 |
| A monument to comfort women erected outside Japanese Embassy in Soul. |
Seventy years after the end of World War Two, the voices of revisionism in Japan are growing stronger and moving into the mainstream, particularly on the issue of comfort women, who were women forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war.
One of the most eloquent voices of revisionism is Toshio Tamogami.
It is when I ask him about the issue of Korean comfort women that Mr Tamogami's denials are most indignant.
He declares it "another fabrication", saying: "If this is true, how many soldiers had to be mobilised to forcibly drag those women away? And those Korean men were just watching their women taken away by force? Were Korean men all cowards?"
Although they may not say it as loudly and as bluntly as Mr Tamogami, this is a version of history that is widely believed by many of Japan's nationalists.
Earlier this year at a joint session of the US Congress in Washington DC, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed deep sorrow for the suffering caused by Japan during WW2.
Mr Abe does not deny there were Korean women serving as comfort women near the frontlines in China and South East Asia.
But he has repeatedly said there is no evidence these women were coerced or that the Japanese military was involved in their recruitment and confinement. The implication is the women were prostitutes.
This is a very murky area. Girls from poor families have been sold in to prostitution in Japan, Korea and China for centuries, and the practice was certainly still going on in the 1930s and 1940s.
Read the full article here.
No comments:
Post a Comment