Japanese politicians say Korean ‘comfort women’ claims fabricated
Statue-protest politicians urge review of apology for forced prostitution
A group of Japanese politicians who visited California to protest about a statue in honour of Asian "comfort women" have joined the movement demanding the government reconsider the apology made in 1993 to the victims of forced military prostitution during the second world war.
Known as the Kono Statement, after then chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono, the government of the day acknowledged that the Japanese military was involved in the forced recruitment of women from Japan's colonies for its military.
Installing a ‘sex slave’ statue will serve as the root of evil in the future
But summoned before the Diet on Thursday, Nobuo Ishihara, Kono's deputy, confirmed that the government did not verify accounts given by 16 South Korean women who claimed they had been forced into sexual servitude for the Japanese military - testimony that served as the basis for the apology.
That admission has provided an opportunity for the right wing in Japan to dismiss the women's stories as fabrications.
"The cause of all the trouble we see now is the Kono Statement," said Yoshiko Matsuura, a local assembly member in Tokyo and a representative of the Japan Coalition of Legislators Against Fabricated History.
"Until [Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide] Suga clarifies the background to the Kono Statement and says it is groundless, then this issue cannot be resolved," she said yesterday.
The issue of comfort women has long been a contentious one that previous Japanese governments tried to gloss over. The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, however, has been emboldened by a large majority in the Diet and a sense among the public that Japan's neighbours are taking any opportunity to criticise it.
