The Truth of the “Comfort Women”
Intelligence Warfare--Information laundering by anti-Japanese fascists-By Nishimura Kohyu, journalist/critic
Since the end of 2012, the new-born second Abe Administration has been mostdespicably attacked by a part of the European and U.S. media. First all, on December 27,
right after the Prime Minister’s inauguration, The New York Times online put an article
by its Tokyo Branch chief, Martin Fackler, entitled “Japan Hints It May Revise an
Apology on Sex Slaves.” This article was also put on The New York Times of December
28. It was filled with extremely indiscreet argument and ridiculous view worthy of no
attention from the history study field in Japan.
On top of that, as a finishing touch, The New York Times of January 1, 2013 put an
opinion “Japan Can Champion Women’s Rights” by Mary M. McCarthy, a scholar who isfamous for unscholarly reasoning technique, quoting a testimony by a Dutch woman
who had witnessed at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing, and thus making up awhole picture of the comfort women issue out of one very special example. Further, The

New York Times online of January 3, and The New York Times of January 4 put anutterly unintelligent editorial entitled “Another Attempt to Deny Japanese History,”
which discriminatively discussed the Japanese people and abused Prime Minster Abe ina most impolite language.
Also, The Washington Post of January 26 put an opinion entitled “Japan Must FaceIts History” by Jennifer Lind, a “Japan specialist” professor, whose historical analysis isvery rough. The editorial also criticized the reconsideration of the Kohno Statement. As
to what lies behind these two newspapers’ anti-Japanese fascist attitudes of completely
ignoring the fruitful results of the history study and ruthlessly violating the Japanesehuman rights, I would like to argue on another occasion. But now, I must say that it
would do no good and even be critical for the United States to accuse the task of
reexamining the past history for being ‘revisionism’ and to stop thinking any further.
In the first place, the very act of trying to tie the concept of sex slavery with theformer Japanese Army is revisionism itself, the world of the movie Matrix and virtual
reality. Many Japanese may begin to suspect that Europeans and Americans willfully
intend to eternally enslave Japan in the world of such virtual reality and write off theirown acts of invasion into Asia and violation of human rights. This will only do much
harm in terms of the Japan-U.S. relationship.
The term of “ the Greater East Asia War” was banned by the Allied Nations General

1

Headquarters after Japan’s defeat in the War, and instead, the term “the Pacific War”
was imposed on the Japanese people to use. It goes without saying that usurping words
of a state is the first stage of invasion. The Japanese had lost their words and their
history, and the current events have become virtual reality. It is the “anti-Japanesesystem” that has put the Japanese people into such predicament.
After the U.S. occupation of Japan was over, freedom of speech was back and Japanwas free from censorship. And yet, the moment the Japanese had buried the term “theGreater East Asia War” by self-imposed censorship, that disgusting system started. Just
like Thomas, the leading character in the movie Matrix, which was made by the
Wachowski Brothers, the Japanese people have been buried under the “anti-Japanese
structure,” without ever realizing that the world involving them eternally in whirlpoolsof accusation is the “Matrix” virtual reality.
This is not toying with literary metaphors for fun. Nor, it is not mere comparison. In
fact, look at what happened in December 2011 in Korea, concerning the Japanesemilitary comfort women issue. The bronze statue representing a comfort woman was
installed in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul at a little past ten on the morning ofDecember 14. This bronze statue was formed out of willful idea far from the actual
prostitutes working in a theater of war. It is the military comfort women exactly in theworld of Matrix. And this Matrix world has become the topical articles of The New YorkTimes and The Washington Post. This is exactly what’s going on under the current
situation.

