Japanese Must Apologize

All Japanese may have to apologize to the world for letting him a leader of a national party. Toru Hashimoto, a co-president of Japan Restoration Party, said “Comfort women was necessary to maintain the order of the army at the time,” at a press conference. In addition, he recommended the Commander of US Marine in Okinawa to “take advantage of sex business.” Although there are arguments that he ignored dignity of woman or that he was eccentric revisionist, the most important point was he made a disaster for credibility of Japanese politics.

He tried to persuade people by saying “comfort women system had been common to all armies in the world.” But he confused prostitute with rape. Known raping case in the war may include Berlin fallen into the Russian Army at the end of World War II or Bosnia in the Civil War in Yugoslavia. Those cases happened as effusions of antagonism of occupiers against the subordinates. Comfort woman was forced organized prostitute in brothels built for the purpose. Most of those women were brought from non-enemy nation. That was a significant infringement of human rights.

Embarrassingly, Hashimoto tried to sell Japanese women to US soldiers in Okinawa. He ignored the words of a leader comprehended political will. That is not what political leader supposed to do. He also ignored the problem of LGBT in US military, only focusing men’s lust. So, what are you going to do for women soldiers or gays and lesbians, Mr. Hashimoto?

Colleagues of his party showed incompetence in responding to Hashimoto’s aggression of human dignity. Shintaro Ishihara, co-leader of the party and a well-known eccentric nationalist, supported Hashimoto by saying that military and prostitute had been having close relationship. Ichiro Matsui, General Secretary of the party, said, “Hashimoto meant that US soldiers could blow their energy off at bars with alcoholic drinks.” Matsui ignored how many US citizens restrict having alcohol with religious reasons. One who had seen US drunk man would do would not recommend them to have alcoholic drinks.

The obvious reason of Hashimoto’s excessive speech was to be looked at. His party has been declining in supporting rates and it is likely that they will be diminished after the election of the House of Councillors this summer. But, his sensationalism will face backlash from women voters. It is OK how soon they are gotten out of the stage of Japanese politics. It is the problem for us that our neighbor countries, including US, become more skeptical about Japan’s seriousness about recognition on wartime facts.