Japan Times
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Abe's sex slave stance darkens women's day
By ERI NOSAKA
Staff writer

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent denial that the Imperial Japanese Army coerced women into sexual slavery during the 1930s and 1940s overshadowed an International Women's Day forum at the United Nation's University in Shibuya Ward.

Andrew Horvat, a visiting scholar at International Center for the Study of Historical Reconciliation at Tokyo Keizai University, told the audience on Thursday the government's reaction was troubling.

"What is frightening is, Abe's questioning of incontrovertible evidence (about the coercion) places these Japanese leaders in very unusual company -- the company of people in Europe who are asking for evidence of the Holocaust," Horvat said.

Speakers blamed gender inequality in part on the government's ignorance about the issues and its reluctance to correct the problems in society.

Most panelists were reluctant to speak about the sex slave issue.

However, Momoyo Ise, a board member of the United Nations Association of Japan, alluded to it, saying that sex-trafficking was a growing problem in Japan because political leaders did not understand the issues of the past.

"Violence and discrimination against women have a long-standing place in our society," Ise said. "The reason we cannot advance as a nation is because our leaders and government officials lack the basic understanding of human rights and values."

Marika Banda, former director general of the Cabinet Office's Gender Equality Bureau, said Japan was not progressing fast enough.

She said women make up just 9 percent of the Diet ranks while Scandinavian countries have 40 percent in their legislatures.

"Yes, we have passed new laws ensuring that the rights of women are protected," Banda said. "But if you compare the rate at which Japanese women are holding managerial positions in comparison to other countries, it is evident that we are moving at an unacceptable pace."

San Francisco Chronicle
Editorial
Japan's shame
Friday, March 9, 2007

SHINZO ABE is the latest Japanese prime minister to deny a disgraceful truth about his country's history: Some 200,000 women from China, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines were forced to become sex slaves for the Japanese military during the World War II era.

Japanese records and tearful testimonials from surviving women have amply proved the case. A Japanese minister even issued an apology in 1993 that amounted to a government acknowledgement.

Yet Abe, in a bid to mollify an obdurate fringe in Japanese politics, has shamelessly waffled. Last week, he denied the women were coerced. Then, he backpedaled by saying that the 1993 apology stood, but he wanted a new inquiry, launched by party insiders, not historians.

The cause for this evasiveness stems partly because U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, a San Jose Democrat, is pushing a nonbinding measure that asks Japan to own up "in a clear and unequivocal way for its Imperial armed forces' coercion" of so-called "comfort women,'' who were forced into military-run brothels. Honda's initiative has a strong chance of passing, now that Democrats control Congress.

The issue comes with overtones. Japan needs to right a historic wrong to sustain leadership in the region, amid rising trade with China and sensitive talks with North Korea. China, which has long resented Japan's foot-dragging on the topic, is playing it cool, leaving the outcome for Japan to explain.

These calculations mean nothing to the pain of the surviving women, now in their 80s. Some were kidnapped, others were tricked into the brothels where they were forced to have sex with as many as 20 soldiers a day. These women deserve to hear directly from Prime Minister Abe.

This article appeared on page B - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Chicago Tribune
Editorial
No hiding from history
Published March 9, 2007

Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, wants his country to shake off that hangdog, defeated-nation mind-set and take its rightful place as a world power--with a real military, better relations with its neighbors and a seat on the United Nations Security Council. But Abe, who campaigned on a promise to rewrite Japan's pacifist constitution, must first break away from the crowd that wants to rewrite its past.

Fourteen years after Japan issued a halfhearted apology for the sexual enslavement of 200,000 women, some noodges in the U.S. House are working on a non-binding resolution urging Japan to apologize better. Abe says no. There's no proof the "comfort women" were coerced into providing sex for the emperor's soldiers, he says. And they were recruited by private contractors, he insists, not the military.

The surviving women, most now in their 70s and 80s, remember it differently. Some tell of soldiers storming villages and rounding them up at gunpoint. Others say they went willingly because they were promised real jobs, only to be forced into prostitution. Some Japanese soldiers have admitted they abducted women under orders from their military commanders.

But the government denied any involvement until documents proving otherwise were unearthed in 1993. An apology was issued and a reparations fund was established, but the money came from private sources. Some of the "comfort women" consider that a dodge and have refused to accept the money unless it comes from the government. Right-wingers, meanwhile, have been retreating from the apology since the day it was uttered. Lately they've talked about injecting a little equivocation into the 1993 statement.

Denying the past is nothing new for Japan, but the revisionists have been particularly brazen lately. Six years ago, right-wing scholars introduced a middle-school textbook designed to give students a more positive sense of their nation's history. It characterizes Japanese wartime aggressions as resistance to Western imperialism and shrugs off "The Rape of Nanking."

Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, regularly inflamed Japan's neighbors by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, a monument to the nation's war dead--and its war criminals.

Abe's efforts to repair relations with the neighbors aren't helped by his backpedaling about the sex slaves conscripted from those countries. Taiwan, China and South Korea registered angry protests this week and urged Tokyo to accept responsibility. North Korea's government news agency said Japan should apologize "so that it can be trusted by the international community." And 40 aging Filipino "comfort women" demonstrated Tuesday outside the Japanese Embassy in Manila.

As the first Japanese prime minister born after World War II, Abe is more concerned with charting the nation's future than with redeeming its past. This explains his impatience with those who want him to account for an ugly and violent drama so old that most of the actors have died. But Japan's neighbors have understandably long memories about wartime atrocities. Abe is too young to remember. That doesn't mean Japan will be allowed to forget.

慰安婦問題―国家の品格が問われる
朝日 2007/03/10

　旧日本軍の慰安婦について、「官憲が家に押し入って連れて行くという強制性はなかった」などと述べた安倍首相の発言の余波が収まらない。

　米国のニューヨーク・タイムズ紙は１面で「否認が元慰安婦の古傷を開いた」として、元慰安婦たちの生々しい証言を伝えた。米連邦議会下院では、日本に対して公式謝罪を求める決議案が採択に向けて勢いを増している。

　一方、国内では慰安婦への謝罪と反省を表明した９３年の河野官房長官談話に対し、自民党の議員らが事実関係の再調査を首相に求めた。メディアの一部にも、これに同調する向きがあり、国内外で炎に油を注ぎ合う事態になっている。

　何とも情けないことだ。いま大切なのは、問題は何が幹で何が枝葉なのか、という見極めである。

　首相発言の内容は、河野談話が出されて以来、それを批判する人たちが繰り返し持ち出す論理と似ている。業者がやったことで、日本軍がさらっていったわけではない。だから国家の責任はない、というのが批判派の考えだ。

　今回、一部のメディアが「問題の核心は、官憲による『強制連行』があったかどうかだ」と主張したのも、それに相通じるものだろう。

　しかし、そうした議論の立て方そのものが、問題の本質から目をそらそうとしていないか。

　どのようにして慰安婦を集め、戦地に送り、管理したのか。その実態は地域や時代によって異なる。しかし、全体としては、植民地や占領地の女性たちが意思に反して連れて行かれ、日本軍の将兵の相手をさせられたことは間違いない。

　河野談話が「軍の関与の下に、多数の女性の名誉と尊厳を深く傷つけた」と結論づけたのは、潔い態度だった。

　細かな事実にこだわって弁明ばかりするよりも、民族や女性の人権問題ととらえ、自らの歴史に向き合う。それこそが品格ある国家の姿ではないか。

　海外の誤解も指摘しておきたい。たとえば、米下院の決議案は日本政府が謝罪していないという前提に立っている。

　だが、政府の主導で国民の募金によるアジア女性基金がつくられ、元慰安婦たちに「償い金」を贈り、首相名で「おわびと反省」を表す手紙を渡した。

　補償問題はすでに国家間で決着ずみだとして、政府は女性基金という道を取った。私たちは社説で「国家補償が望ましいが、次善の策としてはやむをえない」と主張してきた。日本として何もしなかったわけではないのだ。

　安倍首相は河野談話を受け継ぐと繰り返し、「これ以上の議論は非生産的だ」と語る場面が増えた。だが、首相が火種となった日本への疑問と不信は、自らが消す努力をするしかない。

　日本は北朝鮮による拉致を人権侵害と国際社会に訴えている。その一方で、自らの過去の人権侵害に目をふさいでいては説得力も乏しくなろう。

社説：「従軍慰安婦」問題　「河野談話」の継承は当然だ
毎日新聞　2007年3月8日　東京朝刊

　いわゆる従軍慰安婦をめぐり、旧日本軍の関与を認めた９３年の「河野（洋平官房長官＝当時）談話」の見直し論議が、自民党内で起きている。安倍晋三首相は「河野談話」の継承を明言している。だが、「当初定義された強制性を裏付けるものはなかった」との発言が、見直し論にくみするものと受け止められ、中国や韓国などの近隣諸国には懸念が広がっている。

　その一方で、米国下院では「河野談話」では不十分だとして、日本に公式な謝罪を求める決議案も提出されている。

　安倍首相は就任直後、中国、韓国を歴訪。途絶えていた両国との首脳外交を再開させた。自民党の「河野談話」の見直し論は、せっかく改善された近隣外交には大いにマイナスだ。安倍首相が継承と言明したのは当然だ。