Why was the “comfort women” issue presented in America?
“In Japan, which once waged a most atrocious war of aggression in Asia, ghost offormer Imperialists are coming to life again. The crime committed by the militarist
Japan, in which two-hundred thousand women were cruelly ill-treated as sex slaves,
was to be denied intentionally by the Abe Administration…”
This kind of thinking probably explains everything concerning the comfort womenissue which had arisen out of the blue in 2007, mainly in the United States, butelsewhere as well. It may seem totally absurd and utterly improbable to the Japanese,but such a plot was actually written and directed by someone. Serious and good-natured
Japanese were caught quite unguarded and unprepared--at a loss as to how to
respond—and they kept their heads down and merely prayed that the rough storm
passes by in due time. The Japanese could do nothing but quietly endure, hoping that
repeated words of apology would soon abate the harsh attack.
To Japanese who are somewhat interested in history and politics, the main issue of2the “comfort women” is whether or not the “comfort women” were fact forced, ahistorical argument that took place in the past—10 years ago—and involved the major
media; and the debate is already over, too absurd to address anew. Why, then, is it still acurrent political and diplomatic issue? Moreover, this time, the issue appeared not justamong specifically interested Asian countries (South Korea, North Korea and China),
but it suddenly popped up in America.
Let me state the conclusion first. The important point is that essentially this isneither a historical issue nor a matter of differing views of history. Of course, at thefoundation is the issue of respective views of history, but the anti-Japanese accusations
are widely and loudly made at an angle that is totally different and far from historicalstudies and facts. That’s the point. We must not overlook the fact that in the JapaneseDiet, a bill concerning the comfort women is submitted almost every year since 2001 asa kind of political exercise. Examples of false accusations abound: the testimony that
comfort women were forcibly abducted by the Japanese Army described in My War
Crime, written by Yoshida Seiji, in which the content turned out to be completely fake(1983), an exclusive article written by reporter Uemura Takashi of The Asahi
Newspaper about the testimony made by a comfort woman dated August 11, 1991 and a
propaganda piece dated January 11, 1992, which was fabricated in cooperation withProfessor Yoshimi Yoshiaki of Chuo University, claiming that the Japanese Army was
involved in the forced abduction of comfort women. Though all these lies have been
exposed to the light of day, bills concerning the compensation for comfort women are
repeatedly submitted in the Japanese Diet. This is the most worrisome point. I will
discuss the domestic comfort women-related bills that were submitted in Japan later,which are of parallel structure with the resolution that accuses Japan submitted byRepresentative Mike Honda (hereafter referred to as the “Honda Resolution”).
The comfort women issue presented then would never have been solved, even if it
had been addressed as a historical argument and not as an issue of differing views ofhistory. First, I would like to present the fact that two points of completely different
nature are intricately intertwined.
Dots and lines that connect Beijing and Washington, D.C.
First of all, it should be mentioned that behind the “Honda Resolution” that was
submitted in the U.S. House of Representatives was a conspiracy hatched by ananti-Japanese global network. Before Representative Mike Honda submitted the bill, asimilar bill was proposed the previous year by Representative Lane Evans, an advocate
of human rights and other causes. The bill was submitted several times beforehand and3every time it was turned down. Mr. Evans had been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease
and eventually retired from Congress at the end of his term (2007). An episode has been
also revealed that Mr. Evans had been involved in ‘comradely love’ with Ok Cha Soh,
the Chair of the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues, Inc., organized by agroup of South Koreans living in the United States.
On the other hand, Mr. Honda is a third-generation Japanese American and according
to his biography, as a child he was in an American detention camp during the Greater
East Asia War, though there is no evidence to confirm this. However, whether Mr.
Honda is actually a third-generation Japanese American or he just pretends to be so isbeside the point. Far more important is that he was elected to the House ofRepresentatives from an electoral district where Chinese Americans are an extremely
dominant group.
The fact has been shown to the world by reporter Komori Yoshihisa, a Washington
D.C. special editor of The Sankei Newspaper, that donations from groups of Chinesemerchants to Representative Honda’s political fund amount to an overwhelmingly hugesum.
Donors to Mr. Honda include Chairman Ivy Lee of the Global Alliance for
Preserving the History of World War II in Asia a Chinese-merchant body, which is said
to have commanded the anti-Japanese riots in Shanghai and Beijing in 2005; Mr.
Frederic Hon, advisor to the Kuangtung Province Committee of the People’s Politicaland Commercial Cooperation Congress; Mr. Zhuhua Chou, secretary general of theMemorial Society for Asian Pacific World War II Atrocities, which impeaches Japan
with committing ’atrocities’; Mr. Victor Yung, an officer of the “American Museum of
the Chinese Holocaust,” which plans to build a Nanking Massacre Memorial Museum
in the United States. Representative Honda received huge donations from theseanti-Japanese activists and organizations.
Among them, the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia
is connected to anti-Japanese South Korean American bodies as well as the North
Korean intelligence organization. The “Global Alliance” also assisted in funding the
production of the anti-Japanese film Nanking, based on Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking
and produced by AOL Vice-President Ted Leonsis. Without doubt, such anti-Japaneseorganizations are in close cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party. So, behindthe Honda Resolution is the Chinese Communist Party.
The true nature of the “Honda Resolution” is a conspiracy by an anti-Japanese global
network, submitted as a part of psychological warfare, solely intended to degrade andweaken Japan. So, it is self-evident that these anti-Japan groups had nothing to do with4

historical facts in the first place. There lies an undercurrent of anti-Japanese fascism
targeting Japan by specific Asian countries, namely, China at the center and South andNorth Korea.
Therefore, though it is quite straightforward to deal directly with the “Honda
Resolution” through debating the historical facts on the basis of a correct view of history,
if we fail to analyze the conspiratorial aspect and to be equipped with enoughinformation against the ‘psychological war’, we will end up suffering the same defeat as
we did seventy years ago.
At the Tokyo Trials, What War Means—Terror of the Japanese Army in China,
written by Harold Timperley in 1938, was held up as decisive proof of the “Nanking
Massacre”, but the fact is that the book was a part of the global propaganda scheme
plotted by the International Propaganda Office of the Chinese Nationalist Party. The
global propaganda effort at that time engulfed United States and Great Britain, whichsignificantly influenced American and British thinking in terms of the relationshipbetween Japan and China. We Japanese should truly learn from this lesson of history.
Terrifying scheme of information laundering
It is absolutely necessary to examine how the informational war is actually carriedout. Why did the entire U.S. media hysterically criticize then-Prime Minister Abe (sinceAbe is currently Prime Minister, hereafter “then” will be omitted) who said that hewould re-examine the “Kohno Statement”?
On March 1, 2007 Prime Minister Abe, asked by a group of reporters how heintended to deal with the “Honda Resolution,” emphasized that there was no clear
evidence that proved that the Japanese Army was involved in the forced abduction of
women and that in that regard the Kohno Statement was defective. “There was no
testimony or evidence to prove a forcible act. Therefore, we should rethink the matterover on a different premise that the definition of forced abduction be changed
fundamentally.”
That was all Abe said in responding to a question asked by reporters surrounding thePrime Minister during an informal interview, but the Prime Minister’s Office could notconfirm the content. I will detail the situation later, but in this incident alone, Japan’s
inferiority in the handling of information is apparent. In October 2006, after having
clearly stated that he would follow the Kohno Statement during a meeting of the Houseof Representatives’ Budget Committee, Prime Minister Abe explained that ‘forced’ in anarrow sense means that ‘they broke into the person’s house and forcibly took the
person away,’ and in a broad sense ‘the person was not willing to go, but ended up

