The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling ordering Bungeishunju Ltd. to pay 9.2 million yen in damages to the family of an archaeologist who killed himself in 2001 because of reports in the publishing company's weekly magazine.
Upholding a Fukuoka High Court ruling, the top court's No. 1 Petty Bench also ordered the publisher to print an apology to the family of Mitsuo Kagawa in the weekly magazine, Shukan Bunshun.
The top court said Shukan Bunshun carried reports from January to March 2001 that suggested Kagawa had faked finds of stone tools in the Hijiridaki Cave in Honjo, Oita Prefecture, in 1962. Kagawa was then an archaeologist at Beppu University in the prefecture.