U.S. Army's "Comfort Women"

Mayor Hashimoto is right when he said that almost all Armies in various countries used some kind of prostitutes. In WW2, there were many documents that German, Russian, and English Army employed many prostitutes. They were unofficial, but Nazis set up an state-run brothel in concentration camps.

Even after WW2, the U.S. Army used Recreation and Amusement Association that employed more than 50,000 prostitutes in Japan. They were official institution supported by Japanese goverment.

The U.S. Army employed many prostitutes in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. According to Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Peter Arnett, a respected journalist who reported the Vietnam War testified as follows:

By 1966, official military brothels had been established within each division’s camp. Each one was a two-building “recreation area” where 60 Vietnamese women lived and worked. The prostitutes decorated their cubicles with nude photographs from Playboy magazine and had silicone injected into their breasts to make the American soldiers feel more at home.

Arnett said that these "recreation areas" were authorized by the Chief of Staff and the Defense Department. He estimated that more than 300,000 prostitutes worked during the Vietnam War.

They were neither kidnapped by the Army nor sold by human trafficking, but it was not only Japanese Army that employed prostitutes in the battle field. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

Krugman's Russian Roulette for Japan

Paul Krugman praises PM Shinzo Abe for his "unorthodox" fiscal and monetary policy.

Whatever his motives, Mr. Abe is breaking with a bad orthodoxy. And if he succeeds, something remarkable may be about to happen: Japan, which pioneered the economics of stagnation, may also end up showing the rest of us the way out.

As Krugman says, Abe's policy is "old-fashioned pork-barrel". Since Abe knows little of economics, his policy was actually implemented by Financial Minister Tarou Asou, who was expelled from Prime Minister by 2009 election.

Krugman is right when he says that monetary policy is irrelevant because Japan is trapped by deflation. So he recommends a Keynesian fiscal policy to push Japan out of long recession. Although it has had little effectin the US, he insists it was too little and urges American government to spend much more, which Abe and Asou are trying to do.

However, it is not obvious that such policy can get Japan out of stagnation and maintain growth for a long time. Indeed there is a GDP gap of minus 3.1 percent, so potential output might be achieved by filling this gap by government spending theoretically. Krugman seems to assume that there are multiple equilibria a la Cooper-John as follows:

If government spending could push Japanese economy out of A, an inferior equilibrium, it might reach a superior equilibrium B. If such an equilibrium exists, for example, an inflation by 2 per cent would be a self-sustaining path theoretically. But it is implausible because money stock (M2)  is very stable since 1992 while monetary base fluctuated as high as 36 per cent as follows.


Growth of monetary base (green) and M2 (red) in Japan (%)
If, on the other hand,  such superior equilibrium doesn't exit, Krugman's Big Push is a risky policy that might push Japanese economy out of equilibrium forever as follows.

Of course we don't know whether we are in an inferior equilibrium of multiple equilibria or only one stable equilibrium. But as Japan is facing far more serious financial risk than that of the US, Krugman's recommendation might be a Russian Roulette for Japan.

Open letter to the editor of NY Times

Dear editor,

I have a comment about your editorial "Another Attempt to Deny Japan’s History" on January 2. As Ms. Hiroko Tabuchi at NYT Tokyo bureau recommended, I send this as a "letter to the editor". As I publish this as an open letter here and Agora in Japanese, you don't have to publish this.

I was one of the first journalists who covered "comfort women" when I was working for NHK TV station in August 1991. When we interviewed Kim Hak-soon, the first woman who came out as a comfort woman, she said that she was sold by parents to Korean brothels and transferred to military brothels in China by private agents.

But in January 1992, Asahi Shimbun ran a story about a military document of comfort women. It was a document to prohibit private agent's kidnapping of women, but Asahi mistook it as an evidence of military kidnapping. And Kim changed the story that she was kidnapped by the Army.

This "sex slave" story misled NYT and other foreign media. Since many people pointed out the error, Asahi reluctantly admitted that they could not prove the military coercion, but they switched the focus to the coercion in the broad sense by private agents. It is only foreign media that still attack Japan's military coercion.