5going with them somehow.’ Abe responded that firm proof has yet to be produced thatshows that forced abduction in the narrow sense actually happened.
This comment by Abe is quite adequate, based on historical fact, and on March 1 of
the following year, in 2007, he made nearly the same comment. Consequently, theJapanese media, except the Jiji Press and the Sankei Shimbun, did not treat it as big
news.
The Sankei Shimbun reported what Abe actually said in full detail on March 2, 2007,
with the headline “Prime Minister Hints at Reconsidering the Kohno Statement”. The
Jiji Press distributed an article, dated March 1, at 22:30:“<Comfort Women, No Evidence of Forced Abduction. Prime Minister does not
Deny His Intention to Reconsider the Kohno Statement>
Prime Minister Abe, on the evening of March 1, regarding the Kohno Statementof 1993 in which Kohno apologizes about the comfort women issue, said, “Fact isthat we have found no evidence to prove forcibility, in the sense as defined, in thefirst place.” This showed his view that there is no evidence to prove that theformer Japanese Army forcibly collected comfort women and controlled them.
Also, as to whether it is necessary to reexamine the Statement, he said, “On thepremise that the definition of ‘forced’ has drastically changed, we need to think
about the issue,” and he did not deny the possibility of reconsideration. Prime
Minister responded to questions of reporters. [omitted thereafter]”
All at once the U.S. media snapped up this statement, as a hungry goby does after
bait. This situation was reported by the Kyodo News Agency two days later on March 3.
“<Kohno Statement Ready for Reconsideration Reported by U.S. Paper
Regarding the P.M.’s Statement>
12:23 on March 3, 2007[The Kyodo News Agency][Washington D.C., March 2, Kyodo]—The New York Times of March 2 reported thatPrime Minister Abe Shinzo said that there was no evidence of forcibility by theformer Japanese Army in the comfort women issue. The Prime Minister was
prepared to reconsider the Kohno Statement of 1993, which admits theinvolvement of the former Japanese Army in the matter, and he showed his
intention to do so more clearly than ever before.
“The Washington Post, dated March 2, also printed an AP (Associated Press)
dispatch from Tokyo. Prime Minister Abe’s statement was inconsistent with the6Japanese Government’s view up to then and would surely incur wrath from China
and South Korea.”
What happened during the three days?
During the three days between March 1 and March 3, some trick was set up in thecircuit that circulates media information and there was a big change on the front interms of the information war. The result was an adverse effect—a negative image
imposed on Prime Minister Abe and Japan.
First of all, The New York Times (hereafter NY Times) ran an article with the vulgar
and willful headline, “Abe Rejects Japan’s Files on War Sex,” by Norimitsu Onishi,
whom I call an ‘anti-Japanese agitatorsprinkler’. The headline is a product of
information manipulation and Onishi’s article is as horrible as can be:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied Thursday that Japan’s military had forced
foreign women into sexual slavery during World War II, contradicting the Japanese
government’s longtime official position. Mr. Abe’s statement was the clearest so farthat the government was preparing to reject a 1993 government statement that
acknowledged the military’s role in setting up brothels and forcing, either directly or
indirectly, women into sexual slavery. That declaration also offered an apology to thewomen, euphemistically called “comfort women.” “There is no evidence to prove
there was coercion, nothing to support it,” Mr. Abe told reporters. “So, in respect tothis declaration, you have to keep in mind that things have changed greatly.”…
[italics added by Nishimura]

What Prime Minister Abe said during the informal interview is not at all an official
governmental statement, but Onishi here intentionally made it look like an official one
so that fierce anti-Japanese criticism would spring up--and he further writes that eventhe 1993 Kohno Statement was also a “government statement”. The article is full ofastounding fabrications of malicious intent. “Oh, no! Not Onishi again,” some people
may think and that is quite all right. But it does not stop there, and with more bias added,
the ill intention spread all over the world. To make the matter worse, this time the AP in
Tokyo performed as enthusiastically as Onishi in damaging Japan.
Fabricated article by Tabuchi Hiroko (presently of the NY Times)
The Associated Press distributed an article with the headline “Japan’s Abe: No Proof
7

of WWII Sex Slaves” at 23:37 on March 1. The article was credited by a Japanese
reporter named Hiroko Tabuchi. The article, starting with an interview of a person from
CHUKIREN (the Association of Returnees from China), is filled with errors and doubts.

Yasuji Kaneko, 87, still remembers the screams of the countless women he raped in
China as a soldier in the Japanese imperial army in World War II. Some were
teenagers from Korea serving as sex slaves in military-run brothels. Others were
women in villages he and his comrades pillaged in eastern China. “They cried out,
but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died,” Kaneko said in aninterview with The Associated Press at his Tokyo home. “We were the emperor'ssoldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without
reluctance.” [Italics added by Nishimura]

CHUKIREN is composed of people who were captured on the Chinese front andwere later sent to a concentration camp in Fushun, in which P.O.W.s were thoroughly
brainwashed by the Chinese Communist Party, and then returned to Japan to act as anagitprop unit in order to turn Japan Red. Their testimonies are highly dubious in the firstplace and the witnesses’ statements about ‘military-run brothels’ are completely
groundless. It is also highly probable that Tabuchi Hiroko herself made up the story.
Altogether, the content of the interview cannot be true.
Whenever I hear this kind of story, like the Nanking case, for instance, I cannot help
but think that if a perpetrator is telling the truth, he should be immediately executed as awar criminal. For the honor of the Japanese Army, whose rules and regulations werevery strict, and above all, for the sake of many innocent (Class B and C) war criminals
who were executed on account of false charges, they should voluntarily stand before the
VAWW-NET (Violence Against Women in War-Network Japan) “Women’s
International War Crimes Tribunal”. Kaneko Yasuji should have apologized to the entire
Japanese nation and to victims by committing suicide in front of the Imperial Palace.
Let’s go back to the maliciously written article by Tabuchi Hiroko. She writes asfollows:
Historians say some 200,000 women—mostly from Korea and China—servedin the Japanese military brothels throughout Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. Many
victims say they were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by Japanese
troops, and the top government spokesman acknowledged the wrongdoing in 1993.
8

