Technically Several Problems Press’ scope is specifically news relating to trans people. However, we feel this fits into a wider mission of documenting patriarchy and its consequences, and we’ve recently become aware of an unfolding series of events taking place in Japan. We have termed it “the Shogakukan affair” and we believe it qualifies. Here is what we’ve been able to find out about it so far.

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Headnotes

Content warning

This article extensively discusses child sexual abuse. During the body of the article, there is a factual description of a series of abusive acts downthread. Those acts have already been published in Japanese news sources; I (the author, Isabelle Moreton) debated whether to repeat them when I wrote the original thread, but ultimately decided that I would be failing to convey the seriousness of the situation if I didn’t.

Sourcing

I’m using mostly English-language sources. However, a lot of English-language coverage coming out of Japan on this issue was relatively sparing on details I felt I needed. My understanding is that this is partly because the media is doing what the media does where cases of sexual abuse are concerned. It is also partly because, as I understand it, Japanese defamation law has all the bad parts of British defamation law, but worse (and any Japanese organisation well-resourced enough to regularly be translating its content into English likely has enough resources to have lawyers constantly reminding them of that).

As a result, some of this article is based on my understanding of Japanese-language sources that have been machine-translated into English. I take responsibility for any factual errors I may have made as a result.

Some Japanese words which are used in this piece primarily in transliterated form (e.g., “Shogakukan”) or translated form (e.g., “Weekly Shonen Jump“) are, within their first few appearances, preceded at least once by the relevant written Japanese in order to facilitate searching for them in Japanese-language sources.

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Background

The primary corporate participant in the affair is 株式会社小学館 Shogakukan, Inc.

小学館 Shogakukan is part of the 一ツ橋グループ Hitotsubashi Group, a vertically-integrated publishing and media business alliance based in Chiyoda, Tokyo. There are a couple of Hitotsubashi Group companies you may have heard of, either by name or because of what they do:

• Shogakukan itself, which is primarily noted for publishing magazines across several genres, including manga, educational, fashion, and news.
• 株式会社集英社 Shueisha, Inc., which is the biggest publishing company in Japan and is also a publisher of magazines. In particular, 集英社 Shueisha publishes the ジャンプ Jump family of magazines, of which 週刊少年ジャンプ Weekly Shonen Jump is the best-known. Whether or not you’ve heard of Jump you’ve almost certainly heard of its output: series to have debuted in Jump magazines include Bleach, Chainsaw Man, Death Note, Dragon Ball, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Jujutsu Kaisen, Naruto (and Boruto), One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin, and Yu-Gi-Oh!.
• 株式会社小学館集英社プロダクション Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd. (“ShoPro”), a subsidiary of Shueisha. You may or may not have heard of ShoPro or its work, but you’ve almost certainly heard of, or heard of the work of, its North American subsidiary, Viz Media, LLC. Viz is, at present, a (or the) licensee for anime and manga in various franchises including Black Lagoon, Death Note, D.Gray-man, Fist of the North Star, My Hero Academia, Neon Genesis Evangelion, One-Punch Man, Ouran High School Host Club, Pokémon, RWBY, Splatoon, Star Wars: The Mandalorian, and Transformers.

(I include all this information because an appreciation of the sheer scale and reach of the companies involved might do more to convey why we felt this story should be getting more attention in English.)

Another property that isn’t a company is also relevant here: Shogakukan operates マンガワン Manga One, an official web distribution platform, through which a number of its series are distributed. I mention this because Manga One played a significant role in the events this article covers.

What happened?

There are now known to have been at least two (2) cases in which the following series of events happened:

1. An author engaged by Shogakukan was convicted of one or more sexual offences against one or more children.
2. Shogakukan subsequently rehired those authors, furnishing them with new pen names and helping them to build new careers.

While the amount of culpability attributed to Shogakukan — by itself, and by other parties in each case — has varied, those two facts remain the same.

The two authors with whom this is so far known to have happened were Kazuaki Kurita and Tatsuya Matsuki. The current wave of media coverage began when Kurita’s ongoing relationship with Shogakukan became public in late February; as an unplanned aftereffect, Matsuki’s ongoing relationship with Shogakukan then also became public.