It was clear that there were prostitutes sold by human trafficking in the pre-war era and that Japanese Army managed the brothels, as usual in the world. In Indonesia, an accident was documented, as Ms. O’Herne witnessed, but the soldiers who raped her were punished by Japanese Army because they prohibited coercion.

This is not a problem of "whitewashing" the past but historical facts. In fact there is little disagreement among historians: there was human trafficking by private agents but no military order for abduction. Before you attack PM Abe's "shameful impulses", you had better read new articles about history without prejudice.

Best regards,

Ikeda

NYT's shameful accusation without proof

After Tokyo correspondent Martin Fackler criticized Abe administration's move to revise Kono Statement, the NY Times posted an Editorial that insists

Any attempt to deny the crimes and dilute the apologies will outrage South Korea, as well as China and the Philippines, which suffered under Japan’s brutal wartime rule. Mr. Abe’s shameful impulses could threaten critical cooperation in the region on issues like North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Such revisionism is an embarrassment to a country that should be focused on improving its long-stagnant economy, not whitewashing the past.

And Op-ed article "Japan Can Champion Women’s Rights" by Mary M. McCarthy, an Assistent Professor of Drake University. It's a repetition of old lie. McCarthy writes,

O’Herne was one of up to 200,000 mostly Korean, but also Chinese, Dutch, Japanese, Filipino, Indonesian and other women coerced into sexual servitude by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces."

"Shameful impulses" and "whitewashing" are not polite words, but there is no evidence that supports NYT's accusation. No evidence of "coercion by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces" was not found outside Indonesia.

In fact O’Herne's case is the only one accident that Japanese Army abducted women, for which soldiers were executed by the Army. NYT reporter Onishi couldn't find the evidence outside Indonesia. Even Prof. Yoshimi admitted that there was no military abduction in Korea.

It is not the first time that NYT accuse Japanese government without proof. I wonder why they are so enthusiastic about the fake problem of "comfort women", when their friend Asahi Shimbun has become silent because they know they fabricated the story.

If NYT wants Japanese government to apologize, they should show material evidences that the Japanese Army ordered to kidnap women from Korea. Without proof, PM Abe and his colleague in the Cabinet don't change their mind.

Fackler is, unlike Onishi, a nice guy who understands Japanese. NYT can change the history by investigating the truth of "comfort women". It is not so difficult, because many historians agree with the facts.

PM Abe should revise the Kono Statement

According to Sankei Shimbun, Prime Minister Abe said that there was no evicence of military abduction of "comfort women" in the documents that Japanese government investigated. He said that since Kono Statement in 1993 was not an official decision of the Cabinet it should be examined by experts.

But it is not easy to revise the statement because NY Times reports "American officials say they have urged Mr. Abe to shelve calls to revise the Kono Statement to avoid increasing tensions with South Korea". Although American government is neutral, many lawmakers endorse the Resolution 121 to blame the comfort women.

In fact Kono Statement did not apologize the military abduction of comfort women, but its ambiguous expression was interpreted as admission of guilt. We should sort out two problems. Historians' consensus is as follows:

• Military abduction: There is no document that shows Japanese Army coerced Korean women into brothels. Some women claimed that they were abducted by Army, but they were not supported by evidences. There is only one evidence of coercion in Indonesia, which was a court-martial offense and the criminal was executed.
• Human trafficking: There was human trafficking by private parties, as usual in the world of pre-war era. Kono Statement apologized that the Army sometimes helped the private coercion, but Japanese government refused legal resposibility for abduction.

Japanese Army was responsible for the operation of brothels because it was dangerous, but they did not abduct women from Korea. Although somebody abuse the word "abduction" as human trafficking, the Army was not responsible for the conduct of private parties.

So it is a necessary step to revise Kono Statement by removing ambiguous expression such as "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." This referred to the case in Indonesia, but Koreans mistook it as the admission in general.

