Japan Press Weekly

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2013 January 30 - February 5 [HISTORY]

Shii criticizes Abe’s intent to withdraw state apology for ‘comfort women’ issue

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on January 31 criticized Prime Minister Abe Shinzo for intending to revise the 1993 Kono Statement that acknowledges the Japanese military involvement in the “comfort women” issue and expresses apology for that involvement.

During his question time in the Lower House, Shii said, “Based on the testimonies of former ‘comfort women’, the government in the statement acknowledged that the Imperial Japanese army forced those women to work as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers.” He pointed out that Abe’s argument, which denies the fact that the military took away those women and used them under coercion because of the “absence” of written evidence, is incompatible with the Kono Statement.

The chair quoted former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Ishihara Nobuo, who was deeply involved in compiling the statement, as saying that government interviews with victims undoubtedly show that those women were forced to work as “comfort women” against their will.

Abe was unable to refute Shii’s argument and just replied, “This question should not be turned into a political or diplomatic issue.”

Shii also warned the prime minister that the revision of the statement will destroy the common understanding that Japan’s war was an unjustifiable war of aggression, an understanding on which postwar Japan was founded, and would lead Japan to be isolated in Asia and from the global community.

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Prime Minister Abe Shinzo on February 1 expressed his intention to revise also the Murayama Statement making an apology for Japan’s colonial rule on Asian countries.

Abe said this in replying to Social Democratic Party Chair Fukushima Mizuho in a plenary session of the House of Councilors.

On August 15, 1995, marking the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII, then Japan’s Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi issued the statement. It showed official government remorse and apology for Japan’s “colonial rule and aggression” causing “tremendous damage and suffering” on the people of other Asian nations.


Related past article
> Abe’s intent to deny Japan’s past war of aggression invites isolation from international community [January 5, 2013]