Japan Press Weekly

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2014 January 22 - 28 [HISTORY]

NHK chair justifies Japan’s wartime sex slavery system

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK’s new president said on January 25 that the military’s use of sex slaves, such as the Imperial Japanese Army’s “comfort women” system, was “common” to any country at war.

Momii Katsuto, 70, was appointed as president of NHK in December last year by its executive board, almost all of whom are Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s “close friends”.

At his first press conference, Momii said, “South Korea has been criticizing us by saying that Japan is the only country to have forcibly taken local women away to use them as sex slaves. The ‘comfort women’ issue was already settled by the 1965 Japan-Republic of Korea Basic Relations Treaty. Why are they trying to rehash the matter?”

In the 1993 Kono Statement, the government admitted that Japan’s military was “involved” in the sex slavery system during World War II, and officially apologized to victims. In the field of historical science, Japan and Germany have been regarded as the only two nations that systematically set up frontline brothels during the war.

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Yamashita Yoshiki sharply criticized the NHK president on the same day, saying, “Momii’s remarks not only go against the administration’s conventional view but also ignore historical facts. His qualification to be the public broadcaster’s president should be brought into question.”


Past related articles:
> An ally of PM Abe elected as NHK President [December 21, 2013]
> JCP Ichida criticizes Hashimoto for refusing to retract ‘comfort women’ remarks [May 28, 2013]