Truth about Japan

Japan News reports that the Asahi Shimbun third-party committee, which has been examining the paper’s past reports on so-called comfort women, released a report Monday that concluded the newspaper made a “fatal mistake”. The report said the Asahi switched points of contention over the word “coerciveness” — a word used to describe the situation concerning comfort women. The report said until the doubts were raised in 1992 over statements by Yoshida, it was the Asahi that took the initiative in widely reporting “coerciveness in the narrow sense.” However, it did not admit in the 1997 special coverage that it had reported “coerciveness in the narrow sense” and instead criticized other people who assert it, according to the report. Based on the statement on comfort women issued by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono in 1993, the Asahi now stresses the existence of “coerciveness in the broad sense.”

NYTimes published an editorial "Whitewashing History in Japan". Four months after the Asahi's defeat, NYT resolved to repeat their false reports as follows: Right-wing political forces in Japan, encouraged by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are waging a campaign of intimidation to deny the disgraceful chapter in World War II when the Japanese military forced thousands of women to serve in wartime brothels . This is inconsistent with Martin Fackler 's report, " There is little evidence that the Japanese military abducted or was directly involved in entrapping women in Korea". The Asahi admitted there is no evidence. Does the editorial board of NYT have unknown evidence of military sex slave? They accused Abe harshly, The Abe government is playing with fire in pandering those demanding a whitewash of wartime history. “They want to bully us into silence,” Takashi Uemura, a former Asahi reporter, said in describing how ultranationalists have made...

NYT published an article by Mindy Kotler , the director of an leftist NPO. NYT cautiously avoids restating their version of "historical truth". Because, without Yoshida, there is no hard evidence of "sexual slavery" by the Japanese Army. The scholarly community had long determined that Mr. Yoshida’s claims were fictitious, but Mr. Abe seized on this retraction by The Asahi to denounce the “baseless, slanderous claims” of sexual slavery, in an attempt to negate the entire voluminous and compelling history of comfort women. In October, Mr. Abe directed his government to “step up a strategic campaign of international opinion so that Japan can receive a fair appraisal based on matters of objective fact.”

NYT confessed that their reports about "sex slaves" have little (if any) historical ground. There is little evidence that the Japanese military abducted or was directly involved in entrapping women in Korea, which had been a Japanese colony for decades when the war began, although the women and activists who support them say the women were often deceived and forced to work against their will.

BBC reports the "comfort women" of the U.S. Army. More than 120 former prostitutes, who are ageing and poor, are suing not the American authorities but their own government, demanding compensation of $10,000 (£6,360) each. Their argument is that the South Korean government facilitated their work in order to keep American forces happy .

BBC reports that slavery (including sexual) is going on now. NYT had better accuse current UK government rather than Japanese Army 70 years ago. Aneeta Prem, founder of the Freedom Charity, said recent publicity around the issue was helping, but "everyone needs to be vigilant." She said: "It's not somebody in shackles, it's not somebody tied into a house that cannot leave, that isn't what a modern day slave is. "It could be someone forced into sex trafficking , someone forced to work on a farm with no pay or little pay."

BBC reports Yomiuri's apology. Japan's biggest newspaper has issued a controversial apology for using the term "sex slaves" when referring to women who worked in brothels set up for Japanese soldiers in World War Two.

In the beginning, c omfort women issue was a "local story" of Social Dept., Osaka HQ of Asahi Shimbun. Tales in Seiji Yoshida's confession was featured as just a sentimental story in the serial dubbed "Women's World War II" (Onnatachi-no-Taiheiyou-sensou in Japanese) by Kiyoyasu Kitahata, a lead writer of Asahi. It can be guessed Asahi was in a mood that a few misperceptions could be ignored since denouncements against Japanese military's war crimes were quite common at that time and there was no objection to them.      However, the issue could not be proved when developed into a serious diplomatic  problem. It would be expected that they should have awkwardly withdrawn it then paused  even though they could not correct. Other newspapers than Asahi were away from the comfort women issue while they also featured some until around 1992. Why was Asahi the only one to persist with the comfort women issue and argued that the Japa...