Now some in Japan's government are questioning whether the apology wasneeded.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday [March 1] denied women were forced
into military brothels across Asia, boosting renewed efforts by right-wing
politicians to push for an official revision of the apology.
"The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion," Abe said.
Abe's remarks contradicted evidence in Japanese documents unearthed in 1992
that historians said showed military authorities had a direct role in working with
contractors to forcibly procure women for the brothels…[Italics added.]
The italicized parts were entirely and intentionally fabricated by Tabuchi Hiroko.
What is worse is that Prime Minister Abe was not correctly quoted, just like in the NY
Times article.
How is a maliciously intended article fabricated?
“There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it,” Mr. Abe
told reporters. “So, in respect to this declaration, you have to keep in mind that things
have changed greatly.” (Norimitsu Onishi/ NY Times)“The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion.” (Tabuchi Hiroko/AP)
At that time the Japanese media reported that “By the initial definition of the word
forced, it is true that there is no evidence to prove forced abduction” and that “On thepremise that the definition changed drastically we should think about the issue.”
And these two parts are completely omitted from the above two articles. Did reporters
Onishi and Tabuchi, both of whom have good command of the Japanese language, failto understand the word “definition”? Or, were their understanding of Japanese so poorthat they chose to work for foreign media outlets? No, this was a fully-intended act ofomission in order to report Prime Minister Abe’s comment in a distorted way tooverseas readers.
After all, these articles are not “reports”, but the most malicious propaganda, madeup of dubious witness claims and false information in order to intentionally distort Mr.
Abe’s comment concerning the reconsideration of the Kohno Statement and to aggravate
the image of the atrocious Japanese military.
Articles distributed by the AP are reported by the global media. Japan’s and Prime
Minister Abe’s false image were spread all over the world through the ‘wind of
malicious bias’.
In other AP articles, statesmen and historians who support Prime Minister Abe’s

9comment were referred to as ‘nationalist politicians and scholars’, while scholars who
maintain that there was forced abduction were called ‘historians.’ Clearly manifested
here are entirely ignorant prejudices and discrimination against the Japanese people.
Which side are readers of the world who are not at all familiar with the Japanesesituation ready to take, that of ‘historians’ or ‘nationalists’? If ‘historians’ are referred
to as ‘scholars with anti-Japanese views’ and ‘nationalists’ as ‘patriotic scholars ofhistory’, it is likely that current images will completely change. To reporters Onishi and
Tabuchi, their reliable ‘historian’ is Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki of Chuo University andmanipulation of information was actually carried out in multiple cases.
On top of that, Tabuchi Hiroko either did not know or forgot that the historical
document discovered by Professor Yoshimi in 1999 was China Area Army Notice
No.745: Secret, in which was actually an order to admonish bad businessmen andpanders not to forcibly abduct women. But she appeared to intentionally ignore this fact.
The true nature of this military memo is that it was meant to show the Japanesemilitary’s intention to criticize Japanese and Korean enterprisers who actuallyconducted the ignoble business of forcibly abducting comfort women, who, theanti-Japanese mob accuse, were really abducted by the Japanese military, and to prohibit
and thoroughly crackdown on such wrong business dealings that would greatly tarnish
the prestige of the Japanese military and may cause grave social problems.
Condescending attitude to write an interview without actually covering it in person
We should also pay attention to the timing of the AP dispatch. At 22:37, only sevenminutes later than the Jiji’s dispatch, an article of enormous volume was sent. It is notcertain when the interview at the beginning of the article was held, but it would be agood guess that it was a part of an article that was planned and written beforehand, asensational and appealing piece with a non-objective and self-serving interview of aunreliable witness. Prime Minister Abe’s comment was quickly inserted to theprewritten article as soon as the Jiji Press sent the article on the Prime Minister’scomment, and the effect was as a fish catches bait in a fishing pond.
An even bigger doubt comes from the fact that Prime Minister Abe’s distorted
comment of reconsidering the Kohno Statement, which was simultaneously reported byboth the NY Times and the AP, was not the same comment obtained through the informalinterview held by reporters who surrounded the Prime Minister. Neither Onishi nor
Tabuchi was there among the reporters at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence on
March 1, 2007. Reading the Jiji Press article, the Prime Minister’s comment in thearticle was secondhand, or there was someone working as a messenger, who relayed the10Prime Minister’s comment back to the two reporters, among the reporters at the Prime
Minister’s Official Residence.
In either case, such terrible ‘information laundering’ is actually taking place andwith it is a system in place to send articles worldwide around the clock, thereby
unilaterally damaging national interests that are at the very heart of Japan.
The front of the information war waged at that time was not only Japan proper, butof all places, the Prime Minister’s Official Residence.
Thus, for two months, between March and April of 2007, reports blaming Prime
Minister Abe and Japan for the comfort women issue permeated the entire world. Prime
Minister Abe said, “On the premise that the definition of ‘forced’ has drasticallychanged, we need to think about the issue,” but this part of his comment was notreported. Instead, a campaign that spread a negative image of Japan’s withdrawing its
acceptance and the apology it had once made was further promoted by the AP and the
NY Times, and the media the world over repeatedly reported Japan’s distortion of history,over and over again.
As a consequence, The Los Angeles Times published an article—insensible, stupid
and totally unintelligent—asserting that the Emperor should apologize. Additionally,major papers like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post strongly criticizedJapan in their editorials.
On March 24, The Washington Post printed an editorial with the insulting headline“Shinzo Abe’s Double Talk,” which perfectly reflected the effect of information
manipulation by Onishi and Tabuchi:… Mr. Abe has a right to complain about Pyongyang's stonewalling. What's odd -and offensive -- is his parallel campaign to roll back Japan's acceptance of
responsibility for the abduction, rape and sexual enslavement of tens of thousandsof women during World War II. Responding to a pending resolution in the U.S.
Congress calling for an official apology, Mr. Abe has twice this month issued
statements claiming there is no documentation proving that the Japanese military
participated in abducting the women. A written statement endorsed by his cabinet
last week weakened a 1993 government declaration that acknowledged Japan's
brutal treatment of the so-called comfort women…
Based on such totally incorrect knowledge of history, the U.S. decided to strongly
disapprove of the movement to reconsider the Kohno Statement on the part of Japan.
This is the true face of American liberalism and exactly what is meant by ‘double talk.’