栗田和明 Kazuaki Kurita

Shogakukan originally engaged Kazuaki Kurita’s services more than a decade ago. 堕天作戦 Daten Sakusen (“Operation Fallen Angel“), a manga written by Kurita under the pen name 山本章一 Shouichi Yamamoto,¹ was serialised through Manga One starting in February 2015.²

At around that time, Kurita was also a visual art instructor at Hokkaido High School of Arts in Sapporo, Hokkaido Prefecture. In April 2016, a female student, referred to in court documents with the Latin-script letter A,³ enrolled at that school. Kurita began grooming her shortly thereafter, and eventually proceeded to physical sexual abuse.⁴ Specifically, Kurita:

• raped A, including outdoors and in public contexts;
• urinated on her;
• forcibly subjected her to painful enemas;
• made her write various obscenities on herself;
• made her eat faeces;⁵
• recorded at least part of his abuse of her, creating child sexual exploitation material (CSEM).⁶

In March 2019, A graduated from the school. Kurita continued to coerce her into sending indecent images to him. This continued until approximately July 2019.⁷

In February 2020, Kurita was arrested and criminal charges were laid against him. Eno (op cit) notes that based on what Kurita is known or alleged to have done, he could have been charged with the equivalent of rape, extortion, assault, grievous bodily harm, and false imprisonment, and would ultimately have faced a sentence of up to thirty (30) years in prison.

Ultimately, the Public Prosecutors Office opted to proceed only with charges of producing and possessing CSEM. Kurita was convicted, but the sentence consisted solely of a financial penalty of ¥300,000 (at the time of publication approximately US$1,900 or AU$2,700).⁸

Shogakukan suspended publication of Daten Sakusen after Kurita’s criminal conviction,⁹ but did not immediately take further action. It appears, in fact, that they intended to immediately resume publication of Daten Sakusen. A, understandably, strenuously objected.¹⁰

Shortly thereafter, negotiations commenced between A and Kurita with a view toward a possible out-of-court settlement. I’m not clear on how much agency A had in these negotiations — in suits like this, victims are often facing a choice of “take the money or be destroyed”. All that is clear is that something occurred which could be, or at any rate was, described as a negotiation.

The negotiation took place in a group chat on Line.¹¹ In April 2021 or so, a Manga One editor, identified in multiple sources¹² as 成田卓哉 Takuya Narita, joined the group. Narita proposed a settlement agreement between A and Kurita which included the following terms:¹³

• Kurita would pay ¥1.5 million (US$9,500, AU $13,500) to A;
• A would withdraw her objection to the resumption of Daten Sakusen;
• A would accept a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) preventing her from discussing Kurita’s abuse of her in public.

A did not accept the terms proposed by Narita,¹⁴ and proceeded to file suit against Kurita in Sapporo District Court in July 2022.¹⁵

In September or October 2022, Shogakukan placed Daten Sakusen on indefinite hiatus, citing unspecified “personal troubles” — which it vaguely implied were health-related — on the part of the author.¹⁶

Also in 2022, seemingly shortly thereafter, Shogakukan (through Manga One) engaged Kurita to write a new series, 常人仮面 Jojin Kamen (“Ordinary-Person Mask“), under a different pen name, 一路 一 Hajime Ichiro.¹⁷

The editor responsible for “Ichiro” was Takuya Narita.¹⁸ Narita seems to have exerted a great deal of influence over Narita’s re-engagement, and Shogakukan’s communications with press after Kurita’s case became public suggested that the corporation, as an entity, had no awareness that “Ichiro” was Kurita. However, Eno (op cit) notes that 和田裕樹 Hiroki Wada, who was then editor-in-chief of Manga One, would have had the personal information of all staff, and thus reasonably ought to have been aware.

A’s suit against Kurita continued, in the background, as it were. Kurita appears to have been largely remorseless during the proceedings, characterising his relationship with A as “consensual,” and suggesting that there was no truth to the diagnosis of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that A developed as a consequence.

On 20 February 2026, Sapporo District Court found in A’s favour,¹⁹ ordering Kurita to pay her ¥11 million (~US$70,000; AU$100,000).²⁰

The fact that “Yamamoto” and “Ichiro” were both Kurita became public at some point in the following week. On 27 February, Manga One released a statement confirming the key facts concerning the relationship between Jojin Kamen, Ichiro, and Kurita. There has been some suggestion that they were trying to get ahead of the story; however, I’m not clear on the particulars.

By 28 February, Shogakukan had removed Jojin Kamen from Manga ONE and stopped shipments of hardcopy books.²¹

The same day, the 日本漫画家協会 Japan Cartoonists Association issued an official statement calling for a transparent investigation of the events surrounding Kurita.²² Shogakukan, for their part, issued a press release stating they would “establish an investigative committee to clarify the facts”.²³

This marks an opportune point at which to segue to the other author who was exposed.

マツキタツヤ Tatsuya Matsuki

From January 2018 to August 2020, Shueisha published アクタージュ act-age, written by Matsuki and illustrated by Shiro Usazaki, in Weekly Shonen Jump.