When I covered Koreans in 1991 for NHK documentary, nobody claimed they were abducted by the Army. The wrong article of Asahi Shimbun fabricated the problem, which hurts Japanese-Korean relationship seriously. As Mr. Abe is much interested in this problem, it might be the last chance to correct the history.

Asahi Shimbun fabricated "comfort women"

All these things began with a wrong article. "Comfort women" or  "military abduction" weren't discussed before it.

The Asahi Shimbun reported in the front page on 11 January 1992 that the historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi discovered documents that proves the Army's "commitment" to comfort women in the archives of Japan's Defense Agency.


According to the article, the document indicated that the military had been involved in running the brothels, for example by selecting the agents who recruited. Takashi Uemura, Asahi's correspondent in Seoul, reported further that the comfort women had been abducted as part of "Joshi Teishintai" (women volunteer corps). But it was obviously wrong because Teishintai was the labor team in the factories of military equipment.

This article kindled the phantom scandal of "comfort women". It misled the Japanese government because it was scheduled for Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa to visit South Korea five days after the reporting. Miyazawa apologized to Korean government about the comfort women without confirming the facts. And in 1993, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono addressed a statement to apologize Japanese government's "commitment".

These problems were fabricated by the Asahi that mistook the commercial prostitution as military forced labor. And there is no evidence of "abduction" of women by the Army. Since many historians and commentators attacked the wrong reporting, the Asahi tacitly admitted the error. However, they never apologized it but insists "such minor difference doesn't matter" in the editorial.

Norimitsu Onishi, a liar

The most influential source of lies is Norimitsu Onishi, the Tokyo bureau chief of NY Times. He was born in 1969 in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, and moved to Canada when he was four. He graduated from Princeton University and joined the Times and covered Africa, Afganistan, and other foreign countries before he came to Japan in 2003.

His articles about comfort women are much distorted and biased. For example, in the article featured on the front page on March 8, he quoted the testimony of Wu Hsiu-mei and Jan Ruff O'Herne. However, Wu said that she was taken by a "Japanese officer" and talked nothing about the Army's coercion. O'Herne, a notorious seller of her tragedy, said nothing about the Army's order, too. Prostitutes can't be the witness of Army's order. Her case was judged by Dutch court which decided that Japanese Army had forbidden violent treatment of comfort women.

Onishi also visited a historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, who is attacking Japanese government based on phony evidences. The document he alleges to be the proof is nothing but the warning from the Army to brokers not to kidnap women into brothels. Onishi doesn't even pretend to be impartial by interviewing more neutral historians such as Ikuhiko Hata. Onishi might be afraid of the "inconvinient truth" that his reporting is groundless.

Onishi's articles are laughing matter in Japan. The article about him in Wikipedia Japan lists his many wrong (often ridiculous) articles. He speaks Japanese fluently, but is ignorant of Japan. Onishi has advantage to write such racist articles because he looks like a Japanese. But some people suggests that he is a Korean-Japanese. If so, it's natural that he hates Japan that expelled his family.

He is the first NY Times correspondent who wrote so many stupid articles, which is hurting Times's reputation seriously. It's because the editors in NY headquarter are ignorant of Japan, too. Once I was amazed to see a picture of an unknown man captioned "Japanese PM Abe" in a Times's article on March 6 on the Web. When I pointed out it to the editor by e-mail, the picture was deleted without apology. I don't blame their ignorance. But it's criminal to repeat lying when so many Japanese people have pointed out they are incorrect.

The Facts about Comfort Women

A group of Japanese lawmakers in a full-page ad in the Washington Post on June 14 denied the Japanese government and military had a hand in conscripting women from Asian countries as sex slaves for the Imperial Army during World War II. Its excerpt from a blog:

FACT 1
No historical document has ever been found by historians or research organizations that positively demonstrates that women were forced against their will into prostitution by the Japanese army. A search of the archives at the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, which houses wartime orders from the government and military leaders, turned up nothing indicating that women were forcibly rounded up to work as ianfu, or "comfort women."

