Author: Tetsuhide Yamaoka
President of the Australia-Japan Community Network Inc.
The Ideological Environment of Sophia University
Recently I heard an interesting piece of news.
Early in April, a woman claiming to promote certain films visited a small theater in Hokkaido. She told the manager, "This film is very popular in Tokyo now - everyone is talking about it. You should show it here, too."
The woman was Soon-hi Seok, an associate professor at Tomakomai Komazawa University. She was promoting the film titled, The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue, by Miki Dezaki.
Soon-hi Seok had published a book titled, The Historical Bond Between Koreans and the Ainu (Jurousha, in Japanese, 2017). In it, she shared her perspective, arguing "The Koreans forcibly taken to Japan don't have Japanese nationality. They are given neither equal opportunities nor equal rights. Their survival is in peril."
On April 13, Asahi Family Digital published a long interview with Dezaki, director of the film, The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue, He said,
I was a YouTuber. But when I uploaded a movie titled, Racism in Japan, a lot of Japanese online right-wingers were angry, and they severely attacked me.
