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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Something unusual happened on 5 March 2009 in the quiet compound of the French school known as Sciences Po, the National Foundation for Political Science, from which most of the past and present French governmental elite graduated. It was the first day of a major conference on “Memory, The Writing of History and Democratization” that assembled political scientists, sociologists, and historians, addressing a vast array of issues related to World War Two, Stalinism and Maoism, and recent African wars. Around one hundred people had gathered in one of the main lecture halls. The first session was ending when a woman from the audience quickly approached the speakers' table. She was not your typical academic conference attendant. A bailiff, she was there to hand one of the speakers a subpoena to appear before the Paris district court at the request of the “French Sasakawa Foundation” (FFJDS). The Foundation, having filed a libel suit against that particular scholar, had chosen this flamboyant way to make the case public.
1 This French foundation was created in 1990 with a 3 billion yen endowment from Sasakawa Ryōichi's Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation. It is part of a network of organizations headed by the Nippon Foundation (link). Sasakawa Yōhei, Ryōichi's son, is chairman of the Nippon Foundation, and is on the board of a number of partner organizations, including the French, the British and the Scandinavian ones, as well as the Tokyo Foundation. According to the French decree of recognition of the Paris-based foundation, its official name is « Fondation Franco-Japonaise, Dite Sasakawa » (FFJDS) which might translate into English as Franco-Japanese Foundation, so-called Sasakawa.
2 Paula Daventry (ed), Sasakawa, The Warrior For Peace, The Global Philanthropist, Foreword by Robert Maxwell, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1981.
3 As captured by Andrew Marshall and Michiko Toyama in their investigative article: « In The Name of the Godfather », Tokyo Journal, October 1994.
4 Satō Seizaburō, Sasakawa Ryōichi kenkyū. Ijigen-kara-no shisha, Tokyo, Chūō Kōronsha, 1998. See also by the same author: Seiyoku (za raito uingu) no otoko, Tokyo, Chūō Kōronsha, 1999, and the post-mortem autobiography of Sasakawa edited by Itō Takashi and Watanabe Akira, Sugamo Nikki, Tokyo, Chūō Kōronsha, 1997.
5 Iguchi Gō, Shimoyama Masayuki, Kusano Hiroshi, Kuromaku kenkyū. Takemura Masayoshi, Sasakawa Ryōichi, Kobari Rekiji, Tokyo, Shinkokuminsha, 1977, Awaya Kentarō « Tokyo saiban-e-no michi 26 », Asahi Journal, 12 April 1985, Kamata Satoshi, Shiawase-no hōshū, Tokyo, Suzusawa shoten, 1990, pp. 7-104, Kaga Kōei, « Saigo-no Don. Sasakawa ichizoku-no anto », Bungei Shunjū, August 1993. It is reported that the journalist Kaga Kōei received death threats in relation to his research on the Sasakawa empire (cf. Bertil Lintner, Blood Brothers, Crows Nest, Allen & Unwin, 2002).
6 Philippe Pons, Misère et crime au Japon du XVIIème siècle à nos jours, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, David Kaplan and Alec Dubro, Yakuza. Japan's Criminal Underworld, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003 (expanded edition), Richard Samuels, Machiavelli's Children. Leaders and their Legacies in Italy and Japan, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2003, Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists. The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2008. In the preface to the new edition of their famous book, David Kaplan and Alec Dubro tell how, at the request of Sasakawa Ryōichi, Robert Maxwell ordered the shredding of the whole inventory of the English edition, and along with it the portrait of Sasakawa as a war criminal with ties to the underworld and the ultranationalist movement.
7 Cf. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 May 1990. For a view on some European cases see Tobias Hübinette, « Asia as a Topos of Fear and Desire for Nazis and Extreme Rightists », positions, 15/2, Fall 2007, pp. 403-428.
8 Link.
9 Itō Takashi is a historian and a founding member of the “Society for the Creation of New History Textbooks” (Atarashii rekishi kyōkashoo tsukurukai), also known as tsukurukai, a leading organization promoting historical revisionism in Japan today. The three volume book actually comprises previously published texts such as Satō Seizaburō's articles: Itō Takashi, Sasakawa Ryōichi to Tōkyō Saiban, Tokyo, Chūō Kōronsha, 2007-2008.
10 Source (12 April 2010). Also recently published in English translation is Satō Seizaburō's hagiographic biography: Sasakawa Ryoichi. A Life, Norwalk, Eastbridge, 2006.
11 Konsaisu nihon jinmei jiten, Tokyo, Sanseidō, 1990, Asahi jimbutsu jiten. Gendai nihon, Tokyo, Asahi shimbunsha, 1990, Kyodo News, 26 May 1995, Jiji Press, 19 July 1995, Yonhap News, 30 May 2005.
12 Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, 1980; The Associated Press, 20 July 1995.
13 Ishida Takeshi, A Foreign Country in Japan: Sugamo Prison, The Asia-Pacific Journal.
14 SCAP to the War Department, 28 October 1947 (NARA: RG 331, Entry 1289, Box 1416, File 010-2). Another SCAP evaluation of Sasakawa, as “a man potentially dangerous to Japan's political future”, has often been quoted by historians. Although it does not contradict the above statement — it actually confirms it — one should, however, note that the former was produced on 4 June 1947, before the new round of investigations by the IPS had been set in motion. In other words, the later document is an even stronger argument for considering Sasakawa as a defendant in a class-A war crimes trial.
