My life in Publishing for Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination

By Akio Ishii
President and Representative Director, Akashi Shoten

Presented at the 2008 Magsaysay Awardees' Lecture Series,
Magsaysay Center, Manila 1 September 2008.

It is indeed a great honor for me to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. At first wondered if I was deserving of such a prestigious award, as I consider myself a behind-the-scenes-man, being a manager of a publisher. However I have decided to receive this award with gladness, and see it as an appreciation of my life and work for the 68 years I have lived. I wish to sincerely express my gratitude to the chair and trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation.

With the outburst of the Lugou Qiao incident in 1937, Japan entered into virtual state of war with China, and expanded the front of the war of aggression into Asia, which Japan was already engaged in. Moreover, in 1939 Germany took up arms against Europe, starting World War II. Japan followed suit, and also extended its own war to the world. The following year, on the 27th of September 1940, I was born in Akashi City, Hyogo in Japan. I was five years old in 1945, when Japan had faced its defeat in the war. When I was old enough to understand what was happening, Japan was involved in full-scale foreign invasion and war. When I look back on that time, I believe Japanese society was in a impoverished state, both economically and spiritually. When I was five years old, immediately before Japan was defeated in the war, I remember my uncle being dispatched going to war to Sakhalin, which is today part of Russia. I clearly remember sending off my uncle, as everyone sang military songs, and waved the flag of the Imperial Japanese Navy. It was very soon after that when Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration, and lost the war.

During the war, all of Japan was shrouded with a gloomy state of an all-out war, but I was just a young boy growing up surrounded by the seas of Setouchi, running about outdoors every day, playing in the sea in summer, and wiping my nose on my sleeves in winter.

However, towards the end of the war, Akashi City, where I grew up, became the target of an intense air raid by the U.S. forces, because there was a factory of Nakajima Aircraft Company, the airplane maker which manufactured the fighter "Hayabusa" for the Japanese forces. Because of this, Akashi received the most damage from air raids in the Kinki district. The air raids became intense day by day, from about the time I turned four years old, and I remember running about trying to escape from the fire bombs. While fleeing from the bombs, I remember thinking why this was happening. This experience when I was young was probably my starting point of understanding the facts about Japan's invasion of Asia, later in life. As I will mention later, even at the factory of Nakajima Aircraft Company, there were many Asians who were brought to Japan against their will. I think that seeing such realities first hand was for me the genesis for later finding out the truth about the facts of the Asian invasion by Japan, the human-right violations towards woman by the Japanese forces on the battlefield, and the issues of "comfort woman" established by the Japanese forces, and eventually questioning these issues through publication.

Another big issue was the discrimination that I myself received. During my boyhood years, the caste system that had existed in Japan for 400 years since the Edo period, was still strong. When I was six years old, my family left the town we lived in and moved to a neighboring town. As soon as we moved, what I started hearing was people saying to me, "You are from that Buraku, aren't you?" I remember been frightened whenever people asked me this. But even as a child, I could not consult my family about this, as my parents and sisters were also being discriminated in the same way. Although I felt strong anger and sadness towards this unjustified discrimination, I had kept these feelings deep within myself.

When I look back on these things, the misery of war I experienced when I was only five or six, and the fact that I had to deal with the unjustness of humans discriminating other humans at a young age: all these things paved the way for the rest of my life.

It was not the discrimination that I received personally, and I also witnessed the discrimination towards Korean residents in Akashi City at that time. As I mentioned earlier, many Koreans were brought from the Korean peninsula (a colony of Japan at the time) against their will to work at the factory of Nakajima Aircraft Company in Akashi City. The Koreans working there were discriminated severely from Japanese society. Even Japanese children would make fun and discriminate Koreans. At the time, though supposedly Koreans were considered to be Japanese, they were still treated one position lower than the so-called "mainland" Japanese. Children who mirrored the sentiment of discrimination of the adults, made fun of Koreans. The Koreans did not know where to point their anger, saying "we all eat the same food. What makes us any different?" I would witness this, and because I also was being discriminated, kept wondering why these people were being unjustifiably discriminated. These two discriminations that I came against in my boyhood would become the basic theme and the pillar of the publications when I would later start my own publishing company.

When I was 15 and in the third grade of junior high-school, my family moved to Osaka, the second biggest city in Japan, due to family circumstances. I thought that the unjustified discrimination we received in Akashi would not exist when we moved to Osaka. The truth was that I would meet with even more severe discrimination in Osaka. I think that my desire to find out about the roots of this unfair discrimination grew stronger in those days. Although my family was poor, my father allowed me to go and study in a university in Tokyo, as I had become very keen on learning.

