Fujimura had begun faking discoveries when he was working as an amateur archaeologist in the 1970s in proximity to various paleolithic research groups in Miyagi Prefecture.
However, Fujimura's success in finding artifacts soon silenced his critics, and his reputation as a leading amateur archaeologist was firmly established by the early 1980s.
A critical paper was published in 1986, noting among other points that "the TL dates from Zazaragi are additional indicators that something is wrong with the geological context of the artifacts, at least at that site.
The truth behind Fujimura's archaeological fraud was exposed by the newspaper Mainichi Shinbun, in a morning edition article on November 5, 2000.
Hearing the rumour of fraud, journalists from Mainichi newspaper installed hidden cameras at a dig site where Fujimura was working and caught him planting artifacts.
[citation needed] There were also "finds" that were quite difficult to believe, such as stone implements in which the cross sections happened to match those of items found at sites tens of kilometers away.
[citation needed] Immediately after the hoax was discovered, the Japanese Archaeological Association formed a special committee which spent two and a half years reviewing the incident, releasing a report in May 2003 concluding that Fujimura's work was indeed the product of a hoax and admitting that, aside from a few exceptions, majority fail at pointing inconsistencies of Fujimura's finds.
[citation needed] In a series of articles in the Japanese magazine Shūkan Bunshun published on January 25,[4] February 1 and March 15, 2001, the magazine alleged that the stone tools discovered at the Hijiridaki cave site (聖嶽洞窟遺跡) in Ōita Prefecture had also been forgeries, and indicated that Mitsuo Kagawa, a professor at Beppu University, was a "second divine hand" involved in that hoax.