Earlier this month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, seeking to shore up his crumbling base domestically, ripped open old wounds by publicly questioning the accounts of thousands of women forced to work as sex slaves by the Japanese army during World War II. Abe suggested that “no historical proof exisisted” that these women had been coerced into service as these women claimed, despite a 1993 Japanese goverment study and official report that found the women’s stories credible.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has apologized in parliament for the country’s use of women as sex slaves during World War II.
The apology comes after Mr Abe was criticized by Asian neighbors for previous comments casting doubt on whether the women were coerced.
Mr Abe told parliament: “I apologies here and now as prime minister.”
This appears to be part of a concerted bid to reduce the fall-out of earlier comments, a BBC correspondent says.
Mr Abe said, during a debate in parliament’s upper house, that he stood by an official 1993 statement in which Japan acknowledged the imperial army set up and ran brothels for its troops during the war.
“As I frequently say, I feel sympathy for the people war.”
While Abe should be ashamed of himself for trying to score political points by minimizing the horrible suffering of these women, at least he found the fortitude to apologize publicly.
2 responses so far ↓
1 ChinaRedux // Mar 26, 2007 at 7:16 pm
What a disaster for Japan. Sure, an apology is nice–but that’s all? Isn’t this a blatant case of historical revisionism?
2 花崗齋之愚公 // Mar 27, 2007 at 12:45 am
If you read my last post on the subject, you can see how appalled I was at the whole episode. But Shinzo’s about-face (which no doubt will cost him dearly at home) in the face of international condemnation is at least…something.
And yes, it is the worst kind of historical revisionism.
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