Japan and the war: Abe’s demons

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Unable to forget

JAPAN’S imperious newspapers rarely issue apologies; two in six months is unheard of. In August, the liberal Asahi Shimbun admitted running stories based on discredited testimony by a former Japanese soldier who said he had corralled Korean women into wartime military brothels. Last week, the Asahi’s conservative archrival, Yomiuri Shimbun, said sorry to its 10m readers for using the term “sex slaves” in many articles about so-called comfort women since 1992. Such language was “inappropriate”, its editors said. This will inflame the issue.

The apology reflects an ideological war that has been waged for over two decades. Conservatives in Japan have fought to reverse an admission by a previous government of military involvement in coercing Asian women into sexual slavery during the second world war. They say the women were willing prostitutes who served the troops. Critics accuse Japan of whitewashing the past.

Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, is deeply entangled in this controversy. Several in his cabinet deny war crimes and say Japan has been bullied into expressions of guilt and remorse. Mr Abe is unhappy that events from 70 years ago dominate Japan’s diplomatic relations with South Korea (at a G20 meeting in Australia last month, Mr Abe and South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, spent 40 minutes talking about how to resolve their differences over the wartime women). He blames the Asahi for poisoning ties with Japan’s closest neighbour and besmirching Japan’s image abroad. Japan must regain its honour, he says. In an interview with The Economist, he said his heart ached thinking about the women. But he said previous governments had also taken his view that there was no proof of coercion.

Historians disagree. They say women were treated as the spoils of war throughout Japanese wartime territories. Some were driven into prostitution by poverty. Others were enticed with promises of legitimate work or marched into “comfort stations” at gunpoint. Revisionists who describe them all as volunteers are “completely wrong”, says Haruki Wada, a former director of Japan’s official compensation fund for the women.

The Yomiuri’sretraction, which follows a similar move by NHK, a public-service broadcaster, is a victory for revisionists—and a pre-emptive strike. Since the Asahi retraction, the Yomiuri has run many articles berating its rival. The apology is a way of protecting the newspaper from counter-attack, while thumbing its nose at its ideological opponents.

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