Manga publisher hurts their reputation by employing a sex offender who wrote under a pen name

Anime Hunch reported on a case involving the manga publisher Shokagukan, who've caused a scandal by employing a convicted sex offender who'd written under a pen name, all this despite the severity of his crimes:

Shogakukan, the publisher of hit manga like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and Detective Conan, confirmed on Feb 27, 2026, that it has suspended distribution of Jojin Kamen after acknowledging that its original author, Kazuaki Kurita, who wrote the series under the pen name Hajime Ichiro, was convicted in 2020 under Japan’s child pornography law.

Despite that conviction, Kurita continued publishing on the company’s Manga ONE platform for nearly six years. He also published the series Daten Sakusen (Operation Fallen Angel) under the pen name Shoichi Yamamoto.

This came to light after the latest court ruling against the author on Feb 20, 2026, where he was asked to pay damages worth 11 million to the victim.

In a formal statement, Shogakukan admitted failures in its editorial decision-making and verification process that allowed the appointment to proceed.

The editorial department issued an apology to the victim, readers, the series’ illustrator and other creators for betraying their trust.

The announcement triggered significant backlash across social media platforms, with readers and fellow creators serializing on Manga ONE publicly questioning how a previously convicted offender had been permitted to continue publishing on the platform for years.

Criticism also intensified over the reported involvement of an editor in settlement discussions between Kurita and the victim in 2021, including participation in a messaging app group chat during negotiations over compensation and conditions.

Read more at the article, which tells how repellent the crime he committed was against the girl he attacked, and no sane person should have to read his mangas as a result, and definitely not spend money on them. Here's also what Anime Corner says:

Furthermore, it was revealed that an editor at Manga ONE mediated between the individual who was assaulted and Kurita in a LINE group chat while Daten Sakusen was still ongoing. This editor is believed to be Takuya Narita, who allegedly proposed getting a settlement agreement notarized that would compensate the individual with 1.5 million yen (~$9.6k) if they did not go public about the assault and withdrew their appeal against Kurita’s manga resuming.

The editor is believed to be Narita due to a purported post from the individual who was assaulted, as reported by Japanese outlet ITmedia, and Narita’s confirmed role as editor of both Daten Sakusen and Jojin Kamen, per official X posts. (However, manga can have multiple editors.) Kyodo (via Mainichi) and Sankei report on the Manga ONE editor’s suggestion to get a document with the above terms notarized, but do not name Narita. The distribution and serialization of Jojin Kamen has now been halted.

Obviously, it's shameful the publisher would cover up a crime involved, and why waste so many trees for the sake of a story concocted by a real life monster? It's unbelievable how many irresponsible and incompetent employees there are in the entertainment industry. Some may already have read about the sexual abuse indictment Hollywood actor/director Timothy Busfield is now facing, and it was reported that Warner Brothers did not lead a convincing investigation of their own into the matter, which gives reason to believe they too were trying to cover it all up. And to think that WB was trying to get themselves sold to Netflix, the company that broadcast a smutty arthouse film called "Cuties"! Now that it looks like they've been sold to Paramount/Skydance, we can only hope somebody will make a convincing effort to clean up their conduct.

And of course, even today in Japan, they too, lest we forget, still have a lot of improvements to make, including their vetting process, which could include making sure a company's contributors don't have a severe criminal record, and if they do, they must distance themselves from the offenders immediately, without hesitation. Shokagukan, for all we know, might end up facing financial damage from this scandal, yet another example of how sexual crimes still aren't opposed properly in the Japanese system.