Abe Backtracks on Japan's Comfort Women Admission

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]AP: Japan's Abe - No proof of WWII sex slaves
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday there was no evidence Japan coerced Asian women into working as sex slaves during World War II, backtracking from a landmark 1993 statement in which the government acknowledged that it set up and ran brothels for its troops. Abe's comments to reporters came as a group of ruling party lawmakers urged the government to revise the so-called Kono Statement, which states that Japan's wartime military sometimes recruited women to work in the brothels with coercion. "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion," Abe said. "We have to take it from there"...Earlier Thursday in Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun urged Japan to be more sincere in addressing its colonial past as dozens of people rallied outside the Japanese Embassy, lining up dead dogs' heads on the ground...Roh said Japan "needs to, above all, show an attitude of respecting the historical truth and acts that support this...Instead of trying to beautify or justify its past wrongdoing, (Japan) should show sincerity that is in line with its conscience"...more...

[Mulboyne]

The Japan Communist Party published a 20 page transcript (PDF) of Abe being questioned by Executive Chair Kazuo Shii last October. Shii pointed out to Abe that back in 1997 had said that the "Kono Statement has lost its justification". Page 16 of the transcript gives details of this exchange.

Shii: I have here the minutes of the discussion at the second workshop of the House of Representatives Committee on Audit and Oversight of Administration on May 27, 1997 that includes Mr. Abe's remarks. The minutes show that you stated that all seven textbooks submitted for screening contain descriptions of the so-called military comfort women and that this was problematic. You said that if military comfort women were there not as a result of coercion, there is no need for the textbooks to take up the theme, adding that there are no official documents that verify whether there was such coercion. In this statement, you meant to demand that the description of the “military comfort women” be deleted.

What is more, you blame the "Kono Statement" for the inclusion of the military comfort women issue in the textbooks and said that the "Kono Statement" has become groundless. If you intend to “follow the 'Kono Statement',” why don’t you admit that you were wrong in making remarks attacking it?

Abe: My understanding at that time was that the Kono statement was intended to admit that the Japanese government was involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the recruitment of comfort women, express apologies and remorse for that, and promise to study in what way the government should express its apology and remorse. At the time, I questioned whether a junior high school textbook should include descriptions of military comfort women. For example, I thought it was necessary to first take into account the state of children’s development. I also thought it important to ascertain whether there was coercion in the narrow sense of the word. I said that if there are differences of opinion regarding the facts, we may have to reconsider including the material in the textbook.

I said that nothing substantiates the fact of coercion in the narrow sense of the word. When I discussed this issue, I pointed out that the name of YOSHIDA Seiji cited in textbooks as a person in charge of the recruitment of comfort women was later found to be a mistake. That was a question I raised in my statement.

Shii: You have just said that the allegations about “coerciveness” in the narrow sense of the word are groundless. The “coerciveness in the narrow sense of the word,” I think, implies the coercion that was present in relation to the transfer of comfort women. However, the "Kono Statement" pointed out that there are many cases of women being recruited against their will. This is part of the government findings. Do you still deny everything including what you call cases of coercion in the narrow sense of the word? Isn’t it coercion if women were recruited against their will? Do you deny this fact cited in the "Kono Statement"?

Abe: I meant that there could be coercion in the narrow sense of the word and coercion in the broad sense of the word. The question should be whether the women were taken out of their houses forcibly, or they wanted to choose to not go but they were in an environment that compelled them to go in the end. The latter can be regarded as a case of coercion in he broad sense of the word.

Shii: You tried to argue about the narrow sense of the word and the broad sense of the word. But the minutes show that you did not argue about the difference. You flatly denied the fact of the use of coercive recruitment of women in general. That is why you called for change in the practice because the prerequisite of the argument has collapsed. I am saying that if you accept the "Kono Statement," you need to look back on what you did and correct the mistake. What do you think? Again, the minutes contain no such phrases as “narrow sense of the word,” or “broader sense of the word.” It is an argument you have just begun come up with.

Abe: What I said was whether it is appropriate to contain the issue in the junior high school textbook. As I have repeatedly said, my position as the prime minister is one of following the "Kono Statement."

[Buraku]

here we go again

"No proof of WWII sex slaves"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070301/ap_on_re_as/japan_sex_slaves

[Jack]

Please someone tell this Abe idiot to shut the fuck up. Next thing he will say is that Japan never colonised Korea. Or the Chinese raped Niigata.
Like Asia needed more fuel to flame the fire.

[Tsuru]

Please someone tell this Abe idiot to shut the fuck up. Next thing he will say is that Japan never colonised Korea. Or the Chinese raped Niigata.
Like Asia needed more fuel to flame the fire.

I think you will find China is laughing in their fists after they just found out they actually do have to power to make the world economy shake just by making an announcement. They can pull the plug anytime they want.