Although I entered Waseda University in 1960, Japan was going through an era of student activism, and all over Japan universities were bustling with the opposition against the conclusion of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. Naturally I also participated in the movement. At the same time, I participated in a group that examined the problems of Buraku discrimination. Because of all these activities, I hardly went to classes, and spent all my time at university on demonstrations and study groups.

At that time, Japan was going through its postwar reconstruction period, and was in the process of becoming the economic giant it is today. During this tempestuous period of the times, I left university and actively participated in the labor movement. While working as a civil servant in the west of Tokyo, I was heavily involved in labor union activities. At the same time, in about 1970, while engaged in the labor union movement, I joined the Buraku Liberation Movement to eradicate the long-standing unjustified discrimination.

In 1974, after meeting the famous writer Hiroshi Noma, who was one of the busiest activists in Japan working to wipe out Buraku discrimination at the time, I organized a society to eliminate discrimination.

Although I was poor without any money at all at that time, I borrowed 600,000 yen from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and produced a magazine. Because the Japanese Government at that time were taking legal measures in the form of a temporary legislate to eradicate Buraku discrimination, the quarterly magazine Tokyo Buraku Liberation Research that I had published was welcomed by a lot of people and got off to a good start.

At the time, I was editing the magazine while being involved in the labor union movement, and one thing I did witness during the editing of the magazine was a tendency in the publishing industry which considered discrimination issues as a taboo. This was the pitiful state of the publishing industry, which did not want to be associated with discrimination issues, and which were very reluctant in publishing literature related to discrimination issues. I believe in order to create a society free of discrimination, publication through printed media plays an extremely important role. Indeed, publication should be the fort within the movement that creates inspiration and culture of anti-discrimination. I felt the urge to create a publisher that based its principles on discrimination and human rights issues, and thereby breaking the closed-minded circumstances that loomed in the publishing industry. I began to think that there should be at least one publisher in Japan that stood out from the rest. At that time, Korean residents in Japan were very energetic in their publishing activities, but there was no one from the Buraku areas who had established a publisher. So, I decided I could start my own publisher and be involved in publication to eradicate Buraku discrimination. Fortunately, I had been publishing the quarterly magazine for four years, so I had a strong network of writers who were concerned about discrimination and human rights issues, and I also had a basic list of purchasers interested in human rights related books, which meant I could probably make ends by running a publisher, and this determined me to establish Akashi Shoten.

I named the publisher Akashi Shoten, after Akashi City in Hyogo where I grew up and where I first experienced Buraku discrimination at a very young age. I wanted to be a reminder of the concept of what I was doing.

That is how Akashi Shoten was born, and as a result our agenda contains two main factors. First of all, we have a social mission to publish as many books as we can into our society on discrimination and the establishment of human rights, which other publishers are reluctant to do. Secondly, we need to have a unchanging stance on publishing that we will keep on making suggestions to the general public on the issues of human-right violations that happen every day.

For the first seven years, we only published books on Buraku issues, but from about 1985, we also started to publish books on a wide range of human rights issues including such topics as Korean residents in Japan, handicapped persons, newly-arrived foreigners, and feminism. We have also published many books on area studies on China and Asia including Korean issues, researches regarding international progression such as the human rights issues of minority groups in the world, and books on human rights enlightenment. As a result, the public started to recognize us as the prominent publisher on human rights, which helped us to pave our way as a comprehensive human rights publisher.

I would like to point out some books published by Akashi Shoten that have made a strong impression on me.

One great book we published when we were just starting off was Discriminated Buraku in Early Modern Kanto by legal historian Ryosuke Ishii, who later received the Order of Cultural Merit of Japan. This book was a culmination of 40 years of the author's research on Buraku discrimination, which had continued for 400 years from the Edo period. The publication of this book came as a surprise for many, because Akashi Shoten, which no one knew about at the time, had published a book by this great scholar.

One of the most memorable publications in the 1980's is Emperor Hirohito's Responsibility in the War by professor Kiyoshi Inoue, a modern historian on Japan. During the prewar days, professor Inoue collected material that rationally clarified how Emperor Hirohito was involved with Japan's war of aggression against Asia, at the Japanese history archives of The University of Tokyo (Tokyo Imperial University at the time). Based on this material, professor Inoue studied to prove that Emperor Hirohito was responsible for the war, and published his research. And this fine book was published through Akashi Shoten.