On the night of 18 June 2020, in Nakano, Tokyo, Matsuki approached and inappropriately touched two (2) female middle-school students in separate incidents about an hour apart.²⁴ CCTV footage captured both offences; on 8 August, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department placed Matsuki under arrest. Shueisha cancelled act-age two days later.²⁵

Matsuki was indicted on 16 September,²⁶ and convicted and sentenced in Tokyo District Court on 23 December. The Court sentenced Matsuki to 18 months’ imprisonment, fully suspended, conditional on 3 years of probation: that is, Matsuki would no longer be required to serve the 18-month prison sentence if he complied with good behaviour restrictions for 3 years. ²⁷ Matsuki does not appear to have gone to prison; presumably, he completed his probation period around December 2023.

On 29 August 2024, another Manga One editor, not identified, contacted Matsuki with the apparent intention of soliciting work.²⁸ On 30 August, he advised them he’d been working on a draft, 勇者一行の心理カウンセラーYusha Ikko no Shinri Counselor (“The Heroes’ Psychological Counselor“).

On 6 September, the Manga One Editorial Department commissioned Matsuki to expand Yusha Ikko no Shinri Counselor into a full manga, 星霜の心理士 Seiso no Shinrishi (“Psychologist of the Stars“).²⁹ They allowed him to do so under a pseudonym, which outlets have reported as Itsuki³⁰ or Miki³¹ Yatsunami. I haven’t been able to determine which is correct (one reason why is that, immediately after Matsuki was unmasked, most manga trackers changed their entries for Seiso no Shinrishi to reflect who the author actually was).

Unlike with Kurita — who Shogakukan have asserted was employed more or less entirely through Narita, who they say conspired to pull the wool over their eyes — there is no dispute that both the editorial team and Seiso no Shinrishi‘s artist, 薫雪平 Kaoru Yukihira, knew who “Yatsunami” actually was.³²

The editorial team, for their part, have asserted that they and Matsuki agreed he would operate under a pseudonym to avoid triggering his victims’ trauma, and that they believed it was safe for him to do so, since his probation period had been completed, and he had undergone extensive psychotherapy and been “rehabilitated” as a result.³³

Shogakukan have also said they did not disclose who Matsuki was because disclosing someone’s personal information without their consent is a serious human rights violation, even if that personal information is a criminal record.³⁴ As it happens, Matsuki apparently consented to have his personal information released as part of the investigation that Kurita had triggered,³⁵ so the question became moot.

Fallout

Today is 6 March. Since the news broke, a number of authors have either temporarily suspended or outright terminated their relationships with Shogakukan and Manga One, including:

• Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata (Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead)³⁶
• Tsukasa Abe and Kanehito Yamada (Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End)³⁷
• Ai Kozaki (Asahinagu, Cecil’s Queen)³⁸
• Tetsuro Kuromatsu (Draft King, Be-Kaku)³⁹
• Ai Minase (Namida Usagi: Unrequited Love in Uniform)⁴⁰
• Miko Mitsuki (Hana to Meoto: Taisho Doting Fairy Tales)⁴¹
• ONE/Tomohiro (One-Punch Man)⁴²
• Sumito Oowara (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!)⁴³
• Rumiwo Sakaki (The Gate That Leads to Paradise)⁴⁴
• Rumiko Takahashi (Ranma ½, InuYasha)⁴⁵
• Minoru Takeyoshi (Shokubutsu Byourigaku wa Ashita no Kimi no Negau)⁴⁶
• Ryuhei Tamura (Cosmos, Beelzebub)⁴⁷
• Konomi Wagata (My New Life As a Cat)⁴⁸

Over the past decade or so, the anime and manga industries have been repeatedly rocked by acrimony among the Japanese and global public relating to their lenient treatment of authors, artists, and other labourers who have been convicted of or otherwise proved to have committed acts of sexual abuse. Whether this will spark any meaningful reform, at Shogakukan or in the wider industry, remains to be seen.