11

The role of The Asahi Newspaper: arsonist
The most ridiculous of all was The Asahi Newspaper. The paper printed thefollowing article on March 3. The Asahi Newspaper is an arsonist, which really set the
comfort women issue on fire, doing exactly the same foolish act that a NHK reporter did,
who was arrested for reporting a fire he himself had set.
“<Asking Japan for Correct Historical View—South Korean Government on
Prime Minster Abe’s Comment>
At 19:20 on March 3, 2007
Concerning Prime Minister Abe’s comment on the comfort women, the South
Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a criticism by the Ministry’s
staff on March 3, saying that the South Korean Government expresses its grave
regret. The criticism goes on: “In spite of the repeated manifestation of Japan’s
position that it will follow the Kohno Statement, it is highly doubtful if Japan’s
self-reflection and apology are truly meant,’ and it asks Japan’s political leaders ‘tohave correct historical views.’
The influential JoongAng Ilbo, dated March 3 printed an editorial criticizing
Prime Minister Abe’s comment as a ‘random remark.’ ‘History of any kind cannot
be concealed. Being ashamed of it, the more it distorts its history, the moreshameful that nation will become,’ the editorial writes ironically.
Furthermore, the Asahi Newspaper printed a sensationalist article, filling up a lot of
space, in its morning edition of March 10. The newspaper itself was a “burning ember”
regarding the comfort women issue in 1991, and this time in particular, it became ahorrendous arsonist, pouring gasoline onto the flames that were stoked by the NY Times,
which, in turn, used the burning embers that are the Asahi Newspaper. And the purpose
was to weaken the Abe Administration.
<Prime Minister Abe’s Comment on Comfort Women Issue. No Way
Containing Influences in US>
In the United States there is no stopping of the impacts of the comfort womenissue from spreading. Major newspapers like The New York Times wrote editorials
and articles criticizing the Japanese Government and, at the seismic center, theHouse of Representatives of the US Congress, a resolution asking Japan toapologize, is gathering wide support. Given these circumstances, among those12Americans who are familiar with Japan are showing more and more concern andthey are beginning to ask the Abe Administration to take some countermeasures.
*Spreading impact
The New York Times of March 8 printed an article, headlined “Denial Reopens
Wounds of Japan’s Ex-Sex Slave,” on its front page. Prime Minister Abe‘scomment, reported in the middle of the long article, “denied the military's role incoercing the women into servitude,” incurred renewed anger among former
comfort women. The paper had just run an editorial a few days earlier on the 6th,
criticizing Abe’s comment and asking the Japanese Diet to manifest a forthrightapology and sufficient official compensation.
The Los Angeles Times published a university professor’s essay entitled ‘Japan
Can’t Dodge This Shame’ on March 6, and on the next day it ran an editorialasserting that ‘the best person to repair the damage is [the] Emperor… himself.’
The 2007 comfort women resolution, proposed in the U.S. House Committee for
Foreign Affairs offered a direct occasion to bring the comfort women dispute thistime to the surface, and supporters of the resolution are increasingly hearing Prime
Minister Abe say, ‘The fact is, there is no evidence to prove military coercion’ on
March 1.
Dr. Michael Green, former senior director of Asian affairs at the National
Security Council and special assistant to the president for national security affairs
until the end of 2005, said, ‘I barely managed to persuade some of theRepresentatives into opposing the resolution last week, but this week (after Abe’scomment) all of them turned favorable for it. The U.S. Department of State
stopped briefing on Japan’s handling of the issue this week.’*Americans versed in Japan are also worrying
Ex-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia and the Pacific Kurt
Campbell, who just returned from Japan on the March 6 said, ‘Japan watchers andsupporters in the States are disappointed and dismayed.’
He points out, ‘Though I highly appreciate that Japan issued many statements(including the Kohno Statement) in the past, the problem is there are doubts about
Japan’s attitude among China, South Korea and other countries critical to Japan,’‘If things go on like this, the support toward Japan in the States will surely
collapse,’ warns Mr. Campbell.
Dr. Green, who was in Japan at the time, pointed out, ‘It [the comfort women13

