Two universities, in Osaka and Hokkaido prefectures, have received letters urging them to fire former Asahi Shimbun reporters working for them, threatening to plant explosives on their campuses if they don't, police said Tuesday.
Tezukayama Gakuin University in Osakasayama, Osaka prefecture, said it received a letter on Sept. 13 saying it must dismiss a professor who had been working for the university since April 2012 because he wrote, while working at the Asahi, erroneous articles that were based on claims by Seiji Yoshida, a man who said he was involved in the kidnapping of Korean women who were then forced into sexual servitude for the wartime Japanese military. The victims came to be known euphemistically as "comfort women."
The sender of the letter included nails in the envelope, threatening to attack students by blowing up a gas bomb using the nails as shrapnel.