Footnotes

1. Jiji Press (“Shogakukan,” 2026). ↩︎
2. J-Cast (2022). ↩︎
3. Nwaenie (2026). ↩︎
4. Eno (2026); Nwaenie (op cit). ↩︎
5. Nwaenie (op cit). ↩︎
6. Eno (op cit). ↩︎
7. Eno (op cit). ↩︎
8. Kyodo News (2026). ↩︎
9. Kyodo News (op cit). ↩︎
10. Eno (op cit). ↩︎
11. Line is a freeware instant messaging and networking app. It does not have a separate name in written Japanese; in Japanese contexts, its name is rendered using the Latin-script characters LINE. ↩︎
12. Malay Mail (2026); Nwaenie (op cit). ↩︎
13. Jiji Press (“Shogakukan,” op cit); Kyodo News (op cit); Malay Mail (op cit). ↩︎
14. Kyodo News (op cit). ↩︎
15. Eno (op cit). ↩︎
16. J-Cast (op cit); Malay Mail (op cit). ↩︎
17. Jiji Press (“Shogakukan,” op cit). ↩︎
18. Jiji Press (“Shogakukan,” op cit). ↩︎
19. Eno (op cit). ↩︎
20. Jiji Press (“Shogakukan,” op cit); Nair (“Shogakukan, one convicted sex offender,” 2026). ↩︎
21. Kyodo News (op cit). ↩︎
22. Oricon News (2026). ↩︎
23. Shogakukan (“About,” 2026). ↩︎
24. Hodgkins (“NHK: act-age story writer,” 2020); Jiji Press (“Publisher,” 2026). ↩︎
25. Hodgkins (“Shueisha cancels publication,” 2020). ↩︎
26. Pineda (“act-age manga writer,” 2020). ↩︎
27. Pineda (“Court hands suspended sentence,” 2020). ↩︎
28. Nair (“Shogakukan controversy,” 2026). ↩︎
29. Jiji Press (“Shogakukan,” op cit). ↩︎
30. Jiji Press (“Shogakukan,” op cit). ↩︎
31. Waugh (2026). ↩︎
32. Manga One Editorial Department (2026). ↩︎
33. Shogakukan (“The issue,” 2026). ↩︎
34. Manga One Editorial Department (2026). ↩︎
35. Shogakukan (“The issue,” op cit). ↩︎
36. Takata (2026). ↩︎
37. Cacciatore (2026). ↩︎
38. Kozaki (2026). ↩︎
39. Kuromatsu (2026). ↩︎
40. Minase (2026). ↩︎
41. Mitsuki (2026). ↩︎
42. ONE (2026). ↩︎
43. Oowara (2026). ↩︎
44. Sakaki (2026). ↩︎
45. Cacciatore (op cit). ↩︎
46. Takeyoshi (2026). ↩︎
47. Tamura (2026). ↩︎
48. Wagata (2026). ↩︎

References

Cacciatore, F. (2026, March 2). Big manga artists pull their works from major publisher after sexual abuse scandal. Polygon (Valnet, Inc.). Retrieved 5 March 2026.

Eno, S. [enosumimanga] (2026, February 27). 元マンガワン作家、山本章一 本名、栗田和明による悪質な犯罪（未成年への3年間に及ぶ性虐待・暴行等）と、栗田の漫画家活動を継続させた編集者、成田卓哉と和田裕樹と豆野文俊について　整理と意見 [A summary and opinion on the vicious crime (including sexual abuse and assault of a minor over a period of 3 years) committed by former Manga ONE author Shouichi Yamamoto, real name Kazuaki Kurita, and the editors who allowed Kurita to continue his manga career: Takuya Narita, Hiroki Wada, and Fumitoshi Mameno] [Note post]. note (Note Co., Ltd.). Retrieved 6 March 2026.

Hodgkins, C. (2020, August 8). NHK: act-age story writer Tatsuya Matsuki arrested on suspicion of committing indecent act with minor. Anime News Network (Anime News Network, LLC). Retrieved 6 March 2026.

Hodgkins, C. (2020, August 10). Shueisha cancels publication of act-age manga. Anime News Network (Anime News Network, LLC). Retrieved 6 March 2026.

J-Cast (2022, November 1). 漫画「堕天作戦」未完でアプリ連載終了、個人で発表へ　理由は「私的トラブル」…編集部には感謝 [The app serialisation of the unfinished manga Operation Fallen Angel will end due to personal troubles; author will personally announce the end of serialisation, is grateful to the editorial department]. J-Cast, Inc. Retrieved 6 March 2026.

Jiji Press (2026, March 3). Publisher to investigate its hiring of two manga authors convicted of sex crimes. The Japan Times (News2u Holdings, Inc.). Retrieved 6 March 2026.

Jiji Press (2026, March 3). Shogakukan to probe hiring of manga artists convicted of sex crimes. Nippon.com (Nippon Communications Foundation). Retrieved 6 March 2026.

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Kyodo News (2026, February 28). Japan publisher lets sex offender author produce manga under different name. The Mainichi (The Mainichi Newspapers Co.). Retrieved 6 March 2026.

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Waugh, J.R. (2026, March 2). One-Punch Man creator condemns top manga service after massive scandal rocks the industry. ScreenRant (Valnet, Inc.). Retrieved 5 March 2026.