A Manga Publisher Secretly Rehired A Writer Convicted Of Sexual Abuse, Sparking A Long Overdue Industry Revolt

On Friday, news broke that Shogakukan's Manga One, a manga publishing company, had secretly hired two mangaka convicted of sex abuse crimes, publishing their works under new pen names. The news resulted in two released statements from the company, the first of which big-name creators found so insufficient that they requested the halting and removal of their series in the vertical. Once this was revealed, it rocked the industry on Twitter, leading creatives to request their series be removed from the publisher until the matter was properly addressed.

Content note: The following story discusses criminal acts around the abuse of children.

According to Anime News Network, the Japanese news site Ashita no Keizai Shimbun reported on February 25 about a civil case naming manga creator Shoichi Yamamoto. In its ruling, the Sapporo District Court ordered Yamamoto to pay 11 million yen (roughly $71,000) to a woman who said that Yamamoto sexually abused and raped her while he was her teacher at a distance-learning school back in 2016. According to Ashita no Keizai Shimbun, the victim said that Yamamoto abused her from age 15 until she turned 18 and graduated high school, including kissing her and touching her while she was inside a car at age 15, raping her after inviting her to a hotel at 16, and forcing her to eat excrement while taking pictures of her with the words “slave” and “punishment” written on her body. 

As ANN notes, back when sites like Mainichi Shimbun reported the story in 2020, they never mentioned Yamamoto by name, instead simply mentioning him as a manga creator. Their corroborated reporting revealed that the summary court convicted Yamamoto of violating the Child Prostitution and Pornography Prohibition Act, and ordered him to pay a 300,000 yen (roughly $1,900) penalty. He was arrested, and his series, Daten Sakusen, was suspended by Shogakukan.

In May 2021, Mainichi Shimbun reported that a manga editor joined a Line group chat proposing that Yamamoto pay a 1.5 million yen settlement (roughly 9,700) and a non-disclosure condition to the victim, one she never agreed to. According to Bengoshi Dot Com, Yamamoto claimed his acts were consensual, and that the lawsuit be dismissed with a settlement of 1.5 million yen. But, as ANN notes, the court stated the settlement hadn’t been reached because the victim never signed it. 

According to a July 2022 lawsuit against Yamamoto and the school, the victim felt she had to do what Yamamoto wanted out of fear that refusing would have a negative impact on her life at school. According to Bengoshi Dot Com, the victim was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder. According to ANN, the court dismissed the victim's lawsuit against the school. 

Which brings us to February 20 of this year, when the Japanese news site Mainichi reported that Shogakukan Inc. allowed Yamamoto to continue working under the publication, using the pen name “Hajime Ichiro” while working on the series Jōjin Kamen. When news got out, Shogakukan halted the manga’s physical and digital distribution and released a statement apologizing to readers, fellow mangaka in the magazine, and artist Eri Tsuruyoshi—who was unaware of the whole thing. 

The news rocked Japanese Twitter, leading creatives like Hajime No Ippo’s George Morikawa and Goodnight Pun Pun’s Inio Asano to express their collective shock over the whole debacle.  

Rai Rai Rai creator Yoshiaki voiced a common refrain among the mangaka who took to Twitter, calling Shogakukan’s initial statement “insufficient.” Sumi Eno, the creator of the supernatural manga After God, was among the first creatives to release a statement requesting that their series be halted in protest. 

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, a popular fantasy manga series currently on hiatus whose second anime is airing on Crunchyroll, has been removed from Manga One. Though no official statement has been issued, fans online assume it's because of this ongoing scandal.  Rumiko Takahashi’s works like Ranma ½ and Maison Ikkoku, manga that are considered foundational to the genre, have also been removed, without a statement from Takahashi. Takahashi’s series being removed was so sudden and stark that, even without an official statement from her on her official Twitter, it opened the floodgates for other creatives to follow suit, requesting that past works be removed and ongoing works be halted or discontinued on Manga One. 

Of note, One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100 author, One, released a statement—which One Punch Man artist Yusuke Murata retweeted—about Manga One on Twitter, writing, “I can’t team up with people who can’t clearly state their strong condemnation of sexual harm against minors. That’s a given. Waiting for the disclosure of circumstances by the relevant parties. I also want Shogakukan to support them if they take that action.”

Other creatives, like Nakasetakute Doushiyou mangaka Haruko Kurumatani and Skip and Loafer mangaka Misaki Takamatsu, echoed these sentiments about Manga One. Kurumatani noted that the livelihoods of other manga creators are at stake, saying the onus should instead be placed on Shogakukan to act by providing a sincere response.

“It’s precisely because I myself draw manga with a lot of highly explicit sexual content that I believe we should take an even stricter stance on sexual crimes, and above all, as adults, I feel we have a duty to do everything in our power to protect an environment where children can grow up healthily,” Kurumatani wrote on Twitter. 

“However, this does not mean that stopping distribution is justice and continuation is evil,” Kurumatani wrote to followers on Twitter. “I would be grateful if you could understand this. I sincerely pray from the bottom of my heart that those who have been victimized can regain days where they can live with peace of mind.” 