　韓国人の元従軍慰安婦らが日本政府に補償を求め、裁判を起こした。これを受け、当時の宮沢喜一内閣は事実関係を調査し、それを踏まえ「河野談話」を発表した。慰安所の設置や慰安婦の移送に旧日本軍が直接、間接に関与したことを公式に認め、「心からおわびと反省の気持ちを申し上げる」と、謝罪した。

　ところが、自民党内では「日本の前途と歴史教育を考える議員の会」を中心に、旧日本軍や官憲が慰安婦として強制連行した証拠資料は見つかっていない、と「河野談話」の見直しを要求する声が強まっていた。小泉純一郎前首相の靖国神社参拝に続く日本の右傾化の流れと見られかねない。

　元慰安婦への謝罪は「河野談話」だけではない。９５年には「アジア女性基金」を設立。民間による募金をもとにした見舞金と首相が署名した謝罪の手紙を元慰安婦に届けた。これに対して、首相の手紙には、法的責任は盛り込まれていない、と韓国などでは拒否する動きがあったことも事実だ。

　「河野談話」は、政治決着だったといえる。見直し論は、厳密な史実の裏付けがないことを理由にしているが、戦争責任問題を含めたこの種の問題での政治決着には、あいまいな部分が残るのはやむを得ない。史実を争うなら、歴史研究者に委ねるのが一番だ。日中両国間では、しばしば対立する歴史認識をめぐり、双方１０人からなる共同研究委員会が設立されている。

　「河野談話」見直し論のように、政治が不用意に蒸し返すと事態がかえってこじれるケースはよく見られる。長期的な視野に立っての国益をまず考えるのが政治家の責務のはずだ。不健全なナショナリズムをあおる行為は厳に慎まなくてはならない。

　安倍首相をはじめ日本の政治家がやるべきことは、明白だ。米下院での決議案を成立させないためにも、近隣諸国の懸念を払しょくするにも、従軍慰安婦問題で謝罪してきたわが国の立場をていねいに説明することだ。安倍首相は「主張する外交」を掲げるが、主張の結果は、国益に合致したものでなくてはならないはずだ。

３月７日付・読売社説（１）
　［慰安婦問題］「核心をそらして議論するな」

　いわゆる従軍慰安婦問題の核心は、官憲による「強制連行」があったかどうかだ。

　米下院外交委員会で慰安婦問題に関する対日決議案が審議されている。日本の軍隊が若い女性を「強制的に性的奴隷化した」歴史的な責任を明確に認め、日本の首相は謝罪すべきだ、という内容だ。

　日本軍が組織的に「慰安婦狩り」をしたかのように決めつけている。だが、日本政府の調査でも、これを裏付ける文書はない。歴史家の間でもこうした事実はなかった、というのが「定説」だ。この決議案を提出した議員らは、これらを覆すだけの確かな資料があるのか。

　安倍首相は国会で、決議案は「客観的事実に基づいていない」と語った。麻生外相も、同様の見解を示して「甚だ遺憾だ」と述べた。曲解に満ちた決議案である以上、政府は事実を正確に説明して、採択を阻止しなければならない。

　首相は、慰安婦の募集について、「狭義の意味の強制性を裏付ける証言はない」と強調した。「官憲が家に押し入り、人さらいのごとく連れて行く、『慰安婦狩り』のような強制的なもの」、つまり、官憲による強制連行はなかったということを明確にした。

　その一方で首相は、民間業者による、本人の意に反した「広義の強制性」があったことを認めた。だが、こうしたケースと、軍による強制連行とは、まったく違うものだ。

　「強制性」を拡大解釈し、核心をそらして非をならす一部のマスコミや国会議員らは、今後も内外に誤った認識を広げるだけだ。

　それにしても、この問題は、なぜ、何度も蒸し返されるのか。

　その最大の理由は、１９９３年、当時の河野洋平官房長官が発表した談話にある。それには、慰安婦の募集に「官憲等が直接これに加担した」などと、日本軍が強制連行したかのような記述がある。だが、これが裏付けのないまま書かれたことは、元官房副長官らの証言ではっきりしている。

　自民党の有志議員らは、談話のあいまいな表現が、誤解を生む原因になっているとして見直しを検討中だ。米下院の決議案は、「談話の内容を薄めたり、撤回したりする」ものとして、こうした動きをけん制している。しかし、不正確な談話を見直すのは当然のことだろう。

　河野談話を発表した背景には、韓国側の圧力を前に「強制連行」さえ認めれば問題を決着できるとみた甘さがあった。政府は米下院決議をめぐり、再び、外交上の失策を繰り返してはならない。

【主張】慰安婦問題　偽史の放置は禍根を残す
(産経 2007/03/10)

　慰安婦問題に関する過去の官房長官談話が日本の名誉を傷つけ、日米関係にまで影を落としていることは由々しき事態だ。歴史の事実に対しては断固不当な政治解釈を排し、外交的には無用な摩擦を避ける知恵を要する。つまり戦略的対応が求められる。