issue] has nothing to do with the issue of whether they were forcibly abducted ornot. Nobody outside of Japan is interested in this aspect. The point is those comfort
women had to bear a terrible time, and yet politicians at Nagata-Cho are totally
oblivious of this fundamental fact.’
Consequently, a new problem arose, the claim that ‘We hear no words of
sympathy and care from Japan toward the victims at all.’ In the Japan-American
relationship, this problem is riskier than the problems of ‘exported [U.S.] beef and
U.S. bases in Okinawa.’
Dr. Green mentioned the following three approaches that Japan should take inhandling the problem: (1) not to refute the U.S. House of Representatives
Resolution if it is adopted, (2) not to make any correction to the Kohno Statementand (3) to express in some way or other understanding and sympathy toward thevictims directly from the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and others…
By the way, let me add that the mantra, of two-hundred thousand comfort women, towhich reporters Onishi and Tabuchi always refer, has in fact been completely rejectedby academic studies. This number is so often cited that media in Europe and America
also recite two-hundred thousand in unison as if it were the only words that they everlearned. But I wonder if they rely solely on ‘historian’ Professor Yoshimi’s view.
Without any academic evidence, allowing the number two-hundred thousand stand asfact is the same trick used with the number three-hundred thousand, the alleged numberof victims at Nanking.
Modern-history Professor Hata Ikuhiko, in his academic paper entitled End of the
Comfort Women Issue, clearly states: the total number of comfort women was actually
twenty thousand, and 40% of them were Japanese. (Hata Ikuhiko, End of the Comfort
Women Issue, Political and Economic History Study #438, 439, 2003 February-March
Issue)In spite of that, on March 16, 2007 reporter Karl Frere of the AP reports in his
article, headlined “Japan’s Cabinet says no evidence establishing coercion of ‘comfort
women’,” that the forced abduction of two-hundred thousand proved correct byhistorians is ignored by the Japanese Government. Also, The New York Times of March
31 obstinately used a full page in the international section to print an interview ofProfessor Yoshimi Yoshiaki, who promotes the “historical basis” of “sex slaves”.
Then, a month later, on April 17, a new anti-Japanese agitator, Tabuchi Hiroko of theAP, happily reported on a press conference attended by Professor Yoshimi and others
held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo. The press conference was to show

14

that there were numerous testimonials of forced abduction among the court materials
used at the Tokyo Trials. They were in fact extremely dubious court documents
regarding Class B and C war criminals, and even if they were taken up as evidence,
what difference would it make? The trials were already held and legally they werecompletely settled by the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Or, are these people so ambitious
as to overrule the Tokyo Trials?
The same structure as seen some seventy years ago
We must go back to the original question asked at the beginning of this essay: Why
did the comfort women issue come up in the United States at this particular time? To
those who make much fuss over the comfort women, “military-run comfort women” isan eternal, original sin borne by the Japanese people and accordingly the Japanese must
accept as their destiny the hardship and burden associated with historical issues. This
partly suggests the characteristic of the anti-Japanese fascism with its unique historicalview focused on Japan’s original sin, which sees every bit of pre-war Japan as evil. But
this time, it is more complicated and entangled in civilizational and geopolitical aspects.
In the eighties, Japan overpowered the United States in an economic war, and at thattime the latter displayed anti-Japanese sentiment by crushing Japanese-madeautomobiles out of spite. Today, however, American companies, whose labor unions
support the Democratic Party, are in a predicament in which they can no longer batter
Japanese companies as they did in the eighties. During the “Lost Nineties,” after thecollapse of the bubble economy, the Japanese economy once again fell behind that of
the U.S. In the first ten years of the 21st century, the U.S. automobile industry fellbehind Japanese companies again.
Moreover, the paradoxical reality, that local, American affiliates of Japanesecompanies hire large numbers of American workers and help to boost the American
economy, greatly perplexes Americans. Logically, now that they can no longer bash
Japanese companies, the alternative is to vent their frustration on what Japan used to be
more than sixty-five years ago.
However, a bigger factor is the issue of North Korea. Japan’s policy toward North
Korea in the Six-Party Talks can be, in a way, an obstacle to the U.S. and China. For thecurrent strategic goal of America and China is to keep Japan from acquiring a nuclear
arsenal for all of eternity as well as to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
According to one theory, on the occasion of the establishment of diplomatic
relations between the U.S. and China in 1972, a secret agreement was reached between
Nixon and Mao Tse-tung. What is important is that even if that secret agreement is15

merely a rumor, at this point the two countries share the common goal of denuclearizing
Japan. However, now that efforts to denuclearize North Korea have ended up in abject
failure, both the United States and China now need a new tool to lower Japanese
resistance to ignore the issue of North Korea kidnapping Japanese citizens, in order toalleviate the strong policy Japan is now taking toward North Korea, while on the other
hand allaying fears of an inevitable nuclear-equipped Japan.
It is possible that the “Honda Resolution,” which just so happened to be proposed byMike Honda, may have been used to serve the purpose of weakening Japan’s policy
stance. The current structure is exactly the same as the one used some seventy years ago.
One simply replaces Chiang Kai-shek with Hu Jintao, Franklin D. Roosevelt with
George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The picture today was thesame picture drawn by the United States then, using China to sandwich Japan, which
eventually leading to the China Incident and the Greater East Asia War.
Also, to the United States, the view presented at the Tokyo Trials is absolutely vitaland while hoping for strengthened U.S.-Japan security cooperation, powers in the
United States are automatically working to prevent Japan from becoming truly
independent and self-reliant. The Abe Administration put its greatest emphasis onchanging the structure of the post-war regime, and not just as a top policy goal but also
as a key national strategy, and so logically, confrontation with the United States isinevitable a priori.
In the United States, exhausted through its occupation and governance of Iraq, more
and more people may have begun to entertain the notion that Japan is a threat.
Another possibility is that if America tries to cooperate with China, Japan, with its
potential, may turn out to be a stumbling block between the two countries.
However, it will certainly not lead to a separation between Japan and America, butrather, it will be a step forward in establishing a more mature bilateral relationshipbetween Japan and the U.S.A. Nevertheless, we must bear it in mind that from now on
various and repeated attempts will be made, in the form of intelligence warfare, to takeadvantage of the rickety balance that exists between Japan and America.
Return of the zombie, the Okazaki Tomiko Bill
Once again, we must now turn to the domestic situation at the time. Though, at thattime, our attention was largely captured by the United States Congress, the JapaneseDiet was in a more serious situation, where the submission of bills on comfort women,
like zombies, were revived no matter how many times they were put to rest. A bill topromote the “Resolution of Issues concerning Victims of Wartime Sexual Coercion”