Artist Tsuruyoshi later released a statement apologizing for the whole situation, which they say they were wholly unaware of. Witch Hat Atelier creator Kamome Shirahama, whose work is published under a different company, Kodansha, chimed in asking that Tsuruyoshi be compensated for their work.

“Above all, I sincerely hope that the physical and emotional pain of the victim can be alleviated even a little, and that a sincere response is made to their demands,” Shirahama wrote in a quote retweet to Manga One’s initial statement. “Additionally, I wish for appropriate compensation to be provided to the illustrator who suffered disadvantages as a result of being caught up in secondary harm, and to the manga creators who voluntarily withdrew their works from distribution.” 

Today, Shogakukan released yet another statement, stating it “will never tolerate sexual assault, sexual exploitation, or any other human rights violations.” While issuing another apology to Tsuruyoshi, the company announced it was conducting an internal investigation over Manga One’s editorial department, which led to the decision to establish a third-party committee to confirm “Manga One editorial department’s process for hiring writers and original authors” and to “receive recommendations for preventing recurrence.” Shogakukan followed that up by announcing that the details of the third-party committee’s findings will be revealed at a later date. 

Yamamoto wasn’t the first mangaka convicted of a sex crime whom Manga One willingly hired under a different pen name. Turns out the creator of The Counselor Through the Years and Stars manga, Itsuki Yatsunami, was actually the pen name of Act-Age co-creator Tatsuya Matsuki.

According to ANN, Matsuki was arrested and indicted for groping a middle school student in 2020. Matsuki was sentenced to a year and six months in 2023, but had his sentence suspended for three years, pending he displayed good behavior. Act-Age was immediately suspended from Weekly Shonen Jump, and the belief was that Matsuki’s career was over. 

According to Shogakukan’s new statement, Matsuki met with an editor at Manga One in August 2024 over a series he was penning that later served as the premise for the manga. The following September, the editorial department approved the series, stating that the sentence had expired and that Matsuki had remorse for it, requesting a different pen name out of consideration for the victim. Matsuki published his work in Manga One, with only a small group of people in its editorial department aware of who Matsuki was. 

“Yatsunami Itsuki has been receiving psychological counseling since the incident. He has taken the court's verdict and social sanctions seriously, and has met with psychologists repeatedly to rehabilitate himself. His experience of repeatedly reflecting on his past and self-reflection is what motivated him to write this book,” Shogakukan wrote in the statement. “The psychologist in charge has determined that Yatsunami Itsuki's mental treatment and rehabilitation have been sufficient. The editorial department has determined that this should not be taken as a reason to deny him the opportunity to return to society.”

Unlike the situation with Tsuruyoshi, manga artist Kaoru Yukihira was aware of the whole situation and still agreed to draw the series. 

“It was the first time in my life that I was moved to tears while reading the manga (original work), and I felt that this was a work that I should draw,” Yukihira said, according to the Shogakukan statement. “The theme, social significance, and entertainment value of this work should be shared with the world.”

Shogakukan concluded its statement with the following: 

The Manga One editorial department feels a strong sense of responsibility for the fact that this announcement has brought back up past incidents and created a situation that may cause emotional pain to those who have been affected, and we offer our sincere apologies. The Manga One editorial department is fully cooperating with the third-party committee's investigation and will seek the judgment of experts on whether the decisions made during this process were appropriate. Furthermore, in order to cooperate with the third-party committee's investigation, the Manga One editorial department will temporarily suspend updates for "The Counselor Through the Years and Stars" from today. We will sincerely address any damages caused to Yatsunami Itsuki and Yukihira Kaoru due to this suspension. Finally, we would like to once again offer our deepest apologies to those who have been affected, and to all those who are feeling anxious.

If there’s any faint silver lining to be had with this whole ongoing shitshow, it’s that the manga community—both in Japan and in the West—is locking arms in unison with creators to call out this fuckshit. People aren’t just mad that a convicted sex offender was quietly sheltered and defended by a platform like Manga One; they’re furious that this could happen twice.

For years, the industry’s response to sexual misconduct has been a shrug. Rurouni Kenshin mangaka Nobuhiro Watsuki was fined 200,000 yen (about $1,900) for possession of hundreds of child pornography DVDs, yet he was still welcomed back to continue his manga, which received new anime adaptations. Whether that leniency came from powerful creators like One Piece’s Eiichiro Oda vouching for him, or from a legal system that former AV actress and author Kaho Shibuya described as overwhelmingly soft on sex crimes, the result was the same: a culture where accountability barely existed.

That’s why the backlash in big 2026 feels so different, and honestly refreshing, because it’s finally coordinated, forceful, and impossible for Shogakukan to hand-wave away. This time around, online anger is loud and aligned with creators throwing the weight of their work as leverage to force real institutional change. After years of wrist-slap punishments and industry amnesia, watching fans and artists refuse to let this cycle repeat—while long overdue—feels like the first real step toward a standard of accountability. Hopefully, it’s one that other publishers will confront as well.