　その意味で、安倍晋三首相が国会で「官憲による強制的連行があったと証明する証拠はない」と答弁したのは、事実に誠実に向き合った結果であろう。米下院公聴会で証言した韓国人女性は、国民服の日本人男性に売春を強要されたと証言したが、日本軍に強制的に連行されたとは述べていない。

　論点は慰安婦問題で国家の強制連行があったのか、あるいは身売りの娘に業者が介在したのかである。

　しかし、「河野談話」が明確な裏付けもなく慰安所の設置に「旧日本軍の関与」があったと認めたために、彼女らが日本軍の「性の奴隷」であったとの誤った認識を広げてしまった。安倍首相が否定すると、米紙が真意をねじ曲げ、さらに誤解が拡散する。

　首相は自民党の調査、研究に委ねる姿勢を示すことで、これ以上の外交的なマイナスの回避を図った。中国寄りのニューヨーク・タイムズ紙などは、首相の言動を歪曲（わいきょく）すべく虎視眈々（たんたん）と狙っている。彼らに批判材料を提供してしまうと、一般の米国人に間違った認識を与えてしまう。喜ぶのは日米の離間を狙う中韓である。

　特に中国は、日本が国連常任理事国入りを目指すと、歴史認識を武器に反日キャンペーンに乗り出した実績がある。反日運動のいかがわしさに気づいた欧米のメディアから批判を浴びると、その欧米世論を味方に付けるよう方向を転換している。一部の米紙はその術中にはまった。

　誤用の多い「レイプ・オブ・南京」の著者、アイリス・チャン氏の胸像を米有名大学に寄贈した中国人権発展基金会の幹部が、対日歴史批判に関し「欧米などへの宣伝を重視する」と述べていたのはその証拠である。

　米国下院の慰安婦非難決議案と米紙の誤りには、首相が出るまでもなく、その都度、日本政府として訂正を求めるべきだ。歴史事実の誤認や誇張をそのまま放置すると、偽史が独り歩きし後世に禍根を残す。

安倍首相の慰安婦問題発言　米国で止まらぬ波紋
2007年03月09日21時17分　朝日

　米国内で、従軍慰安婦問題をめぐる波紋の広がりが止まらない。ニューヨーク・タイムズ紙など主要紙が相次いで日本政府を批判する社説や記事を掲載しているほか、震源地の米下院でも日本に謝罪を求める決議案に対して支持が広がっているという。こうした状況に米国の知日派の間では危機感が広がっており、安倍政権に何らかの対応を求める声が出ている。

　◆広がる波紋

　８日付のニューヨーク・タイムズ紙は、１面に「日本の性の奴隷問題、『否定』で古傷が開く」と見出しのついた記事を載せた。中面に続く長いもので、安倍首相の強制性を否定する発言が元従軍慰安婦の怒りを改めてかっている様子を伝えた。同紙は６日にも、安倍発言を批判し、日本の国会に「率直な謝罪と十分な公的補償」を表明するよう求める社説を掲げたばかりだ。

　ロサンゼルス・タイムズ紙も６日に「日本はこの恥から逃げることはできない」と題する大学教授の論文を掲載し、翌７日付の社説では「この問題を修復する最も適任は天皇本人だ」と書いた。

　今回の慰安婦問題浮上の直接のきっかけとなった米下院外交委員会の決議案をめぐっては、安倍首相が１日「強制性を裏付ける証拠がなかったのは事実」と発言したのを受けて支持が広がっている。

　０５年末までホワイトハウスでアジア問題を扱っていたグリーン前国家安全保障会議上級アジア部長は、「先週、何人かの下院議員に働きかけ決議案への反対を取り付けたが、（安倍発言の後）今週になったら全員が賛成に回ってしまった」と語る。米国務省も今週に入り、議員に対し日本の取り組みを説明するのをやめたという。

　◆知日派にも危機感

　６日に日本から戻ったばかりのキャンベル元国防次官補代理は、「米国内のジャパン・ウオッチャーや日本支持者は落胆するとともに困惑している」と語る。

　「日本が（河野談話など）様々な声明を過去に出したことは評価するが、問題は中国や韓国など、日本に批判的な国々の間で、日本の取り組みに対する疑問が出ていることだ」と指摘。「このまま行けば、米国内での日本に対する支持は崩れる」と警告する。

　現在日本に滞在中のグリーン氏も「強制されたかどうかは関係ない。日本以外では誰もその点に関心はない。問題は慰安婦たちが悲惨な目に遭ったということであり、永田町の政治家たちは、この基本的な事実を忘れている」と指摘した。

