Shogakukan Apologizes for Rehiring Artist with Sex Crime Past

Tokyo, March 9 (Jiji Press)–Japanese publisher Shogakukan Inc. said Monday that it has apologized to a sex crime victim for using a male manga artist as an author for a new series under a different pseudonym despite knowing about his history of sexual assault. According to Shogakukan, an executive of the company visited the office of the victim’s lawyer on Thursday and apologized to her by phone. Following the artist’s arrest, Shogakukan’s manga app department stopped publishing a manga series by the man, before rehiring him as the author of a new manga series, “Jojin Kamen,” in 2022 after changing the artist’s pen name to Hajime Ichiro. In a statement released Monday, the publisher said that “the decision to rehire the manga artist under a different pen name constitutes an act that disregarded her human rights, and we deeply regret this failure in our corporate oversight responsibilities.” In a statement released through her lawyer, the victim said she had thought the company should give the real reason for suspending a past manga series. “I sincerely hope that the reality of the harm caused by the crime will be widely known and that society as a whole will establish a system to protect children from becoming victims of sexual crimes,” the statement said. The lawyer said that “we have received information indicating there were multiple (child) victims.” The man, who was a teacher at a private high school in Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, was arrested in 2020 for assaulting a female student in her teens at the school in violation of the child prostitution and child pornography prohibition law. Sapporo District Court ordered him to pay 11 million yen in damages to her on Feb. 20 this year. Both the plaintiff and the defendant have challenged the court ruling. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]