Politicians in Japan make gaffes so frequently that its Asian neighbors no longer feel it necessary to respond to them one by one. Yet the latest remark on wartime sex slavery made by the leader of Japan’s third largest political group apparently went too far.
“The comfort women system was necessary … and other countries were also using it,” Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka and co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, told reporters Monday, adding, “Why do foreigners only take issue with Japan?” He then asked U.S. troops in Japan to make better use of the country’s red light districts.
Can you believe these words, which reveal not just the speaker’s lamentable historical knowledge but also his abject awareness of human rights, coming from one of Japan’s most popular ― and promising ― politicians?
So deplorable were Hashimoto’s comments that even the conservative Cabinet members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put forth a barrage of criticism against the opposition leader. Yet what all this shows is how Japanese politicians are competing to stir up nationalist sentiments among voters, which in turn reflects the rapid rightward shift among Japan’s postwar generation.
Prime Minister Abe himself is leading the pack: the ultra-right politician has raised questions about the shared global knowledge of Japan as the chief aggressor during World War II; put on a baseball jersey with the number “96” on the back to express his wish to revise Article 96 of the Peace Constitution to return to a “normal country”; and even sat in a pilot’s seat in “Fighter 731,” in unmistakable justification of Japan’s germ warfare experiment done by a unit with the same name.
Hashimoto’s counterattack was his latest attempt to justify the country’s inhumane sex slavery of Asian women.
We do not know how many countries were operating military brothels. But we know Japan was the only country in which its military ― the state in other words in a militarist country ― was actively involved, directly and indirectly, in recruiting women, through both coercion and deception, and setting up and operating the facilities. The mayor of Japan’s second largest city also called for Korea to present evidence of the Japanese military’s involvement. It’s no better than a rapist demanding the victim offer proof of his assault.
It is well known the Japanese government burned all incriminating wartime documents right after its defeat. Those it failed to destroy are held by the U.S. government and even some conscientious Japanese scholars.
Abe, Hashimoto and other ultra-right Japanese politicians seem to have one belief in common: Japan’s biggest ― or only ― mistake was losing the war. These postwar-generation politicians are the products of Japan’s education system bent on whitewashing the country’s wartime atrocities and emphasizing only that they were victims of atomic bombings. One cannot help but shudder to think what kind of Japanese generation would arise if the self-justifying education is allowed to continue for another 30 years.
The Allied Forces, mainly the United States, have made Japan what it is today. It’s their responsibility, too, to rectify it into a “genuinely” normal country.