　その結果、「日本から被害者に対する思いやりを込めた言葉が全く聞かれない」という問題が生じているという。日米関係にとってこの問題は、「牛肉輸入問題や沖縄の基地問題より危ない」と見ている。

　グリーン氏は今後の日本が取るべき対応として（１）米下院で決議が採択されても反論しない（２）河野談話には手を付けない（３）何らかの形で、首相や外相らが被害者に対する理解や思いやりの気持ちを表明する、の３点を挙げた。

　　　×　　×

　シーファー駐日米大使は９日、東京都内の大使公邸で朝日新聞などに対し、「決議案は拘束力のないものだが、この問題の米国での影響を過小評価するのは誤りだ」と述べた。さらに「米国には、河野談話からの後退を望む日本の友人はいない」とも語り、河野談話の見直しを模索する自民党内の動きを牽制（けんせい）した。

Front Page (A-1) of the New York Times (March 8, 2007)

The New York Times
Denial Reopens Wounds of Japan’s Ex-Sex Slaves

Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
Japanese students visiting South Korea view photos of Korean women who were sex slaves of Japan's army.

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: March 8, 2007

SYDNEY, Australia, March 7 — Wu Hsiu-mei said she was 23 and working as a maid in a hotel in 1940 when her Taiwanese boss handed her over to Japanese officers. She and some 15 other women were sent to Guangdong Province in southern China to become sex slaves.

Among the victims of Japanese sexual slavery addressing a conference in Sydney were, top, from left, Wu Hsiu-mei of Taiwan; Jan Ruff O’Herne, an Australian formerly from Java; and bottom, Gil Won-ok, a South Korean.
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Tony Sernack for The New York Times


Demonstrators near Parliament in Tokyo with placards denouncing remarks last week by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, denying the role of the country’s military in coercing the women into their plight.
Issei Kato/Reuters

Close allies are urging Mr. Abe to ease the government’s 1993 admission of wartime sexual slavery.

Inside a hotel there was a so-called comfort station, managed by a Taiwanese but serving only the Japanese military, Ms. Wu said. Forced to have sex with more than 20 Japanese a day for almost a year, she said, she had multiple abortions and became sterile.

The long festering issue of Japan’s war-era sex slaves gained new prominence last week when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied the military’s role in coercing the women into servitude. The denial by Mr. Abe, Japan’s first prime minister born after the war, drew official protests from China, Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines, some of the countries from which the sex slaves were taken.

The furor highlighted yet again Japan’s unresolved history in a region where it has been ceding influence to China. The controversy has also drawn in the United States, which has strongly resisted entering the history disputes that have roiled East Asia in recent years.

Ms. Wu told her story on Wednesday outside the Japanese Consulate here, where she and two others who had been sex slaves, known euphemistically as comfort women, were protesting Tokyo’s refusal to admit responsibility for the abuse that historians say they and as many as 200,000 other women suffered.

All three — Ms. Wu, who is now 90; a 78-year-old South Korean from Seoul; and an 84-year-old Dutch-Australian from Adelaide — were participating in an international conference for Japan’s former sex slaves here. Now, just days after Mr. Abe’s remarks, the three were united in their fury.

“I was taken away by force by Japanese officers, and a Japanese military doctor forced me to undress to examine me before I was taken away,” said Ms. Wu, who landed here in Sydney on Tuesday night after a daylong flight from Taipei. “How can Abe lie to the world like that?”

Mr. Abe, a nationalist who had built his career partly on playing down Japan’s wartime past, made his comments in response to a confluence of events, beginning with the Democratic victory in the American Congressional elections last fall. That gave impetus to a proposed nonbinding resolution in the House that would call on Japan to unequivocally acknowledge and apologize for its brutal mistreatment of the women.

Even as Mr. Abe’s closest allies pressed him to soften a 1993 government statement that acknowledged the military’s role in forcing the women into sexual slavery, three former victims testified in Congress last month.

On Monday, Mr. Abe said he would preserve the 1993 statement but denied its central admission of the military’s role, saying there had been no “coercion, like the authorities breaking into houses and kidnapping” women.

He said private dealers had coerced the women, adding that the House resolution was “not based on objective facts” and that Japan would not apologize even if it was passed.

The resolution calls for Japan to “formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery.”

“Prime Minister Abe is in effect saying that the women are lying,” Representative Mike Honda, the California Democrat who is spearheading the legislation, said in a telephone interview. “I find it hard to believe that he is correct given the evidence uncovered by Japanese historians and the testimony of the comfort women.”

Japanese historians, using the diaries and testimony of military officials as well as official documents from the United States and other countries, have been able to show that the military was directly or indirectly involved in coercing, deceiving, luring and sometimes kidnapping young women throughout Japan’s Asian colonies and occupied territories.

