A major Japanese publisher prioritized profits over a victim’s safety, new court documents reveal. In two separate cases, the publisher ran content from manga artists convicted of sexually assaulting minors under pseudonyms.
Manga fans around the world have piled on Shogakukan after details of both cases emerged, with many calling for manga authors to pull their works from the publisher’s online site, MangaONE. Now, one of the victims is speaking out – and she’s asking everyone to let Shogakukan work through its issues.
The editor joined in on the cover-up
The case centers on author Yamamoto Shōichi, whose real name is Kurida Kazuaki. Yamamoto, a former private high school teacher in Sapporo, sexually abused a female student in 2020. He received a 300,000 yen ($2,013) fine for violating Japan’s child pornography laws after photographing the student. The abuse continued even after she graduated.
Shogakukan canceled his manga Daten Sakusen when he was arrested. Then, in 2022, barely two months after the cancellation, the company gave him a new series under the pen name Ichiro Hajime. The same creator, different name, business as usual.
The details of the assault are horrific. The victim maintains that Yamamoto treated her as his sexual slave for years. He forced her to engage in extreme sexual acts and acts of degradation, including eating her own feces.
Yamamoto was never convicted of a crime. This is partially because the assault happened at a time when it was harder for sexual assault victims to prove lack of consent. (Nonconsent laws in Japan were tightened in 2000.)
The victim developed PTSD from the abuse and filed a civil lawsuit. That’s when things got worse.
In May 2021, an editor from MangaONE joined the LINE group where the creator and victim were trying to negotiate a settlement. The editor came in with a proposal: create an official notarized document where the creator pays 1.5 million yen ($10,067) and the victim agrees to never speak publicly about what happened to her.
But the victim had her own terms. She told them she wouldn’t oppose restarting the manga serialization on one condition: Shogakukan had to publicly disclose that they’d suspended it because of the creator’s arrest. The editor refused.
The settlement talks fell apart. Shogakukan went ahead and launched Joujin Kamen on its Manga ONE site in 2022 – same creator, new pen name.
This January, the Sapporo District Court ordered the creator to pay 11 million yen ($73,826) in damages, and the court judgment laid out the editor’s involvement for everyone to see. MangaONE pulled Joujin Kamen on February 27th after the details of the case emerged.
“The editor approached me about keeping quiet that he was the author of Daten Sakusen,” the victim told reporters. “It’s painful that the perpetrator’s life keeps going well while mine doesn’t. It’s frustrating.”
A second case emerges
MangaONE’s editorial department finally apologized once the scandal blew up online: “We should not have hired him as the original creator. We sincerely apologize to the victim above all others.”
Multiple manga creators yanked their work from MangaONE in protest. “This is a horrific act against a minor,” one artist posted. “It’s obviously terrible, so why did the editor respond this way?”
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Then it got worse. The company admitted that another manga running on MangaONE, Seiso no Shinrishi (The Counselor Through The Years and Stars), was also written by a convicted sex offender hiding behind a pen name.
The creator, going by Yatsunami Miki, was actually Matsuki Tatsuya, who’d previously written the original story for “Act-Age,” a popular Weekly Shonen Jump series that got canceled in 2020 after Matsuki was arrested for groping women on the street. He got a suspended sentence of 18 months with three years probation.
Shogakukan tried to spin this one as responsible. They said they’d verified Matsuki’s probation had ended, confirmed he’d undergone psychological counseling, and decided he showed genuine remorse.
The artist working on the series, Yukihira Kaoru, knew about Matsuki’s past before agreeing to collaborate. According to Shogakukan, she said the manuscript moved her to tears and deserved to be published.
The manga industry demands accountability
Akamatsu Ken didn’t mince words. The manga creator-turned-member of Japan’s Diet made his name with hit series like Love Hina and Negima! before entering politics, which gave him the standing to call out Shogakukan publicly.
“Acts that leave unhealable wounds on people’s hearts and bodies cross a line that humans must not cross,” he wrote. “The editor’s involvement in the settlement was inappropriate. Starting a new serialization under a different pen name was far too hasty, even considering the importance of rehabilitation opportunities.”
