Japan Press Weekly

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2013 May 22 - 28 [HISTORY]

JCP Ichida criticizes Hashimoto for refusing to retract ‘comfort women’ remarks

On May 27, commenting that Japan Restoration Party co-leader Hashimoto Toru offered no apology for his remarks on the so-called “comfort women” issue, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi said that Hashimoto “fundamentally lacks the ability to face up to Japan’s past history of wrongdoing”.

Earlier on the same day, at a press conference held in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan Hashimoto retracted and apologized for his recommendation to a U.S. forces commander to have U.S. soldiers use sex-related services, but showed no intention to withdraw his remarks, saying that the comfort women system was “necessary” during the war.

Ichida pointed out that even though it all started when the co-leader stated that everyone can understand the necessity of the system, he excluded himself from “everyone” at the press conference and blamed the media for reporting his words falsely. This simply underlined his arrogance, said Ichida.

Hashimoto said that although other countries’ military forces had also engaged in wartime sexual offenses, it is unfair “to blame only Japan”. Ichida criticized his statement for using a kind of logic that one commits theft because everyone commits theft.

As to the 1993 Kono Statement, the rightist politician said that there is no evidence proving that “the state authority of Japan was intentionally involved in the abduction and trafficking of women”.

Ichida stressed, “The statement admits the Japanese military’s involvement in using women as sex slaves under coercion in accordance with victims’ testimony. Hashimoto denies this fact and distorts the history to fit his ideological bias.”