Shogakukan rehired a convicted abuser under a pen name; its committee said it aided harm

In February 2026, publisher Shogakukan admitted that the story writer behind a series on its Manga One app, hired under a pen name since December 2022, was the man who had written a previous Manga One series until 2020 — when it was suspended because he had sexually abused a former student while working as a high-school teacher and was later fined under Japan's child-prostitution-and-pornography law. Shogakukan formed a third-party committee in March 2026 and published its report on August 3, 2026.

The committee judged that three decisions could fairly be called fostering or contributing to human-rights violations against the victim: Shogakukan kept his contract and paid for unpublished manuscripts after the 2020 suspension; the assigned editor joined the settlement talks between the victim and the abuser — joining their LINE group from May 2021 and discussing specifics of the notarised deed, despite legal's advice to leave it to lawyers — and the company signed a new contract with him under a pen name in December 2022, while the victim's civil suit was still unresolved.

The report also examined two adjacent failures. The convicted former 'Act-age' author, rehired as a story writer under another pen name, was judged not an aiding case, but Shogakukan's internal database left his identity visible and editors hinted at it outside the company, risking secondary harm to his victims.

And after a Weekly Post editor's harassment of a business partner's woman was first learned of in 2020, the company imposed only a one-month pay cut in 2021 and investigated nothing; harm to a second woman continued until 2025, which the committee said proper 2020 handling would likely have prevented. Across editorial rooms, the committee's hotline gathered 44 reports, many describing power harassment.

26 executives, including the president, return part of their pay for three months (president 50%); the committee hotline drew 44 reports of workplace abuse.

Key decisions sat with the editors-in-chief; legal and management departments advised but could not overrule the editorial line.

The company treated the 2020 suspension as the end of its obligation, while the contract, payments and personal loyalty to the author continued.

Rehiring was weighed as a commercial-risk question — would readers object? — rather than as a question of harm owed to the victim.

Publishing's structural power imbalance over freelance creators, which the committee documented, gave complaints nowhere safe to go until the hotline existed.

Ending a serial is not ending a relationship. When an allegation involves harm to a person, contracts, payments and rehiring need legal review — an editor invested in the talent cannot manage fallout.

On August 4, 2026, Shogakukan announced remedies: a human-rights committee with external experts, human-rights due diligence across publishing, legal-department involvement in creator-conduct cases, a grievance-and-relief mechanism, and refresher training. Twenty-six officers, from president Nobuhiro Aiga (50% of monthly pay) down, are returning part of their pay for three months. The company scheduled no press conference, a choice the Asahi editorial board criticised as dodging explanation.