Since the Myanmar coup last February, Japan has been under pressure to cut its links with the military regime. However, far more lies under the surface of this long-running bilateral relationship than many people perceive, making policy decisions quite complex.
During the occupation of China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific by the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy, many young women and girls became victims of rape and forced prostitution. New evidence proves that American young women were among the thousands of victims.
Sections of the Hiroshima Army Clothing Depot (ACD), some of the few remaining buildings that bear the marks of the August 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city, are scheduled to be torn down despite the opposition of concerned citizens’ groups.
The Shingetsu News Agency has been keeping a running log of the major developments in Japanese politics since January 2012. The following is our contemporary account of the entire year 2012.
In 1993, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono made the most full-throated admission and apology acknowledging that Japan had coerced women across Asia into being sex slaves—euphemistically referred to as “Comfort Women”—for the Japanese military during the Pacific War. More recently, however, conservative politicians such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura have engaged in a campaign that is less about carving out a path toward reconciliation than to overwrite memories of an unsavory past.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) advised the government of Japan to take a more active stance towards the Comfort Women matter. The UN report was published on August 30, and it called for a “lasting solution” based on “a victim-centered approach.”
A basic primer on the issues surrounding the controversial Article Nine of the Japanese Constitution.
The Abe Cabinet itself is now openly endorsing and defending the Imperial Rescript on Education, in spite of the fact that both houses of the Diet denounced the document in June 1948 as a handmaiden to wartime Japanese militarism.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics are supposed to be a partnership between the national government and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and Governor Yoichi Masuzoe is clearly determined that his voice will be heard. When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suddenly reversed course on July 17 and decided to take the national stadium construction plans “back to zero,” he clearly didn’t make much of an effort to communicate or coordinate with the Tokyo governor.
The history of Japanese war crimes committed during the Pacific War, and who should take responsibility for them, is a very involved one. It took numerous expert historians and years of research to come to the conclusion that Japan was guilty of abducting Korean and Chinese women to use them as prostitutes for the Japanese Imperial Army: the so-called comfort women issue.
