Is Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sincere about his wish to hold a summit with President Park Geun-hye? Judging by his recent comments at the Japanese Diet, either Abe has no desire to meet with Park or his political judgment has become so clouded that he cannot see the consequences of his remarks.
According to a Japanese newspaper report, Abe, speaking at a session of the House of Representatives Budget Committee on Friday, said that the Kono Statement did not recognize that women were forcibly rounded up and taken away by the administrative or military authorities.
Unless there is more than one version of the 1993 Kono Statement, what Abe claims is completely false. The Kono Statement, posted on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, states: “The Government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments.” It also says, “Undeniably, this was an act, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, that severely injured the honor and dignity of many women.”
The right-wing leaders in Japan have seized on the Asahi Shimbun’s retraction of stories on military sex slaves in August as proof that a system of military sexual slavery did not exist. The Asahi Shimbun retracted 16 stories on military sex slaves that were based on interviews with Seiji Yoshida after his accounts were proven false some 32 years after the publication of the first report attributed to Yoshida.
Answering a question by Tomomi Inada, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council, Abe said, “The groundless defamation of Japan as ‘a state that was involved in sexual slavery’ has spread globally. It is also a fact that such a situation resulted from false reports.” Inada said that the LDP plans to establish a panel to study measures to “restore Japan’s impaired reputation.”
Abe’s statement on Friday may bring to naught the flurry of diplomatic activities aimed at Korea-Japan summit meeting. It had only been two weeks since he sent Park a letter through former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Sept. 19 when Abe made his remark at the Diet. In the letter, Abe is said to have expressed hope that a meeting with Park may take place during an international conference to be held this autumn.
A summit meeting between the two leaders is long overdue. There are many pending bilateral and regional issues which require immediate attention. Yet, Abe and his closest officials, in their recent remarks concerning the military sex slaves, have further chilled Korea-Japan relations. The Korean government had recently said that a summit meeting is possible this year if Japan shows efforts toward the military sex slave issue.
The Japanese government would be misguided in thinking that the Asahi Shimbun’s retraction denies the existence of military sexual slavery or the Japanese authorities’ involvement. Radhika Coomaraswamy, a special rapporteur on violence against women who prepared the landmark 1996 U.N. report on military sex slaves, said in a recent interview that she sees no need to revise her report, which cited a book written by Yoshida. Coomaraswamy said that Yoshida’s statement was “only one piece of evidence” in her report.
As hard as the Abe government may try to deny its wartime atrocities against women, there are living survivors of Japanese military sex slavery who testify that they were forcefully taken away. The only way that the Japanese government can truly “restore Japan’s impaired reputation” is by taking full responsibility for its history.