They estimate that up to 200,000 women served in comfort stations that were often an intrinsic part of military operations.

Yet although Mr. Abe admitted coercion by private dealers, some of his closest allies in the governing Liberal Democratic Party have dismissed the women as prostitutes who volunteered to work in the comfort stations. They say no official Japanese government documents show the military’s role in recruiting the women.

According to historians, the military established the stations to boost morale among its troops, but also to prevent rapes of local women and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among soldiers.

Japan’s deep fear of rampaging soldiers also led it to establish brothels with Japanese prostitutes across Japan for American soldiers during the first months of the postwar occupation, a fact that complicates American involvement in the current debate.

In 1995 a private fund was set up to compensate the women, but many refused to accept any money because they saw the measure as a way for the government to avoid taking direct responsibility. Only 285 women have accepted money from the fund, which will be terminated at the end of this month.

The most direct testimony of the military’s role has come from the women themselves.

“An apology is the most important thing we want — an apology that comes from the government, not only a personal one — because this would give us back our dignity,” said Jan Ruff O’Herne, 84, who testified to a Congressional panel last month.

Ms. Ruff was living with her family in Java, in what was then the Dutch East Indies, when Japan invaded in 1942. She spent the first two years in a prison camp, she said, but Japanese officers arrived one day in 1944. They forced single girls and women to line up and eventually picked 10 of them, including Ms. Ruff, who was 21.

“On the first night, it was a high-ranking officer,” Ms. Ruff said. “It was so well organized. A military doctor came to our house regularly to examine us against venereal diseases, and I tell you, before I was examined the doctor raped me first. That’s how well organized it was.”

In Japan’s colonies, historians say, the military worked closely with, or sometimes completely relied on, local people to obtain women.

In Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea, Gil Won-ok said, she lined up outside a Japanese military base to look for work in her early teens. A Korean man, she said, approached her with the promise of factory work, but she eventually found herself in a comfort station in northeast China.

After she caught syphilis and developed tumors, Ms. Gil said, a Japanese military doctor removed her uterus.

“I’ve felt dead inside since I was 15,” said Ms. Gil, who was 16 when the war ended.

Like many comfort women, Ms. Gil was unable to bear children and never married, though she did adopt a son. She now lives in a home with three other former comfort women in Seoul.

Ms. Wu married twice, each time hiding her background. Somehow the husbands found out, and the marriages ended unhappily. Her adopted daughter is now angry with Ms. Wu for having spoken in public about her past, she said.

As for Ms. Ruff, she returned to the prison camp in Java after her release from the comfort station. Her parents swore her to silence. A Roman Catholic priest told Ms. Ruff, who had thought of becoming a nun: “My dear child, under these circumstances it is wise that you do not become a nun.”

It was at the camp that she met her future husband, Tom Ruff, one of the British soldiers who had been deployed to guard the camp after Japan’s defeat. She told him her story once before they were married — long before they had two daughters and migrated to Australia.

“But I needed to talk about it,” Ms. Ruff said, sitting at the kitchen table in her daughter Carol’s home here. “I could never talk to my husband about it. I loved Tom and I wanted to marry and I wanted a house. I wanted a family, I wanted children, but I didn’t want sex. He had to be very patient with me. He was a good husband. But because we couldn’t talk about it, it made it all so hard.”

“You could talk to Dad about it,” said her daughter Carol, 55.

“No, this is what I keep saying,” Ms. Ruff said. “I just told him the story once. It was never talked about again. For that generation the story was too big. My mum couldn’t cope with it. My dad couldn’t cope with it. Tom couldn’t cope with it. They just shut it up. But nowadays you’ll get counseling immediately.”

“It’s a wonderful thing,” Carol said.

“You don’t know how hard it was to carry this enormous burden inside you, that you would like to scream out to the world and yet you cannot,” Ms. Ruff said. “But I remember telling Carol, ‘One day I’m going to tell my story, and people will be interested.’

International Herald Tribune
Letter from China: In Asia, the past divides and alienates
By Howard W. French
Thursday, March 8, 2007

SHANGHAI: Imagine a world where Germany denied the Holocaust, the United States denied the slaughter of Native Americans and Europe denied organizing its immensely profitable and centuries-long trans-Atlantic trade in African slaves.

Why would they bother? Presumably because they thought cleaning up these dark blots on their past would boost their self-esteem, enhance patriotism and raise their stock in the world.

Close your eyes, spin on your toes three times and reopen them to behold a world where precisely this sort of thing goes on: today's East Asia.

In many respects, this region has been a guiding light for the rest of the world in the past three decades or so, building strong global economies, providing near-universal education for its people and lifting huge numbers of citizens out of poverty.

As we were reminded in the past week, however, a more honest and sophisticated attitude toward history, however, has not been one of the bright spots.