15 Yuma Totani, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial. The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2008, p. 73.
16 NARA: RG 319, Box 270, Row 84, Compartment 11, Shelf 5.
17 Awaya Kentarō, Tōkyō saiban-e-no saiban e no michi, Tokyo, Kōdandansha, 2006, p.141.
18 Link.
19 Letter from Ryoichi Sasakawa to Office Sasakawa in Tokyo, 18 November 1946 (NARA: RG 331, M-1683, Fiche 38).
20 Cf. Satoshi Nakano, “The Politics of Mourning” in Setsuho Ikehata and Lydia N. Yu Jose (eds), Philippines-Japan Relations, Manila, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2003, p. 357. See also Yuki Tanaka, Last Words of the Tiger of Malaya, General Yamashita Tomoyu
21 EFE World News Service, 19 December 2000. See also Kyodo News, 28 November 2000, Japan Times, 10 August 2003.
22 John Breen, “Popes, Bishops and War Criminals: reflections on Catholics and Yasukuni in post-war Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 9-3-10, 1 March 2010.
23 Sono Ayako, Aru shinwa-no haikei, Tokyo, Bungei Shunjū, 1973.
24 Ōe Kenzaburō, Okinawa nōto, Tokyo, Iwanami shinsho, 1970.
25 Ōe Kenzaburō, translated by Scott Borba, « Misreading, Espionage and “Beautiful Martyrdom”: On Hearing the Okinawa ‘Mass Suicides’ Suit Court Verdict », The Asia-Pacific Journal, updated 14 November 2008 http://japanfocus.org/-Oe-Kenzaburo/2915. See also Kamata Satoshi, translated by Steve Rabson, « Shattering Jewels: 110,000 Okinawans Protest Japanese State Censorship of Compulsory Group Suicides », The Asia-Pacific Journal, 3 January 2008, Steve Rabson, « Case Dismissed: Osaka Court Upholds Novelist Oe Kenzaburo for Writing that the Japanese Military Ordered “Group Suicides” in the Battle of Okinawa », The Asia-Pacific Journal, 8 April 2008, link, Minoru Iwasaki and Steffi Richter, « The Topology of Post-1990s Historical Revisionism », positions, 16/3, Winter 2008.
26 “Ketteiban ‘Nankin Jiken’ saishin hōkoku”, Shokun!, February 2001, Watanabe Shōichi, Shōwashi no nazo wo ou, Tokyo, Bungei shunjū, 1999.
27 Agence France Presse, 14 July 2007.
28 Fukiura Tadamasa “Closing the Japan-China Perception Gap”, in An Overview Of The Nanjing Debate, Tokyo, Japan Echo, 2008.
29 F. Tadamasa, ibid.
30 Synopsis for The Nanking Massacre: Fact Versus Fiction, Tokyo, The Tokyo Foundation. This publication is not dated but it was mailed to libraries and researchers, and was recorded as such, between 2006 and 2008.
31 Shudo Higashinakano, The Nanking Massacre. Fact Versus Fiction, Tokyo, Sekai Shuppan, 2005.
32 See also The New York Times, 10 July 2005. The project financed by the Nippon Foundation for Okinatori was presented in the Ocean Policy Research Foundation (OPRF) Newsletter, n°174. The OPRF was established by Sasakawa's Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation, the ancestor of the Nippon Foundation. The former and present chairmen of the Tokyo Foundation are members of the OPRF board of directors.
33 Source, 8 June 2006. The “Higashinakano phenomenon” has, however, been critically analyzed by scholars such as Steffi Richter: “Historical Revisionism in East Asia: What Does Politics Have to Do with It?” in Steffi Richter (ed), Contested Views of a Common Past, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2008, and Kasahara Tokushi, “Higashinakano Osamichi. The Last Word in Denial” in Bob T. Wakabayashi (ed), The Nanking Atrocity 1937-1938. Complicating the Picture, New York, Bergahn Books, 2008.
34 The official name at the time of the government's request was still the “Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation” but the unofficial name “Sasakawa Foundation” had been commonly used for some years. The request came amidst a bribery scandal that implicated the foundation's secretary general, and coincided with the government's intention to proceed to a major overhaul of the foundation. See Asahi Shimbun, 6 June 1994 and Kyodo News, 26 May 1995.
35 As reported on the website of the Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China.
36 See the Sasakawa Peace Foundation Newsletter, 19 March 2010.
37 For example: Yoshida Yutaka, Ten'nō no guntai to Nanking Jiken, Tokyo, Aoki shoten, 1986, Kasahara Tokushi, Nanking Jiken, Tokyo, Iwanami shoten, 1997, Toshiyuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors. Japanese War Crimes in World War II (foreword by John Dower), Boulder, Westview Press, 1996, and by the same author, Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation, London, Routledge, 2002, Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”. History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States, New York, Oxford University Press, 2006.
38 The Chronicle of Higher Education, op. cit. A special edition of the Newsletter of the York University Faculty Association gave a detailed report of the controversy: Active Voice, 27 February 1990.
39 Agence France Presse, op. cit.
40 For an overview of this rich sub-field of political science see for example Ran Hirschl, “The New Constitutionalism and the Judicialization of Pure Politics Worldwide”, Fordham Law Review, 75/2, 2006.
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