After we published professor Inoue's book, we made efforts to publish books concerning the abduction of Koreans and Chinese by Japan during the war of aggression against Asia. During World War II, to supplement the domestic labor shortage due to an all-out war, in which every single Japanese citizen was mobilized to prepare a system for war, Japan was bringing in manpower from its colony of Korea and occupied territories of China through a variety of methods including deception and intimidation, and made them work at coal mines and other hazardous construction sites. Even after losing the war, the Japanese Government never made any proper compensation to these victims, and they continue to make adverse claims even today. At Akashi Shoten, we consecutively published large-scale books such as Records of Chinese Abductees, a book edited by Hiroshi Tanaka, Aiko Utsumi, and Takashi Niimi that investigated the accounts of discrimination, and Records on Chinese Abductees during the War Vol. 1-4 edited by Eidai Hayashi, which collected material on coal mines. The Erased Records of the Korean Abductees, another book by Eidai Hayashi was a laborious work that patiently covered the realities of the hard labor and the life of Koreans that were forced to work at the Chikuho Coal Mines from interviews with witnesses at that time.

In the 1990's, new light was shed on the issues of "comfort woman", one of the major issues of harm afflicted by Japan in the war, as the actual victims themselves came forward voluntarily to pursue the responsibility of the Japanese Government. In response to this movement, Akashi Shoten published many books during this time. Testimonies: Abducted Korean Comfort Women edited by the The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Salvery by Japan collected testimonies of surviving victims in South Korea, and Filipino 'Comfort Women' of the Imperial Japanese Army recorded first-hand testimonies. In 2005, we published 'Comfort Women' on the Battlefield by Rumiko Nishino, which meticulously covered the tracks of survivor Pak Yeong-sim who lives in North Korea.

The human rights of the victims in the past, including the abductees and the comfort woman victims, is not yet been restored. The role of Akashi Shoten within these issues has not yet ended.

One of the biggest works of literature that we staked the company on was Royal Korean Envoys, Vol. 1-8. The disdain towards Koreans by the Japanese, which led to the Asia invasion in the modern era, seems to have occurred during the Meiji Restoration at the end of Tokugawa shogunate. However, prior to this, during the entire Edo period there was a history of a very amiable exchange between Korea and Japan, when royal Korean envoys to Tokugawa Japan, taught the Japanese a lot of culture. There is a lot of material left when these envoys came to Japan, especially a lot of paintings. Just about the time when this material was starting to be evaluated appropriately as belonging to these royal Korean envoys (there was a time when the material was wrongly assumed to be a culture of China, and not of Korea), Sin Gi-su, a Korean cultural historian residing in Japan, who had been working hard on uncovering such material, taught me of the true value of the materials. Hiroshi Nakao, who was interested in the exchange during this era from the viewpoint of political history and international relations, joined Sin Gi-su, and the two of them spent eight years to edit what would become a series of great art collection books.

I don't think that Buraku discrimination in Japan is irrelevant to the caste systems in other countries of Asia. However, each country and region has its own distinctiveness, and it would be difficult to try to comprehend everything indiscriminately as being the same caste system. However, it was decided that we needed to publish a study to accurately understand the caste system of India, for the sake of comparing the distinctiveness of such countries and regions. Therefore we gathered many researchers of South Asia in Japan of various experience and knowledge, and established the Indian Harijan Reaserch Society to publish a series of five volumes, over the course of seven and a half years.

We have also published many books that have to do with human rights issues with various areas in Asia. In particular, in terms of issues of human trafficking and the issues of female entertainers from the Philippines, which both have a deep connection with Japan, we have published Stopping Human Trafficking by Yoko Yoshida, and Filipino Entertainers in Japan by Maria Rosario Piquero Ballescas, To Japan, a Society of Prostitution: Letters from Thai Women, first-hand narratives by the victims of organized prostitution. Since the 1970's, package sex tours to various Asian countries by Japanese have been a major issue. And these books just mentioned are proof that these deleterious practices still remain in Japanese society. If Japan really wants to be trusted by Asian nations, we need to solve such issues as well as the issues of postwar compensation issues.

Many foreigners came to live in Japan during the latter half of the 1980's. It was a time of a different kind of economic boom called the "economic bubble years". There was a lack of manpower in Japan, and a lot of foreigners came to Japan looking for work. However, although manpower was necessary, there wasn't enough legislative preparations made, and the greater part of the foreigners came to the work sites without having legal status for employment. Naturally, various problems arose in employment relationships, payment, and work injuries. Moreover, Japan is a society that values a very homogeneous culture and interpersonal relationships. And so the number of foreigners who suffered from this increased. Akashi Shoten is a publisher that deals with the human rights of minority groups, so we published books that asked how we could protect the human rights of such foreigners. Human Rights Handbook for Foreigners in Japan in 18 Languages edited by the Osaka Bar Association, which was mentioned in this award, was made possible through the cooperation of lawyers in Osaka and students at Osaka University of Foreign Studies. Know-how on defending the rights of foreign workers is written in 18 languages including Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, and Urdu. One story I remember from when the handbook came out was that a foreigner who found this book in a bookstore, spent their return train fee to buy the book, and walked home.