For there was Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, insisting "there is no evidence to prove there was coercion" of the 200,000 or so Asian women who historians say were pressed into sexual servitude for Japan's imperial army.

Trying to explain how this might be, members of Abe's governing Liberal Democratic Party made what they thought was a helpful suggestion. "Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs and set prices," said Nariaki Nakayama, leader of a group of 120 Japanese lawmakers who want to rescind a 1993 official declaration acknowledging the imperial army's exploitation of what are euphemistically called "comfort women."

"To say that women were forced by the Japanese military into service is off the mark," Nakayama continued. "The issue must be reconsidered, based on truth, for the sake of Japanese honor."

Honor and history, as we can see, make poor bedfellows, with the typical result that both end up suffering.

The comfort women comments emanating from the Japanese political class brought a rare rebuke from the country's closest ally, the United States, in the form of a statement by John Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, who during a visit to Tokyo said "the forced mobilization of comfort women is the most deplorable act of the war."

Even North Korea managed to hitch a ride on the high road on this issue. Korean women constituted perhaps the largest group of wartime sex slaves, and Japanese obfuscations are particularly resented on the Korean Peninsula. A North Korean group that calls itself the Measure Committee for Demanding Compensation to "Comfort Women" denounced Abe as "the grandson of a Class A war criminal," which in fact he is, and said that as such, Abe is "obliged to more straightforwardly and sincerely reflect on the past crimes of Japan than anyone else, and settle them."

The response of the Chinese government, to its credit, has been carefully measured throughout this flap. China and Japan have been enjoying a tentative détente under Abe, following the bitterness of the Koizumi years, when the former Japanese prime minister made regular pilgrimages to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where Class A war criminals are honored, along with the souls of all of the other fallen soldiers from Japan's modern wars.

"History, in my view, is a strong progressive force," China's foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, said at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday. "It should not become a burden to the progression of peace."

Unfortunately, that is precisely what it has been doing in this part of the world, where the wounds and fissures of the World War II and of the Cold War have been much slower to heal than they have been in the West.

The reasons for this are, of course, complex. Korea remains divided in two. China remains authoritarian, still ruled by a Leninist party, even as it becomes increasingly capitalist. And Japan, having failed to integrate Asia by force of arms, has remained largely alienated from its own continent, clinging out of misplaced pride to a distorted and self-defeating picture of the past.

People everywhere want to feel good about themselves, and for many countries an accretion of national myths, often laid down over centuries, helps make this possible. East Asia's two big powers, Japan and China, share more than either would care to acknowledge in this regard, taking this process one big step further, through the promotion of what each calls "patriotic education."

Abe arrived in power after a lengthy association with this current of nationalist politics. Though they would never admit it, what he and his allies have been striving for is something that has long existed in China, an airbrushed version of history that leaves little room for anything cruel or embarrassing.

Japan's nationalists long for a youth that is proud and patriotic. China already has one, and this has been achieved, in part, by carefully tailoring education, filling young people's heads with unrealistic and unreliable information about their country's past — so much so that it is almost impossible to resist a snicker whenever Chinese leaders lecture the Japanese about respecting "correct history."

Young Chinese tend to know next to nothing about their country's own conquests, or even about atrocities committed in living memory by their own government. What they are taught is what Japan's nationalists seek to teach: their own essential goodness.

The reason this all matters, though, has nothing to do with what might be called the tsk-tsk factor, and everything to do with the real world we live in. Limiting one's history to what is emotionally or ideologically satisfying is to limit a nation to the most parochial of destinies. And when countries with deeply intertwined pasts persist in doing this, new collisions can never be far off.

Tomorrow: Roger Cohen on the brief Swiss invasion of Liechtenstein.

Japan widest gender gap for top female executives
Thu Mar 8, 2007 12:01 AM GMT
By Sylvia Westall

LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - Japan lags behind all countries in addressing the gender gap for top level executives, according to a global survey which found that the rest of Asia has more women in senior management roles than Europe.

The report from consulting firm Grant Thornton International released on Thursday on time for International Women's Day found that 38 percent of companies worldwide have no women in senior management, a figure unchanged since 2004.

"It is disappointing that the participation of women in senior business management has not increased more dramatically over the last three years," said April Mackenzie, a director at Grant Thornton International.

"It is however encouraging to see some of the Asian economies leading the way," she added.

Nearly 70 percent of businesses in Asian countries boast high ranking women, while just over half of European businesses have women in top roles.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, came in last place with just a quarter of businesses reporting women in senior positions.

The Philippines has made the best progress, with 97 percent of businesses reporting women in senior roles.

The survey looked at responses from 7,200 privately held businesses in 32 countries, representing 81 percent of global GDP.

Four out of five of the countries with the lowest figures were in Europe: 27-42 percent of businesses in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and Italy have senior positions filled by women.

