Japanese activists pushing their government for formal admission of guilt on comfort women

Posted on : 2013-08-15 14:28 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Nowadays Japanese politics are moving further to the right, and some are seeking to retract past apology
Mina Watanabe
Mina Watanabe

By Jeong Nam-ku, Tokyo correspondent

Japan Action for Resolution of the Comfort Women Issue, a network of Japanese women’s rights, pacifist, and human rights groups, launched a campaign to make Aug. 14 into a UN-recognized day of commemoration for women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military during the Second World War.

The day was designated last year by the 11th Asian Solidarity Conference for Resolution of the Comfort Women Issue to remember Aug. 14, 1991, the day the late Kim Hak-sun became the first survivor to openly testify about the abuses she suffered as a comfort woman.

Yesterday on Aug. 14, members of the public joined Japan Action and other civic groups at Kashiwagi Park in Shinjuku, Tokyo, to denounce Japan’s denials of the forcible drafting of comfort women and march in the streets with banners urging the government to resolve the issue.

Mina Watanabe, co-president of Japan Action, said in an interview with the Hankyoreh’s Tokyo correspondent that day at the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace in Shinjuku, “We want to create a situation where the world will remember no matter how hard the Japanese government tries to deny and erase the history of the comfort women’s forcible mobilization,” she said. “We want to make people feel ashamed about trying to deny history.”

The commemorative day campaign is aimed at alerting Japan and the rest of the world to the comfort women issue and create a situation where the Japanese government feels compelled to apologize.

A number of incidents in Japan this year suggest backsliding in perceptions on the issue, including the Shinzo Abe administration’s attempts to retract a 1993 apology to comfort women by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono and issue a new statement in its place. In one high-profile gaffe, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, head of the Japan Restoration Party, said the comfort women were “necessary.”

“In June [the month after Hashimoto’s statement], a total of 649 people visited the Active Museum. That’s twice its normal numbers,” Watanabe said. “Hashimoto’s gaffe ended up getting a lot of Japanese people to pay more attention to the comfort women issue.”

“I believe Japanese civil society still has the strength to punish that kind of misstatement,” she added.

Watanabe emphasized an active approach. “I don’t think we should just sit by and watch while people are trying to overturn the Kono statement,” she said.

She also recalled the first Abe administration (2006-07), when the Cabinet decided at a meeting that no written evidence had been found to support claims that comfort women were forcibly mobilized.

“It was recently found that the government did in fact have written evidence at the time,” she said.

“We need to revoke that Cabinet decision,” she added.

Watanabe went on to lambaste the tepid approach of previous Japanese administrations.

“In the past, they’ve only talked about carrying on the Kono statement, but there hasn’t been any apology or compensation to the comfort women survivors, and the Japanese public hasn’t been adequately educated on the history,” she said.

It isn’t easy working on the comfort women issue in Japan. When assemblies and events are organized, right-wing groups often flock to the scene to disrupt the proceedings and cause commotion. Regional newspapers like the Tokyo Shimbun, Hokkaido Shimbun, and Ryukyu Shimpo have shown an active interest, but mainstream media have tended to ignore the issue.

Watanabe cautioned about the consequences of leaving the issue unaddressed.

“Unless we reckon with the issue of comfort women under the old Japanese ministry, we run the risk of seeing that kind of wartime sexual abuse of women happening again,” she said. “We may not be strong, but we won’t give up. We’re going to keep speaking out.”

 co-president of Japan Action
co-president of Japan Action

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