16was submitted by Councilor Okazaki Tomiko and others from the Democratic Party ofJapan during the 164th regular session of the Diet in 2006. It was the seventh submission
to the Diet and the bill was submitted at almost every session—and rejected every time.
Representative Takahashi Chizuko of the Japanese Communist Party and others also
proposed a “Petition of legislation for the solution of the comfort women issue” onnumerous occasions.
Councilor Okazaki Tomiko participated in an anti-Japanese demonstration held infront of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and joined in chanting, standing before aplacard that said “Japan, No!” in February of 2002 while the Diet was in session. (Refer
to “Revival of the Zombies—Resolution on Comfort Women, WILL, May 2003 issue.)
Her action was also reported by weekly magazines and criticism against her exploded inmany blogs on the Internet. However, she has never resigned from her seat and is stilla Councilor. Ironically, the definition of “coercion” by the Japanese Army is the same as
the one used in the Resolution against Japan adopted by the U.S. House ofRepresentatives, which certainly clues us into a series of international plots.
Furthermore, the Democratic Party of Japan took up this bill as fundamental policy,
which led to the “Kan Statement” on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of theJapanese Annexation of Korea in 2010.
The “Okazaki Tomiko Bill” is as follows:
Article 1. Based on the fact that during the time of the previous war and preceding
incidents leading to it, with the participation of the former Japanese Army and Navy,systematic and continuous sexual violence was forced on women and thereby
women’s dignity and honor were tremendously impaired, this Law …to express regret
and apology for this historical fact and to take necessary measures in order to redeem
victimized women’s honor on the responsibility of this nation.
Article 2. In this Law, war-time sexual enforcement refers to the systematic andcontinuous enforcement of sexual conducts forced on women against their will withdirect or indirect participation by the Japanese Army and Navy during the time of theprevious war and preceding incidents leading to it.
(2) In this Law, war-time victims of sexual enforcement refers to women on whomdamages were inflicted by war-time enforcement of sexual violence and who wereother than those registered under the regulation of the old Registry Law (1914, Law#26).
The reason why I said that that the comfort women issue is not an issue in terms of17

historical view is quite clear here. This proposed bill stipulates that “with theparticipation of the former Japanese Army and Navy, systematic and continuous
enforcement of sexual violence was done” or that with “direct or indirect participationof the former Japanese Army and Navy sexual conducts were forced on womencollected against their will.” These are wicked and fierce words and phrases of
propaganda—too low-leveled to argue as an historical issue.
Discrimination against Japanese people seen in the Democratic Party of Japan Bill
Moreover, much to our surprise, this bill applies only to women “other than thoseregistered according to the regulations of the old Registry Law.” In other words, it only
applies to women who are not Japanese. Japanese comfort women who actually, by far,outnumbered those of other nationalities were excluded from relief measures. The bill is
nothing less than a discriminative one based on a dubious sense of human rights held by
the proposers of the bill. Frankly speaking, this is exactly racial vengeance taken out on
the Japanese by non-Japanese peoples with the undercurrent of anti-Japanese sentiment.
“Forcibility in a narrow sense” as is often mentioned applies to ‘direct participation’of Article 2, and forcibility in a broad sense to ‘indirect participation’. But Article 1
stipulates that ‘with the participation (of the Japanese Army), systematic and continuous
sexual violence was forced on women.’ Therefore, it makes no distinction between
coercion in a broad sense or in a narrow sense, and the bill, in high-tones, condemns theforced abduction by the Japanese Army regardless. We understand that the bill, a
dangerous one, was born out of a very particular and extremely narrow-mindedideological view, and not at all based on historical facts.
South Koreans, who were conscripted under the wartime draft, which simply fell on
every citizen’s shoulders, and who were treated in exactly the same manner as Japanesecitizens, were described as having been forcibly abducted. The bill is written in such a
deceptive manner from beginning to end, understandable only among the Koreans.
Prime Minister Abe’s comment at that time, though he admitted coercion in a broad
sense and did not admit to coercion in a narrow sense, has proved to be extremely
effective: now the dispute over the comfort women issue has been settled and the word
‘military comfort women’ has been deleted from all the junior high school textbooks.
However, an ingenious plot to use his comment negatively was staged overseas. At thesame time, the tragic result partly came from Prime Minister Abe’s belief that the media
is essentially good and trustworthy.
In the first place, coercion, in both the broad and narrow senses, were “words”
created by Professor Yoshimi, who was the major figure behind the plot in 2007, closely

18

working with the Asahi Newspaper in order not to admit that forced abduction was a lie.
They were merely sophistic words a third-rate lawyer would think up. In addition, wemust realize that the Resolution adopted in the U.S. House of Representatives,
regardless of “coercion” in the broad or narrow sense, should be seen as violent
terrorism, just like Article 1 of the Okazaki Tomiko Bill.
The Prime Minister’s Official Residence abandoned information dissemination
Now, let’s talk about how to prevent and cope with anti-Japanese terrorism. We needto handle this on two different dimensions. First, as I have often pointed out, it is urgent
that Japan’s information capacity be markedly improved as quickly as possible. I define“information capacity” as the ability both to disseminate information (intelligence) andto collect and analyze information. To fully facilitate the dissemination of information,
it is necessary to develop, build and establish public diplomacy.
We must notice, let alone the so-called Nanking Massacre of 1937, how the various
propaganda campaigns implemented during the 1930’s stirred up anti-Japanesesentiment in the United States, are structurally related to the present crisis. The mostfundamental task of public relations should be to clearly analyze how Prime Minister
Abe’s comment, “there was no forced abduction in a narrow sense,” was conveyed tooverseas media and what kind of reactions were made as a result.
For example, during that particular year, as of May 10, 2007, the number of thePrime Minister’s speeches and press conferences posted on the Home Page of the
Cabinet Office was only 15, listed below. The content of the informal press conferencein question at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence of March 1, 2007 was greatly
distorted and trapped in a whirlpool of information laundering, as I have described indetail.
Statement by the Prime Minister on the Occasion of the 60th anniversary of theEnactment of the Constitution of Japan (May 3, 2007)
Press conference by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Following His Visits to the UnitedStates and Middle East Countries (May 2, 2007)
U.S.-Japan Joint Statement on Energy Security, Clean Development and Climate
Change (temporary translation) (April 27, 2007)
U.S.-Japan cooperation to Tackle Global Trade, Energy and Environment Challenges(April 27, 2007)
Prime Minister’s message to President Bush regarding the [random shooting]
Incident at Virginia Tech University (April 17, 2007)