Top-ranking Philippines has been boosted by women in high profile positions, such as president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Other Asian countries which fared well include mainland China, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand. Over 80 percent of businesses in these countries say they have women in senior jobs.

In countries which are failing to address the gender gap at management level, business and public role models could hold the key to change, Mackenzie said.

She pointed out the success of German chancellor Angela Merkel, Indra Nooyi, the new CEO of PepsiCo Inc and Anne Lauvergeon, head of French nuclear group Areva.

The Hankyoreh 2007/03/08
Conservative press backs Abe’s denial of sex slavery
Meanwhile, NY Times slams Japanese government’s ‘contortion of truth’

Amid the controversy surrounding Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s denial that the Japanese military forced foreign women into sexual slavery during World War II, Japan’s conservative newspapers such as the Yomiuri Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun have supported Abe’s stance as of March 7.

In connection with a nonbinding resolution introduced early February to the U.S. House of Representatives that would urge Tokyo to apologize for the so-called comfort women issue, the Yomiuri Shimbun claimed that there was no documentary evidence found by the Japanese government to prove the Japanese military systematically searched for potential comfort women. Regarding a 1993 statement by then chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono, containing an official apology and acknowledging the involvement of Japanese military authorities in the establishment of "comfort stations," the newspaper said that it was natural for lawmakers from Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to demand a correction of the Kono statement. The Sankei Shimbun agreed, saying, "To recover the honor of Japan, what is needed is the courage to truthfully talk about the matter of the comfort women with time and patience."

A New York Times editorial on March 6, however, slammed the Japanese government, saying that "Japan is only dishonored by such efforts to contort the truth." In relation to remarks by Abe that he had no intention to apologize even if U.S. lawmakers pass the resolution, the U.S. daily suggested that the Japanese government is now trying to reduce the crime to which it once admitted. The Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun also urged Abe to watch his words and not make remarks which could cause unnecessary misunderstanding.

According to the Mainichi Shimbun on March 7, conservatives from the LDP cancelled a plan to demand Abe to "correct" the Kono statement. The newspaper reported that Abe’s aides persuaded these lawmakers to abandon their efforts, citing the potential negative political effects of such a campaign.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

The Los Angeles Times
EDITORIAL
Paging the emperor
As Japan struggles to come to grips with wartime atrocities, its monach could lead the way.
March 7, 2007

PRIME MINISTER Shinzo Abe's attempt to finesse the Japanese government's role in forcing about 200,000 Asian women to work as sex slaves during World War II is worse than unfortunate. It is counterproductive — and the best person to repair the damage is Emperor Akihito himself.

Abe took office trying to improve relations with China and South Korea, but he has now torpedoed them by pandering to the Japanese right wing's most disgusting tendencies toward historical revisionism. With Asia in an uproar, Abe insisted there was no backtracking on the nation's remorse. No one will be mollified. The incident sets back regional peace and security — not to mention the national interests of the United States, which lie in fostering far closer Asian cooperation to deal with issues such as North Korean nuclear disarmament.

The insistence by Japan's extreme nationalists that their country has "apologized enough" for its wartime atrocities, while its politicians and ersatz historians regularly attempt to downplay or simply falsify historical fact, is supremely self-defeating. Moreover, it plays into the insatiable appetite of some Chinese and South Korean leaders to exploit wartime grievances for their own political purposes. Matters have been made worse inside Japan by intimidation against politicians and others who have dared to speak out against official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial to the nation's war dead, including several war criminals.

Japan is a peace-loving democracy, and its heightened self-assurance on the global stage is a welcome development — at least when its historical obstinacy doesn't get in the way. The awful truth is that nearly 62 years after the end of World War II, true amends have not been made with South Korea and China. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's failure to discipline its World War II- atrocity minimizers has damaged Japan's international reputation by undermining the 1995 apology of (Socialist) Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. And because it erodes Tokyo's ability to be an effective partner in Asia, Japan's reluctance to fully acknowledge its wartime behavior has hampered the potential of the U.S.-Japanese alliance.

The person who could do the most to reconcile the people of Japan and their neighbors with the past is Akihito, the son of wartime emperor Hirohito. He is also the one person who could lift this issue above the political fray. In 1992 in Beijing, he spoke eloquently about his nation's tainted past. "There was an unfortunate period during which our country inflicted severe suffering upon the Chinese people," he said. "This is a deep sorrow to me. When the war ended, our people, in deep self-reproach that this kind of war should never occur again, firmly resolved to tread the road of peace."

The emperor could now go one step further and offer a more forceful apology for all crimes committed in his family's name. Such a gesture would be far more definitive and meaningful than any statement issued by a Japanese politician. It's time for both Japan and its neighbors to move on.