Bashed and threatened for months by right-wingers and history revisionists, a former Asahi Shimbun reporter made a rare appearance in Tokyo Friday to file a libel suit against a major publisher and a noted scholar of Korean studies.
Takashi Uemura is seeking ¥16.5 million in damages from Bungeishunju Ltd. and Tsutomu Nishioka, a professor of Korean studies at Tokyo Christian University, saying they erroneously claimed he fabricated stories about "comfort women," Japan's euphemism for the thousands of women who were forced into Japan's wartime military brothels
At a news conference, Uemura said their "unfounded slander" prompted some anonymous nationalists to threaten his employer, and violated the privacy of his family by posting a photo of his daughter on the Internet.