'Hanbok and Comfort Women Mockery' Japanese Far-Right Politician Ordered to Pay Damages for MeToo Defamation

Clicking 'Like' on Defamatory Posts Against Sexual Violence Victims
Controversy Over Hanbok Mockery and Offensive Remarks on Joseon Laborers

A Japanese far-right female lawmaker who recently sparked controversy by demanding the removal of monuments commemorating Korean laborers and comfort women has been ordered to pay damages for defaming a woman who was a victim of sexual assault.

Local media outlets such as Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun reported on the 10th that freelance journalist Shiori Ito won a damages lawsuit against Mio Sugita, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan (photo).

In 2017, Ito publicly revealed that she had been sexually assaulted by a male journalist in 2015, becoming a symbolic figure of Japan’s “Me Too” movement.

However, some people posted defamatory comments about her on social networking services (SNS), and Sugita pressed “like” on 25 such posts between June and July 2018.

LDP member Mio Sugita of Japan
[Photo by Yonhap News]

In response, Ito filed a damages lawsuit against Sugita for 2.2 million yen (approximately 19.65 million KRW), claiming defamation.

The first-instance court ruled that Sugita was not liable for damages. However, the appellate court concluded that Sugita’s repeated critical remarks about Ito around the time she pressed “like” constituted defamation.

The Supreme Court also judged that Sugita’s actions were excessively insulting and upheld the appellate court’s ruling on the 8th.

Sugita is a right-wing politician who has been involved with the “Society for the Creation of New History Textbooks” and has faced controversies over her qualifications due to hateful and defamatory remarks against sexual minorities.

She has denied the forced abduction of comfort women and claimed that academic papers dealing with victims’ testimonies were fabricated. In 2016, she posted mocking comments on SNS about women wearing hanbok, which was pointed out by legal authorities last year as a human rights violation.

Recently, she stirred controversy again by reporting on the removal of a memorial for Korean laborers in Gunma Prefecture, stating, “This is really good, and I hope the monuments or statues of comfort women and Korean Peninsula-origin laborers in Japan will follow suit,” and “False monuments are not needed in Japan.”