The WaiWai column developed a huge online following with its tales of incest, bestiality and suburban debauchery.
The stories, published in English, were presented as direct translations of real-life stories from Japanese magazines, but the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper has now apologised and admitted that many “contained incorrect information”.
Critics had accused the WaiWai column of helping propagate a stereotype of Japanese women as sexual deviants, and of damaging the country’s international reputation.
Many stories published in the column spread around the world via message boards and blogs.
The articles were sourced from unreliable Japanese tabloids and their publication under the respected Mainchi banner gave them credence, critics claimed.
“An in-house investigation has indicated that many articles in the column in question were barely checked before being posted, and that the seriousness of the problem went undetected even within the company,” the newspaper said in a statement.
“These articles... should not have been dispatched to Japan or the world,” it added.
“We apologise deeply for making many people feel uncomfortable, damaging many people's reputations, causing great trouble and at the same time, betraying the public's trust in the Mainichi Shimbun. We are deeply sorry.”
The column has now been dropped from the Mianchi Daily News website, and a female editor has been appointed to run the site.
"We are determined to try our utmost to regain the public trust that we have lost as a result of this incident and rehabilitate the English site into one that can dispatch information about Japan to the world in an appropriate manner," the paper said.
The WaiWai column was withdrawn from the paper’s print version in 2001.