JAPAN'S TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP WITH ITS WWII PAST : 'COMFORT WOMEN' ISSUE IS NOT GOING AWAY

 

Japan's semblance of normality and civility are often shaken when the ghosts of war howl past the curtain of time. 

The issue of 'comfort women', something akin to the 'joy division' of the nazi war machine, is one that will not go away and will surface from time to time to shame Japanese conscience.

And yet, there is a basic refusal to fully amend for what was the shameful slave sex trade of the Japanese War machine. 

And there are people in Japan who are still putting salt in the wound.  Just recently, Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto, uttered the unthinkable words : that "Comfort Women played a necessary role by keeping troops in check".

As if somehow the ill conduct of war was mitigated by sex not bought, not asked for, but brutally coerced. There is a failure here to understand how the mitigated cruelty, if that's what it was, somehow was kept in check by another cruelty: rape.

The Japanese government quickly distanced itself from the prominent politicia n, knowing full well the hornet's nest he has stirred. 

Mayor Hashimoto, in addition, is a member of the Japan Restoration Party, a nationalist party seen by many as a right wing faction intent at promoting a dangerous propaganda that allows no discussion or apology of any of the acts of Imperial Japan. And there are others in the party who are supporting his statement.

But Japan would do well to bring closure to the chapter meaningfully, through reparation and acknowledgement of the wrong done. 

More than 200,000 women from China, Korea and the Philippines were used as sex slaves during the war, completely at the mercy of Japanese troops in occupied territories.  

South Korea immediately responded to the affront by expressing their disappointment over the incredible statement.  In fact they released the following statement: "Our government again urges Japan's prominent officials to show regret for atrocities committed during Japan's imperial period and to correct their anachronistic way of thinking and comments."

Although Japan has offered apologies more than once on the the issue of comfort women, it has never obliged the request for reparations by some of the survivors of the war brothels. 

Op-Ed

Source :  5.14.13