[xenomorph42]

Why is it that Japan always sees itself as a victim and usually(never)wants to accept accountability for any wrong-doing whatsoever on their part?

At least Germany has tried to be open and to have dialogue to make amends as best as they could. Shroeder went around europe on many occasions to show empathy and humbleness of the atrocities it committed during WWII.

But, Whenever you try talk or have a decent dialogue with Japanese people sometimes, they go on the defensive thinking, you are trying to insult or look down on them. For many Japanese, it`s almost like a taboo to talk about WWII past-time aggressions.

[TFG]

Seems to be par for the course.
Perhaps they should start giving Kamikaze lessons in primary schools.
Perhaps they will if Blinky gets reelected as Gov!:D

[Tsuru]

Why is it that Japan always sees itself as a victim and usually(never)wants to accept accountability for any wrong-doing whatsoever on their part?

At least Germany has tried to be open and to have dialogue to make amends as best as they could. Shroeder went around europe on many occasions to show empathy and humbleness of the atrocities it committed during WWII.

But, Whenever you try talk or have a decent dialogue with Japanese people sometimes, they go on the defensive thinking, you are trying to insult or look down on them. For many Japanese, it`s almost like a taboo to talk about WWII past-time aggressions.

Shortly after WWII the US needed Japan to help with the war in Korea, and reparations and apologies to its neighbors (especially those that were on the other side of the iron curtain) took a back seat. Germany was a divided country bombed into nothing, and they had all the time in the world to make reparations to the Jewish people and the newly-found state of Israel, which they did straight up.
The other difference I feel is in attitude. Ordinary Germans are generally very humble and respectful people, but in a different way from the Japanese. Germany is not an island, so that helps too I guess.

The main difference is in education. Baby-boomers like Aso never learned about WWII the way his German counterparts did, his history books never mentioned Nanjing or unit 731. A lot of Germans on the other hand not only learned in detail about the atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht, Dr. Mengele and their regime's persecutions of Jews, gays, gipsys and other minorities, but also actually visited places like the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp museum. Perhaps some people a little older than myself recall German chancellor Willy Brandt falling to his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto Monument in 1970.

I have utmost respect for the German people, much less so for idiots like Aso. The grandfather of my fiance served in the imperial Japanese army, but he never speaks about wartime Japan, not even to his wife. Their granddaughter however wants to know everything there is to know about both the European and Asian theaters of WWII, and the things her country did. She feels cheated that her highschool history classes never taught her these things. Sadly she seems to be the exception.

Priceless picture. Whenever I'm in Japan and I happen to see an Uyoku van I just wave like an idiot and snap a picture like any no-speaky-Japanese tourist would. They're my best buds.

In the immortal words of Basil Fawlty: "Who won the bloody war anyway?"

[Takechanpoo]

Fault of most of gaijin in Japan is that they read only books written in English and dont read books written in Japanese or by Japanese person.
Most of gaijin read only written-in-English books about Japan,
and they believe they understand all of Japan.
They even believe that written-in-Japanese books are not worth reading.
It is too arrogant.
You FGs should read more books written in or by Japanese.
Especially about Nanjin and so-called "comfort women".

[Jack]

While I think Abe should shut his mouth, before jumping on the Japan-bashing bandwagon you have to look deeper into the culture to understand Japanese treatment of Asians. Japanese soldiers did not treat Chinese or Koreans any differently than they were treating each other. The worst people were the stupid generals who sent millions of Japanese soldiers to fight a war they knew they couldn't win. Sending them off to remote islands without food and provisions. Leaving them to fend for themselves ultimately eating each other. In that situation, whther you raped a whole family or burnt a whole village doesn't look that bad. I have great respect for Japanese people but none for their leadership.

Read this book: Flyboys : A True Story of Courage (Paperback)
by James Bradley

and you will understand it better.

Japanese soldiers did terrible things to Chinese, Koreans and others, but they also did the same thing to themselves.

[TFG]

Japanese soldiers did not treat Chinese or Koreans any differently than they were treating each other.
Japanese soldiers did terrible things to Chinese, Koreans and others, but they also did the same thing to themselves.

And what leads you to believe that Japanese soldiers committed the same atrocities on themelves?

[Buraku]

Didn't you read the manga about the poor people of Nippon became the victims of rapes and massacres during the kanto quake ?

Or watch the anime about the poor 26 Shinto Japanese that were nailed to a cross for being too-Japanese and doing too much omikuji ?

THESE ARE ALL FACTS as Jackshit will learn ya !