On the contrary, many documents were found warning private brokers not to force women to work against their will. Army memorandum 2197, issued on March 4, 1938, explicitly prohibits recruiting methods that fraudulently employ the army’s name or that can be classified as abduction, warning that those employing such methods have been punished. A Home Affairs Ministry directive (number 77) issued on February 18, 1938, states that the recruitment of "comfort women" must be in compliance with international law and prohibits the enslavement or abduction of women. A directive (number 136) issued on November 8 the same year, orders that only women who are 21 years old or over and are already professionally engaged in the trade may be recruited as "comfort women." It also requires the approval of the woman’s family or relatives.

FACT 2
There are many newspaper articles, moreover, that demonstrate that these directives were dutifully carried out. The August 31, 1939, issue of Dong-A Ilbo, published in Korea, reports of brokers who forced women to become ianfu against their will being punished by the local police, which was under Japanese jurisdiction at the time. This offers proof that the Japanese government dealt with severely with inhumane crimes against women.

Unscrupulous Brokers Run Rampant
Abduction of Rural Women and Girls
More than 100 Women Victimized
Pusan Police Officers Dashed Off to Mukden

PUSAN -- Unscrupulous brokers have been conspiring to abduct women from poor families by promising them generous rewards in Manchuria (where Japanese soldiers are claimed to be visiting brothels in swarms). Forty-five such brokers were found to be working in Pusan, where they lured unsuspecting young women away from their families and sold them into prostitution in Manchuria. Over 100 women have already been victimized. Intensive investigation by Pusan police has revealed the identity of a Mukden dealer involved in these activities, and six officers were dispatched in the evening of August 20 to the city to arrest this dealer. The arrest is expected to fully expose the nightmarish activities of these brokers.(*extracted from an article on Dong-A Ilbo issued on August 31, 1939)

FACT 3
There were admittedly cases, though, of breakdowns in discipline. On the island of Semarang in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), for instance, an army unit forcibly rounded up a group of young Dutch women to work at a "comfort Station." The station was shut down under army orders, though, when this incident came to light, and the responsible officers were punished. Those involved in this and other war crimes were subsequently tried in Dutch courts and received heavy sentences, including the death penalty.

FACT 4
House Resolution 121 sponsored by US Representative Mike Honda and other charges of Japanese maltreatment of "comfort women" are mostly based on testimonies by former ianfu. In none of their initial statements are there references to their being coerced to work by the army or other units of the Japanese government.

Their testimonies have undergone dramatic changes, though, after the start of the anti-Japanese campaign. Those who testified in a House of Representatives public hearing first reported that they were whisked away by brokers, but then later claimed that their abductors wore clothing that "looked like police uniforms."

FACT 5
The ianfu who were embedded with the Japanese army were not, as is commonly reported, "sex slaves." They were working under a system of licensed prostitution that was commonplace around the world at the time. Many of the women, in fact, earned incomes far in excess of what were paid to field officers and even general (as reported by the Unites States Office of War Information, Psychological Warfare Team Attached to U.S. Army Forces, India-Burma Theater, APO 689), and there are many testimonies to the fact that they were treated well.

There are records of soldiers being punished for acts of violence against the women. Many countries set up brothels for their armies, in fact, to prevent soldiers from committing rape against private citizens. (In 1945, for instance, Occupation authorities asked the Japanese government to set up hygienic and safe "comfort station" to prevent rape by American soldiers.)

This is not the opinion of the "ultraright" because 13 lawmakers of the Democratic Party of Japan, the opposition party, sign this ad.

