Seiji Yoshida

nihongo|Yūto Yoshida|吉田雄兎, pen name nihongo|Seiji Yoshida|吉田清治, born 1913, is a Japanese writer and former soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army.cite book|id=ISBN 978-4-7938-0143-3|title=検証『従軍慰安婦』 従軍慰安婦問題入門 (Verification of the "military comfort women": introduction to the issue of military comfort women)|last=Uesugi|first=Chitoshi|date=September 1996|pages=p. 58|quote=姓名は、吉田東司・吉田清治等は、ペンネームである。本名は吉田雄兎であった。|language=Japanese|publisher=Zenbōsha] cite news|work=The Hankyoreh|title=|last=Han|first=Seung-dong|url=http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/culture/culture_general/201075.html|date=2007-04-05|accessdate=2008-01-25|title=아베의 아름다운 나라 ‘대일본제국’ (Abe's beautiful country, the 'Great Empire of Japan')|language=Korean] Originally from Yamaguchi Prefecture on the Sea of Japan, he was stationed in Korea, then a colony of Japan, during World War II; he claimed that he assisted police to kidnap over 2,000 women from various rural areas of the Korean peninsula to serve as comfort women.cite news|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEFDA133DF93BA3575BC0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2|work=New York Times|title=Japanese Veteran Presses Wartime-Brothel Issue|last=Sanger|first=David E.|date=1992-08-08|accessdate=2008-01-24] After the war, he ran as a the Japanese Communist Party candidate in the 1947 Shimonoseki city council elections, but received only 129 votes.Fact|date=January 2008 In 1977 and again in 1983, he published memoirs in which he detailed his actions during the war. His books and a subsequent 1991 media interview have been credited with bringing about the apology by Foreign Affairs minister Yōhei Kōno. [cite news|url=http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200703/200703060012.html|date=2007-03-06|accessdate=2008-01-24|work=Chosun Ilbo|title=Abe and the Comfort Women]

As Yoshida's memoirs became widely known, he began to attract suspicion. Ikuhiko Hata, a historian at Takushoku University and one of Yoshida's leading critics, pointed to inconsistencies between Yoshida's 1977 and 1983 memoirs, using these to assert that his claims are fabricated. South Korean newspaper interviews with residents of Jeju Island, where the forced recruitment allegedly took place, found no one who admitted to remembering a sweep through a button factory there which Yoshida detailed in his 1983 memoirs. In May 1996, weekly magazine "Shūkan Shinchō" published remarks by Yoshida made to them in an interview, admitting that portions of his work had been made up. He stated that "There is no profit in writing the truth in books. Hiding the facts and mixing them with your own assertions is something that newspapers do all the time too". [cite news|url=http://www.nikkanberita.com/read2.cgi?id=200703061151072|work=Nikkan Berita|date=2007-03-06|accessdate=2008-01-24|title=勇気ある告発者か詐話師か？吉田清治を再考する (A brave whistleblower or a swindler? Reconsidering Yoshida Seiji)|language=Japanese|quote=「本に真実を書いても何の利益もない。事実を隠し自分の主張を混ぜて書くなんていうのは、新聞だってやるじゃないか」] [cite book|title=近現代史の必須知識: 日本人として最低限知っておきたい (Essential consciousness of modern history: The minimum that Japanese people should know)|publisher=PHP Kenkyūsho|id=ISBN 4569645089|last=Mizuno|first=Yasuō|pages=pp. 129|language=Japanese] cite news|work=JoongAng Ilbo|last=Ye|first=Yeong-jun|title=고노 담화 (The Kono talks)|date=2007-03-04|accessdate=2008-01-24|language=Korean|url=http://article.joins.com/article/article.asp?total_id=2651785|quote=궁지에 몰린 요시다는 "일부 사례의 시간.장소에는 창작이 가미됐다"고 털어놨다.] Since then, revisionist historians seeking to deny or downplay the existence of comfort women commonly mention Yoshida and his testimony; they cherry-pick his work as an example of low-credibility writing and attack his claims that specific women in certain locations were enslaved as comfort women, with the aim of denying that any women anywhere were victims of sexual violence by the Imperial Japanese Army. [cite book|title=The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History|last=Morris-Suzuki|first=Tessa|pages=p. 223|publisher=Verso|date=2005|id=ISBN 1859845134]

Works

*cite book|title=朝鮮人慰安婦と日本人 (Korean comfort women and Japanese people)|date=March 1977|id=ISBN 978-4404007957|publisher=Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha|last=Yoshida|first=Seiji
*cite book|title=私の戦争犯罪―朝鮮人強制連行 (My war crimes - the forced transport of Koreans)|date=January 1983|id=ISBN 978-4380832314|publisher=San'ichi Shobō|last=Yoshida|first=Seiji
**Translated into Korean as cite book|last=Yoshida|first=Seiji|title=나는 조선사람을 이렇게 잡아갔다 -나의 전쟁범죄 고백 (I kidnapped Koreans like this - confession of my war crimes)|date=1989|publisher=Cheonggye Yeonguso

References