[Tsuru]

Fault of most of gaijin in Japan is that they read only books written in English and dont read books written in Japanese or by Japanese person.
Most of gaijin read only written-in-English books about Japan,
and they believe they understand all of Japan.
They even believe that written-in-Japanese books are not worth reading.
It is too arrogant.
You FGs should read more books written in or by Japanese.
Especially about Nanjin and so-called "comfort women".

You mean like a butcher who judges his own meat or a student grading his own paper? No thank you. Mind you, that goes for the official Chinese/Korean accounts as well.

I think independent sources are always the best... what do Western writers stand to gain or lose from exaggerating/downplaying accounts and statistics?

[Mulboyne]

I think it is a fair criticism of foreign commentators that they don't read enough Japanese language literature on a given Japan-related subject. That includes academics as well as casual observers. It's not uncommon to hear someone claim that "No-one talks about x in Japan" only to discover that there is already a lively dialogue on x in a number of journals. It is fair to say that media outlets are less willing to air certain controversies but that doesn't mean that there is no debate in other forums.

It is a two-way street, however. Japanese academics and commentators haven't always engaged with debates overseas. Worse, they sometimes do enter the debates but end up supporting one line of argument in the international arena and another at home.

In a comparison which I hope doesn't trivialize the issue, Japan sometimes comes across like a man who has been caught cheating on his wife but insists on arguing against her that he didn't sleep with his mistress 20 times but five times and that necklace he bought only cost 50,000 yen and not 500,000. His version of events may be more accurate but that isn't going to do anything to placate her. Abe may even be right about the semantics of "coercion" in the comfort women case - I don't know either way - but no-one is going to assume he makes the point to tidy up the historical record. Instead they will read his statement as an attempt to revise the whole issue.

It is certainly possible to make the case that Korea, China etc shouldn't still need placating at this late stage but, from a practical standpoint, it appears that they do.

[Jack]

Didn't you read the manga about the poor people of Nippon became the victims of rapes and massacres during the kanto quake ?

Or watch the anime about the poor 26 Shinto Japanese that were nailed to a cross for being too-Japanese and doing too much omikuji ?

THESE ARE ALL FACTS as Jackshit will learn ya !

While I admit to fucking J-chick aplenty and enjoyed doing so, I'm no ignorant like you are.

Read stories about Japanese soldiers like the book I listed earlier and you will find out that even an American who is the son of one of them soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima admits that J-soldiers ate each other. Their own lives were worthless in their own eye do you think in that case they would give a shit about the lives of others? Whether Chinese, Korean or Japanese to them they were all worth jackshit. How bout the thousands of J-girls that were rounded in Japan to work in brothels for the American soldiers after their invasion? If Japanese people used Chinese and Korean comfort women they also used Japanese comfort women to spare the majority from rape as they thought that Americans would rape Japanese women as they had done to others. Little the fucking generals who slaughtered millions of Japanese knew that Japanese women were willingly fucking American soldiers less than 48 hours after the Americans had invaded Japan. Yes, perhaps even the soldier who had killed the husband was now fucking the wife.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Ordinary Germans are generally very humble and respectful people

I can believe I just read that. Germans are generally some of the biggest pricks I've ever met.




The only reason the Germans have done so much and the Japanese have done so little is we made them.

[Tsuru]

I can believe I just read that. Germans are generally some of the biggest pricks I've ever met.

Obviously you don't have much experience with the French

Really though... Germany kicks ass.

[Takechanpoo]

[Mulboyne]

It does seem that Abe was somewhat mistranslated and the issue overplayed by the newswires and the NYT. He seems to have repeated what he already said in the questioning back in October. However, Abe should know what kind of coverage comes with the territory as Prime Minister so he isn't blameless in this. He was quite careful before to distinguish between speaking as the Prime Minister and as a private individual.

[amdg]

So Mulboyne is he calling the comfort women lying whores or not? I can't decide. Seems to me if he says there is "no evidence", then that is exactly what he's saying.

[TFG]

Either way, they sure wouldn't get much work in Ginza these days.

[Captain Japan]

It does seem that Abe was somewhat mistranslated and the issue overplayed by the newswires and the NYT.

The NY Times story on the cover of the Saturday/Sunday issue of the Asahi/IHT was written by the Tokyo bureau chief Norimitsu Onishi. He's Japanese/Canadian. Here's part of what the Wiki entry says of him:

Conservative critics in Japan accuse Onishi of having a strong anti-Japanese bias which, they suggest, helps foster a vilified image of Japan abroad.[3][4] Some non-conservatives assert that his story is not always justifiable because of the lack of solid basis and common sense. For example, in the article reported for the New York Times, LETTER FROM ASIA: Why Japan Seems Content to Be Run by One Party, he concluded the country's democracy is "illusion" because of the long single party dominance that can be comparable to the dominance of the communist parties in China and North Korea.[5] This provoked an official objection statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for being "an incorrect article."[6] His article on December 17, 2006, Japan Rightists Fan Fury Over North Korea Abductions,[7] is another controversial one criticized by Kyoko Nakayama, Tokyo Special adviser to the Japanese prime minister on abduction, that "This is about rescuing our citizens (from ongoing abduction)... They deserve all possible support to regain their freedom and dignity. It is our duty to retrieve them".[8][9] Thomas H. Snitch, a former professor of American University and the president of Little Falls Associates, Inc. also mentioned that Onishi's coverage on Japan's effort to deal with the issue of the North Korean abductions of Japanese for being based on his political bias.

