Noriyuki Yamaguchi


Noriyuki Yamaguchi is a former Japanese journalist and biographer of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He is accused of raping Shiori Itō, who was an intern at Thomson Reuters. His denials and the police refusing to press rape charges against Yamaguchi sparked the Me too movement in Japan.

History

Noriyuki Yamaguchi was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1966. He attended the Keio University Faculty of Economics. He later joined the Tokyo Broadcasting System Television where was assigned to the news department as a photojournalist. His assignments overseas assignments included London, UK, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Washington, DC, US. After retiring, he appeared on TV programs such as TV Asahi and Fuji TV and on radio.

Sexual assault litigation

formally filed a suit against Yamaguchi in September 2017 for sexually assaulting her in a hotel on April 4, 2015. Itō previously filed a police report in July 2016, although it was dropped by prosecutors for insufficient evidence. Ito subsequently filed a complaint with Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution, but a September 2017 ruling did not charge Yamaguchi since "there was no common law basis to overturn."
A Tokyo court in December 2019 awarded Itō 3.3 million yen plus additional fees in damages from Yamaguchi, however he stated that he will appeal the decision. Yamaguchi denied the charges and filed a countersuit against Itō, seeking 130 million yen in compensation, claiming the incident was consensual and the ensuing accusations has damaged his reputation, although that suit was later turned down due to inconsistencies in his testimony. This ruling has garnered international press due to the lack of reported sexual assaults in Japan and the amount of societal and legal crucibles Itō had to endure for speaking up.

Disputes with Yoshinori Kobayashi

On January 24, 2019, Yamaguchi filed a civil suit against cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi. Yamaguchi stated that Kobayashi disseminated false information completely different from the facts in the manga Gomanism Declaration drawn by Kobayashi in the SAPIO magazine's August 2017 issue, where Yamaguchi was depicted as a criminal.