In the 80's, Foreigners who came to Japan to work on their own were typecasted as "foreign workers". But today, these men and women are joined by their families, or have married Japanese, or are actively introducing their own cultures to Japan as residents of Japan. Currently Akashi Shoten categorizes such aspects as part of immigration issues. One of our most important works in this area is Globalizing Japan and Immigration Issues, Vol. 1-6 edited by Hiroshi Komai. Japan is entering an age where it needs to consider these issues as one of its important policy concerns, not only in labor issues, but also for the security of rights for families, and in the fields of the education and medical treatment etc.

Our "Textbooks of the World" series started in the latter half of the 1990's. During this time, Japanese right wing groups started to significantly criticize the description of the history in Japanese history textbooks. Although this is not probably well known outside of Japan, due to the writer's efforts, we were slowly starting to see fair and decent content in Japanese history textbooks. Efforts were made to accurately tell students of the facts of the invasion into Asia by Japan since the Meiji era. Meanwhile, right wing groups that praise the war of aggression by Japan, started making vociferous claims that children should be taught history that was favorable to prewar Japan, by mobilizing some major players in the media. One of the arguments of these right wing groups is that every Asian country writes their own favorable history, by quoting actual textbooks from various Asian countries, stressing that a mutual understanding of history between Japan and Asian countries will never be possible. However, the fact is that most of such right wing groups cherry-pick content from these textbooks, and focus only on the parts that support their opinions.

The "Textbooks of the World" series was started based on the idea that we should convey what history textbooks of South Korea and China are saying by providing an accurate full text translation. As well as textbooks from China, South Korea, Thailand, and Bhutan, we now also publish textbooks from non-Asian countries including Italy and Brazil. Needless to say, it will not be easy for different countries to come to a mutual perception of history. But in this age of advanced globalization where the barriers of movement and communication by people is getting increasing smaller than previously, is there any meaning in isolating each other, disagreeing, or fighting, saying definitively that different peoples could never understand each other?

We believe that one of the important roles of a publisher is to create an environment that deepens mutual understanding, by correctly informing the Japanese readers about textbooks in various countries, and getting them to know how history is being studied in those countries.

Now, besides the work of publication, my own family adopted a foster child 18 years ago in 1990. As I lived and interacted with my child, there was something that inspired me to think very seriously about, as I questioned the many diverse issues through my publishing work. When I adopted my child at four years old, he had received intense abuse from his parents. While living with my child, I was very much made aware of the fact that children cannot choose their parents. You could say that my child was one of the lucky ones. Many more unfortunate children have no where to go and are entrusted to children's institutions, and have to enter the workforce without getting a chance to even go to school properly. This reality hit me hard, and it made me think. Through meeting my adopted child, I started to publish books that dealt with child abuse and foster children, one after another. The encounter of different things in my life determined the theme of books I published, and this was certainly a great encounter for me.

One of these themes for publication I worked on was the question of human rights of children who did not have the privilege of having parents to bring them up, for various reasons.

Akashi Shoten started out publishing books on anti-discrimination issues, Koreans in Japan, issues of foreign residents in Japan, and global minority group issues, and now we have made a leap into the areas of child's rights and welfare, as well as general welfare problems in Japan.

Several years ago a lawyer, who was working on the human rights issues of adolescent children, and who was a good friend of Akashi Shoten and some others asked if we could build a house for children who did not have any place to go, and I decided to make a contribution to the society in the form of offering a house from Akashi Shoten which I own, thinking that since the publishing business was going well. We have also offered another house in Yokohama for a similar purpose.

Although foster parents are still not very common in Japan, I have contributed to a foster parents' nationwide network organization, by offering them an office.

My desire is for Akashi Shoten to be involved in the improvement of human rights issues within Japan through providing psychological and material support.

Some of my friends ask me why I don't build foster institutions for children in developing countries. But many people already do that. Even in Japan there are many children that have nowhere to go. As someone who is a foster parent, I want to act as one of the few entrepreneurs who contribute to society by being involved in the problems that Japan faces.

During the 30 years of existence of Akashi Shoten, I have published nearly 3000 books. Even I don't know how I managed that.

My wish is for a society that is free of discrimination by birth. A society where everyone's human rights are respected without regard to their ethnicity, race, nationality, sex, or their place of origin. A society where everyone is guaranteed education and work. To realize this, I will keep on contributing through publication.

I look forward to your future support.