Embarrassing Challenge

Trying to erase some facts in history, Japanese government took another step against world society. An official with Ministry of Foreign Affairs required the author of special report in the United Nations of correcting description on recruiting comfort women. The author rejected the request. The world would not listen to what the revisionist government was saying for reviewing history. The effort must simply be an embarrassment for the Japanese nation.

Kuni Sato, an Ambassador on Human Rights and Humanity with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, met with Radhika Coomaraswamy, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence against Woman, at U.N. in the middle of this month and asked correction of a description. “Moreover, the wartime experiences of one raider, Yoshida Seiji, are recorded in his book, in which he confesses to having been part of slave raids in which, among other Koreans, as many as 1,000 women were obtained for ‘comfort women’ duties under the National Labour Service Association as part of the National General Mobilization Law,” it says.

Coomaraswamy dismissed the request with a reason that dispute against the description was “only a part of many evidences.” Japanese historian, Ikuhiko Hata, had disputed the description of Yoshida’s book as wrong and concluded that the recruitment had been done by Korean district chiefs or brothel owners. Coomaraswamy was right when she determined that the dispute of Japanese government was narrow-minded.

In Japan, skepticism against Yoshida’s story has been spreading, after Asahi Shimbun apologized about its former report about him as wrong. However, Shinzo Abe administration insists on denying the involvement of Japanese government in comfort woman recruitment. Although Yoshida’s story is one of the many evidences, Abe tried to persuade the people as if Japanese government had nothing to do with the comfort woman issue at all, despite many evidences other than Yoshida story remain.

The strangest thing in Japan now is a number of people came to believe that there was no such thing as comfort woman. All they realize are Abe administration denied something about comfort woman, criticized Asahi Shimbun as eroded national interest, and Asahi apologized on it. They ignore other information that supports historical facts of comfort woman.

Even if the pressure from conservative power inside Japan is strong, challenging U.N. report is too risky to preserve Japan’s national interest. As expected, Japan’s appeal was mostly ignored by the United Nations. As long as the government cannot understand what is the point of criticism on Japan, the bureaucratic organization will keep on making embarrassing appeals, actually harming national interest of Japan.