Did a Japanese organization send North Korean mercenaries to Vietnam during the Vietnam War? No, that's not true: Japanese citizens could not participate in the Vietnam War because of the country's constitutional "No War Clause" adopted after WWII, and diplomatically, Japan was allied with South Vietnam and the United States during the conflict.
The claim appeared in a TikTok post (archived here) published by user @worldbgnews on February 21, 2024, with an explanation that the mercenaries were sent to Vietnam by members of a supposed paramilitary organization called Yatagarasu, a group that allegedly existed since ancient Japan. A caption translated into English from Japanese by Lead Stories staff reads:
During the Vietnam War, Japan sent North Korean mercenaries from an organization known as Yatagarasu.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Feb 28 23:05:49 2024 UTC)
Japanese citizens were forbidden from taking part in military activities after the defeat of Japan in World War II when a "No War Clause" was written into the Japanese constitution following the 1945 Postdam Declaration (archived here). The "No War Clause" is now known as Article 9 (archived here) and is still enforced to this day:
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
For this reason, Japan did not participate in the Vietnam War and limited its role to passively supporting U.S. initiatives on the sidelines while negotiating the handover of Okinawa (archived here).
As for Yatagarasu, there are no traces of a private paramilitary group under this name. The name is associated with a mythological three-legged crow, and a Google search conducted by Lead Stories staff on February 28, 2024, in both English and Japanese, (archived here and here) using the following keywords: "yatagarasu and 'mercenary'" and "ε
«ε«ηεε
΅η΅ηΉ" did not return any result that could corroborate the claim it is or was a paramilitary or mercenary organization operating in Japan.
The closest trace to an organization is a defunct religious Shinto clan (archived here) that performed Shinto rituals for the Imperial Court in the 8th century. A traveling mercenary from the 15th century named Suzuki Magoichi (archived here) was known to bear the Yatagarasu as his family crest, but his personhood has been immortalized through various novels. Hence, it isn't clear if Suzuki Magoichi was a real person or not.
