the “fabricator” of comfort women.  

Attacks against Uemura continued to intensify. He lost his second job at a university after the school was exposed to relentless attacks. His family even received death threats on social media.

A nation tries to rewrite its history into a convenient narrative. A journalist who reveals its inconvenient past will become a target of attack by the Rightist power. 

This is a story of a journalist who spoke out against the nation to prevent history from repeating itself, and the people who support his cause to protect the freedom of the press as well as democracy itself.