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT COMFORT WOMEN

NO ORGANIZED OR FORCED RECRUITMENT: MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT COMFORT WOMEN AND THE JAPANESE MILITARY

Hata Ikuhiko, Professor Emeritus, Nihon University (PDF) Excerpts:

Here we will focus on the testimony of Lee Yong-soo, who lives in Seoul at Nanum House, a home for former comfort women. Ms. Lee has visited Japan several times to tell her story. Here are some excerpts from her testimony at the hearing:

Punsun knocked on my window early in the morning, and whispered to me to follow her quietly. I tip-toed out of the house after her. I lift [sic] without telling my mother. I was wearing a dark skirt, a long cotton blouse buttoned up at the front and slippers on my feet. I followed my friend until we met the same man who had tried to approach us on the riverbank. [Italic added]

Former comfort woman Mun Ok-chu (now deceased) published her vicissitude-filled story. Active in Burma, she was known for her cleverness, sunny disposition and solicitude. She was immensely popular among the Japanese soldiers, from the rank-and-file soldiers to generals. In less than three years, she managed to save up ￥26,000,3 and sent￥5,000 home to her family. At that time, the average salary of a Japanese Army sergeant was ¥30 per month.

How about the other woman, Kim Koon-ja? According to her testimony, her foster father (a Korean police officer) told her to go out and earn some money at the age of 16. Kim met a Korean man who told her he had a good job for her. She was then taken away in a freight car. Ms. Kim was either deceived by a broker or told to go with him by the foster father (perhaps sold to him to pay off a loan). What is noteworthy is that no Japanese was involved in Kim’s case.

Since there is no evidence of kidnapping by a government authority, we must assume that the young women were deceived by Koreans — their compatriots. The fact that no Japanese living on the Korean peninsula had sufficient command of the Korean language to deceive a Korean woman lends even more credence to this assumption.

BACKGROUND OF 'COMFORT WOMEN' ISSUE

A PDF document from Yomiuri Shimbun, BACKGROUND OF 'COMFORT WOMEN' ISSUE

1

Controversy over the so-called comfort women has been inflamed again. The U.S. House of Representatives has been deliberating a draft resolution calling for the Japanese government to apologize over the matter by spurning the practice as slavery and human trafficking. Why has such a biased view of the issue prevailed? The Yomiuri Shimbun carried in-depth reports on the issue Tuesday. The writers are Masanobu Takagi, Hiroaki Matsunaga and Emi Yamada of the political news department. Starting today, The Daily Yomiuri will carry the stories in three installments.

To discuss the comfort women issue, it is indispensable to understand the social background of the time when prostitution was authorized and regulated by the government in Japan. Prostitution was tacitly permitted in limited areas up until 1957, when the law to prevent prostitution was enforced.

Comfort women received remuneration in return for sexual services at so-called comfort stations for military officers and soldiers. According to an investigation report publicized by the government on Aug. 4, 1993, on the issue of comfort women recruited into sexual service for the Japanese military, there is a record mentioning the establishment of such a brothel in Shanghai around 1932, and additional similar facilities were established in other parts of China occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Some of them were under the direct supervision of the military authorities, but many of the brothels catering to soldiers were privately operated.

Modern historian Ikuhiko Hata, a former professor at Nihon University, says the comfort women system should be defined as the “battleground version of civilian prostitution.”

Comfort women were not treated as “paramilitary personnel,” unlike jugun kangofu (military nurses) and jugun kisha (military correspondents). During the war, comfort women were not called “jugun ianfu” (prostitutes for troops). Use of such generic terminology spread after the war. The latter description is said to have been used by writer Kako Senda (1924-2000) in his book titled “Jugun Ianfu” published in 1973. Thereafter, the usage of jugun ianfu prevailed.

In addition to Japanese women, women from the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan, both then under Japanese colonial rule, and China, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries invaded by the Imperial Japanese Army were recruited as comfort women.

Hata estimates that 40 percent of the wartime comfort women were Japanese, 30 percent Chinese and other nationalities and 20 percent Korean.

The total number of comfort women has yet to be determined exactly.

According to a report compiled by Radhika Coomaraswany of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1996, there were 200,000 comfort women from the Korean Peninsula alone. The figure in the report was based on information Coomaraswany had obtained in North Korea. But this report contained many factual errors, and its quoted sources lacked impartiality. Foreign Minister Taro Aso rejected the figure of 200,000 as “lacking objective evidence.”