[Mulboyne]

So Mulboyne is he calling the comfort women lying whores or not? I can't decide. Seems to me if he says there is "no evidence", then that is exactly what he's saying.

He hasn't (yet) denied that comfort women existed as the initial AP report suggested. Here's Earl Kinmonth, no fan of Abe's, on the NBR forums:

[I]“]

This English translation is so far removed his statement as reported in the Nihon Keizai Shinbun as to suggest either (1) a grossly incompetent translator or (2) a willful mistranslation.

My reading would be that he (Abe) gives a very ambiguous answer in which he states that the issue of coercion has been contentious, that there was not evidence of coercion as originally defined, and by so doing indicates a certain understanding for the position of the group calling for revision of the 1993 statement. As for it, any consideration of revision must start from the premise that the definition of coercion changed. Finally, he says that while Korea and Japan will inevitably have their own spin on history, the important thing is that both look to the future and be aware that this is what is really important.

While I cannot guarantee that my rendering is perfectly accurate, any native speaker or any reasonably fluent gaijin would, I think, describe the NYT rendering as grossly inaccurate in that it is far more definitive than the original Japanese and completely mistranslates one statement. (Abe says definitions have changed, not that conditions have changed.)

Please note that I have no brief for Abe, and he may well want to deny that any of the comfort women were coerced(*), but damn it, that's not what he said!

(*) Even the most politically correct left wing sources on the comfort women acknowledge that the system of military brothels did not initially rely on coercion and that not all comfort women were coerced. This point is often lost. While there was grievous coercion for some, that was not the case for all women.

In the scheme of all the things Abe could say about Japan's war activities, to choose to split hairs like this on the very current issue of comfort women, however, indicates gross stupidity. That's a kind reading. An unkind reading would be to suggest that Abe does want to deny some of the broader evidence and does think those women who have testified are "lying whores". That's what Kazuo Shii tried to elucidate in his questioning back in October when Abe made the same statements as he did the other day.

[Gilligan]

It all depends on "what the definition of is is."

[American Oyaji]

So basically, there are some Korean women out there who gave it up for money and there are some that didn't.

I have no doubt that some of the true whores are trying to "clear their names" at this late date.

[Buraku]

So Mulboyne is he calling the comfort women lying whores or not? I can't decide.

He's a confessed Japanophile and has been known to censor or delete posts that don't worship the Land of the Rising Sun.


People can move on and move forward from the sin of the past, but it becomes so much more difficult when morons like Shinzo or governor Blinky decide to open-up old wounds. No doubt Japan is a changed place, and there are few reminders of those evil days of imperialism and facism except when some idiot like Blinky opens his pie-hole. Contrary to what some Nipponocentric textbooks would lead you to belive - it wasn't Korea or the Aussies or America or China that started the war, the fact is that Japan was the aggressor back then, and non-Japanese were often seen as dogs or logs. There is reason why anti-Japanese sentiment is so strong in Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, China et cetera because there are the older generations who remember and told their sons and daughters of the killing and humiliation the likes of Tojo and Hirohito were associated with. There are older generations in Asian that remember the Japanese that even used pregnant mothers as bayonet practice. The Japanese did stuff that was so sick and depraved it even disgusted their Nazi allies.

[Mulboyne]

He's a confessed Japanophile and has been known to censor or delete posts that don't worship the Land of the Rising Sun.

When?

[Captain Japan]

[Captain Japan]

He's a confessed Japanophile and has been known to censor or delete posts that don't worship the Land of the Rising Sun.

Buraku, I think you should consider sticking to giving stock tips.

[Captain Japan]

Abe will stand by 1993 sex slave apology: aide
AP/JT

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will stand by Japan's apology for forcing Asian women to have sex with Japanese troops during World War II, an aide said Sunday in the wake of an outcry by Asian nations over his recent denial of coercion.

"Though there are many definitions of coercion, Prime Minister Abe has said . . . that he will stand by the Kono statement," said Hiroshige Seko, special adviser in charge of Abe's public relations.

Seko was referring to a statement issued by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, apologizing to victims of sex slavery.

Kono's 1993 statement also acknowledged that many women were forced into prostitution and that the military government was involved in some cases....more...