Akamatsu laid out three concrete proposals. First, Shogakukan needs to establish an independent external organization to investigate, since the company keeps botching its initial responses to scandals. Second, the artist who drew Joujin Kamen deserves compensation because she did nothing wrong and got dragged into this mess anyway. Third, manga artists who choose not to pull their work from MangaONE shouldn’t get attacked for it, because that crosses the line into vigilante justice.
The Japan Cartoonists Association weighed in too, calling the situation “an important issue related to the industry’s credibility.” It’s pushing Shogakukan to run transparent investigations while protecting victims’ dignity.
IT journalist Shinohara Shuji got to the heart of what made this case different. Non-disclosure agreements in settlements happen all the time. But this victim specifically asked for one thing: if there’s going to be a settlement, at least let people know why the manga got suspended in the first place. The editor refused that basic transparency while simultaneously trying to help draft a gag order.
“The biggest problem is that in 2020, the creator was arrested and received a fine, yet in 2022 MangaONE started a new serialization under a different name,” Shinohara explained. “They started the serialization even though no settlement had been reached, which makes it look like Shogakukan prioritized continuing the serialization over the victim.”
What this case reveals about the industry
Under mounting pressure, Shogakukan announced on March 2nd that it would set up a third-party committee to investigate MangaONE’s hiring processes. The company’s statement hit all the right notes: “We absolutely do not condone sexual violence, sexual exploitation, or any human rights violations.”
But look at the actual timeline. The creator committed his crimes in 2020. Shogakukan found out and canceled his manga. An editor helped negotiate a settlement in 2021 that would have kept the victim quiet. The company hired the same creator under a new name in 2022.
The scandal only went public in 2026 because a court case forced the details into the open. That’s six years of knowing exactly what happened and choosing business over the victim’s well-being.
The two cases expose how unprepared the manga industry is to handle creator misconduct, even in the wake of other high-profile rape cases in Japan. There are no standard protocols for when one half of a creator-artist team commits crimes.
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Akamatsu pointed out the questions that need to be addressed. How do you compensate the innocent party when problems blow up? When should publishers replace a problematic creator instead of just changing their name?
Victim: I want Shogakukan to continue bringing good manga into the world
One thing has been lost in the ensuing controversy: what do the victims of these two men think about the scandal?
One of them is making her thoughts known – and she’s asking that people tamp down their criticism of Shogakukan and the artists who work for them.
The victim of Yamamoto made a statement through her lawyer, which is available on the Tokyo-Kyodo Law Office website. It was posted in full recently on social media site X by the account Takizawa Gareso.
Her statement is largely a response to a Weekly Bunshun article for which she was interviewed. The article claimed that the victim stated she “couldn’t forgive Shogakukan.” But she denies she ever said this.
“What I truly can’t forgive,” she writes, “is the teacher who refused to admit his guilt and apologize, even after the judgment.”
She praised Shogakukan’s recent response. She says that officials from the company visited her attorney’s office and apologized over the phone for how they’d handled the matter to date.
“What’s important for me is that people understand the nature of the harm inflicted, in order to prevent others from suffering similar abuse. I do not harbor intense anger or resentment towards Shogakukan. Specifically, I do not want Shogakukan to withdraw the works of its manga artists. Nor do I want them to shut down MangaONE, which is a vital platform for many artists. I myself am a fan of Shogakukan manga. As someone who’s found solace in manga, I want them to continue bringing good manga into the world.”
“I am truly grateful for everyone who’s shown concern for my case,” she concluded. “What I want is for the truth of this perpetrator’s actions to be widely known, and for society to take measures to protect children so this kind of thing never happens again.”
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Sources
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女子生徒への性加害で罰金刑を受けた漫画家をなぜ再起用？ 小学館『マンガワン』炎上の背景にある問題 #エキスパートトピ YAHOO!JAPANニュース
日本漫画家協会、漫画家の性加害および対応…漫画騒動に声明「信頼に関わる重要な課題」「漫画界全体に関わる課題」 ORICON NEWS
小学館の漫画騒動 国会議員の元漫画家・赤松健が持論「あえて3点提案いたします」 ORICON NEWS
マンガワンにおける新たな原作者起用問題と第三者委員会設置について 小学館
札幌地裁判決について. Tokyo-Kyodo Law Office