The reasons cited for the need for comfort women and wartime brothels are as follows:

– To prevent military officers and soldiers from raping women and committing other sex crimes in occupied areas.

– To prevent venereal disease from spreading through troops who would otherwise contact local prostitutes who did not receive periodic medical checks.

– To prevent military secrets from being leaked by limiting the women who provided sexual services to officers and soldiers to recruited comfort women.

Such a system and the use of wartime brothels generally are not limited only to the Imperial Japanese military.

The U.S. troops that occupied Japan after the war used brothels provided by the Japanese side. There was a case in which U.S. military officials asked the Japanese authorities to provide women for sexual services. During the Vietnam War, brothels similar to those established for the former Japanese military were available to U.S. troops, a U.S. woman journalist has pointed out.

Hata said: “There were wartime brothels also for the German troops during World War II. Some women were forced into sexual slavery. South Korean troops had brothels during the Korean War, according to a finding by a South Korean researcher.”

2

This is the second installment on the so-called “comfort women” controversy. The U.S. House of Representatives has been deliberating a draft resolution calling for the Japanese government to apologize over the matter by spurning the practice as slavery and human trafficking. Why has such a biased view of the issue prevailed?

The issue of the so-called comfort women has been brought up repeatedly because misunderstandings that the Japanese government and the Imperial Japanese Army forced women into sexual servitude have not been completely dispelled.

The government has admitted the Imperial Japanese Army’s involvement in brothels, saying that “the then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women.” The “involvement” refers to giving the green light to opening a brothel, building facilities, setting regulations regarding brothels, such as fees and opening hours, and conducting inspections by army doctors.

However, the government has denied that the Japanese military forcibly recruited women. On March 18, 1997, a Cabinet Secretariat official said in the Diet, “There is no evidence in public documents that clearly shows there were any forcible actions [in recruiting comfort women].” No further evidence that could disprove this statement has been found.

The belief that comfort women were forcibly recruited started to spread when Seiji Yoshida, who claimed to be a former head of the mobilization department of the Shimonoseki branch of an organization in charge of recruiting laborers, published a book titled “Watashi no Senso Hanzai” (My War Crime) in 1983. Yoshida said in the book that he had been involved in looking for suitable women to force them into sexual slavery in Jeju, South Korea. “We surrounded wailing women, took them by the arms and dragged them out into the street one by one,” he said in the book.

But researchers concluded in the mid-1990s that the stories in the book are not authentic. On March 5 this year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at the House of Councillors Budget Committee that Yoshida’s story does not prove that women were forcibly recruited. He said: “I think it was The Asahi Shimbun [that reported the story] that a man named Seiji Yoshida testified about his having searched for comfort women. But later [Yoshida’s testimony] was found to have been made up.”

As the comfort women issue started to take on political and diplomatic dimensions, some people in South Korea and also in Japan confused comfort women with female volunteer corps, strengthening the misbelief that there was coercion.

Female volunteer corps were, according to a historian Ikuhiko Hata’s book “Ianfu to Senjo no Sei” (Comfort Women and Sex in the Battlefield), single women aged between 12 and 40 who were mobilized to work in factories, starting in August 1944, primarily to secure necessary labor.

There were cases in which malicious brokers sweet-talked women with promises of easy money or intentionally concealed from them what life was going to be like in brothels.

The War Ministry wrote a letter, dated March 4, 1938, to the troops dispatched to China. The letter, titled “Regarding the recruiting of women at the army’s comfort stations,” said there were malicious brokers who were recruiting women in a way “similar to kidnapping.”

It said, “Nothing should be overlooked so that the military’s prestige and social orders are maintained.” The letter indicates how the Imperial Japanese Army tried to make sure that women were not forcibly recruited.

However, in the confusion of war, elite Imperial Japanese Army soldiers who were on the fast track for officer status sent detained Dutch women to a brothel in Indonesia. The incident came to be known as the Semarang incident.

The Imperial Japanese Army Headquarters closed down the brothel immediately after learning of the incident, and soldiers involved received severe punishment–some were sentenced to death–at a war crimes court convened by the Dutch Army after the war.

3

This is the third and last installment on the so-called “comfort women” controversy. The U.S. House of Representatives has been deliberating a draft resolution calling for the Japanese government to apologize over the matter by spurning the practice as slavery and human trafficking. Why has such a biased view of the issue prevailed?
What made the issue of “comfort women” a political and diplomatic one was an article in the Jan. 11, 1992, morning edition of The Asahi Shimbun. The newspaper reported that official documents and soldiers’ diaries that proved the wartime Japanese military’s involvement in the management of brothels and the recruitment of comfort women had been found at the library of the Defense Ministry’s National Institute for Defense Studies.

The article said Koreans accounted for about 80 percent of comfort women from the time that brothels were established and that the women, said to have totaled 80,000 to 200,000, were forcibly recruited under the name of volunteer corps after the Pacific War broke out.

As the newspaper’s report came out immediately before then Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea, it triggered anger among the South Korean public. During his visit to the nation, Miyazawa met with then South Korean President Roh Tae Woo and was quoted as telling him, “It can’t be denied that the Japanese military–in some way–was involved in the recruitment of comfort women and the management of comfort stations.”

On July 6, 1992, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato released the results of a study showing that the wartime military was directly involved in such things as the operation of “comfort stations,” but documents to prove that forcible recruitment actually took place were not found.

But as South Korea’s criticism over Japan’s actions continued, the government issued an official statement on the issue on Aug. 4, 1993, which became known as the Kono statement, after the government official who delivered it, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono.

But Kono’s statement included ambiguous expressions and gave the impression that the government had acknowledged forcible recruitment by wartime Japanese authorities.

Regarding the recruitment of comfort women, the statement said: “The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military. The government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, and so on, and that, at times, administrative and military personnel directly took part in the recruitment.”

The statement also said the recruitment, transfer and control of comfort women on the Korean Peninsula was “conducted generally against their will.” This expression became a strong indication that women, in most cases, were taken in a forcible manner.

By issuing the statement, the government aimed to seek a political settlement over the issue, as South Korea pressed the Japanese government hard to recognize that forcible recruitment actually took place. Then Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobuo Ishihara, who was involved in compiling the statement, said, “As there were no documents to prove forcible recruitment, it was concluded, out of comprehensively made judgments based on testimonies of [former] comfort women, that [recruitment] was forceful.”

Kono’s statement did not resolve the issue. Instead, it spread misunderstanding both inside and outside the nation on the “forcible recruitment” by government authorities.

A U.N. Human Rights Commission report, compiled by Radhika Coomaraswamy, referred to comfort women as sex slaves, and called on the Japanese government to compensate these women and to punish those responsible. The report reached these conclusions partly on the grounds of Kono’s statement.

Mike Honda, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives who led lawmakers in submitting a draft resolution denouncing Japan over the comfort women issue, also referred to Kono’s statement as a basis for the draft resolution.

However, observers have pointed out, and The Yomiuri Shimbun reported on the morning edition of March 16, that there are certain factors regarding Honda’s electoral district–such an increase in the number of residents of Chinese or South Korean origins, while the number of Japanese-origin residents has decreased–that may be behind why the Japanese-American lawmaker of California is leading such an initiative.

Given the Kono statement, the government in July 1995 established an incorporated foundation called the Asian Women’s Fund. It has provided a total of about 1.3 billion yen in compensation for 364 former comfort women. Letters of apology from successive prime ministers–Ryutaro Hashimoto, Keizo Obuchi, Yoshiro Mori and Junichiro Koizumi–also were sent to those women.

On Oct. 5 at the House of Representatives Budget Committee, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe indicated a stance to “inherit” Kono’s statement in principle, while denying forcible recruitment by government authorities.