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Japan-Italian Republic joint press conference (April 16, 2007)
Prime Minister’s press conference on the approval of the fiscal 2007 budget (March
27,2007)
Japan-Australia joint press conference (March 13, 2007)
Message from Mr. Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, to Mr. Bertie Ahern TD,
Taoiseach of Ireland, on the 50th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic
Relations between Japan and Ireland (March 5, 2007)
Prime Minister’s comment (on the launch of H-11A Rocket 12) (February 24, 2007)
Policy speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the 166th session of the Diet
(January 26, 2007)
Statement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the “Direction and Strategy for theJapanese Economy” (Cabinet Decision) in Response to the Report by the Council
on Economic and Fiscal Policy (January 25, 2007)
Press conference by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Following His Visit to Europe(January 13, 2007)
New Year’s Press Conference by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (January 4, 2007)
The above being all that were disseminated, the Cabinet Office may well be chided
for abandoning the task of effective information dissemination. Though the website of
the Prime Minister’s Official Residence at that time had English language pages, it is adisgraceful failure that not one bit of information regarding the military comfort women
was released.
As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is useless, with its poor public relations ability, atthe very least, what the Prime Minister says daily to the reporters during the informalinterviews should have been posted on the website of the Prime Minister’s Official
Residence. After the beginning of the Abe Administration, a proposal to open theinformal interviews did not materialize due to the objection from the Reporters’ Club.
However, it should be a top priority to make this proposal effective and that every
second of each press conference should be available on the Internet. The media’s
arbitrary and piecemeal reporting of interviews is one of the biggest factors that
impinges on the people’s right to know.
Establishment of a think tank is urgently needed
Japan has nearly abandoned the important role of public relations, which is the mosteffective tool in correcting misunderstandings concerning Japan overseas. On the U.S.
Department of State website, senior government official comments are quoted almost in20

their entirety (such as text of press conferences and comments on TV). This well-serves
the purposes of avoiding misunderstandings and prevents biased reporting by the media.
Now is the time, even under the Democratic Party of Japan Administration, to establish
a new public relations system for sending primary, first-hand information to theJapanese people and the entire world without relying solely on the media as an
informational source. Before implementing public relations overseas, it is absolutely
necessary for the government to exercise public relations domestically. How many
Japanese people believe what they are told by newspapers and TV stations is true?
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should do what it is fundamentally required in orderto perform. At the time of the (first) Abe Administration, what significant difference
could it have made in the information war waged from March to May 2007 bymerely—and foolishly—repeating the excuse of how many times Japan apologized
regarding the comfort women issue?
Looking at the comfort women-related information page in the website of the
Embassy of Japan in the U.S. (http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/english/html/cwl.htm), I
cannot help but doubt nothing has changed for at least the past ten years. There has been
no responding to accusation from South Korea, China and others of forced abduction.
To what country on earth does this Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Embassy serve?
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not changed its apology-only line taken by the
Miyazawa and Hashimoto Cabinets in the nineties, which is counter to the facts andquite disadvantageous in dealing with the media. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
ignoring the views and positions of the people, the Diet and the Cabinet, stick to theapology-only line. I fear this may lead to more diplomatic friction.
What is most needed now is to establish a think tank that can effectively perform thevital function of public relations. The think tank would disseminate information with theidea of dealing with Europeans and Americans who are fond of and well-versed inJapanese matters. It should be run half officially and half privately. This is a project tobe viewed in the long term. For instance, it will take five to ten years to handle the
comfort women issue and the Nanking Incident. Only by accumulating disseminatedfacts will misunderstanding slowly begin to melt. We are now at the critical moment ofsetting out on this difficult and trying task.
The following is an idea I heard from Mr. Nishioka Tsutomu at that time. In
response to the “Honda Resolution,” we will set up a research institution to study masshuman rights violation incidents worldwide, and the staff, mainly composed of Japanese,
will carry out research and study issues of mass human rights suppression throughout
world history. We will promote this study as an international project, covering all of21

Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe. Thus, the think tank will make it possible toprobe and raise issues of North Korean refugees in China, the suppression of humanrights in Tibet and Uighur and present-day “sex slaves” among females in North Korea.
We could use them as strong cards against the Chinese Communist Party and North
Korea.
Moreover, we can respond to the distorted issues of the comfort women andNanking currently found in textbooks used in the United States, and we can also put thesolution of the issue of the Japanese kidnapped by North Korea within range.
Verification after three years—Ex-Prime Minister Abe had not apologizedHere is something I really want to add in connection with the report saying thatwhile visiting the United States in April 2007, Prime Minister Abe apologized to
President Bush about the comfort women issue. The story started with a conference heldat Camp David, where President Bush said, “…I accept the Prime Minister’s
apology..His statements were very straightforward and from his heart,” in response to aquestion asked by a Japanese correspondent, “What was discussed concerning the
comfort women issue?”However, reporter Abiru Rui from the Sankei Shimbun had serious doubts and after
continuously covering the issue over time, he found out that the issue of the comfort
women had not been mentioned between the two heads of state. At that time, the impactof Prime Minister Abe’s making an unnecessary apology was quickly and widely
disseminated and he was harshly criticized for this. So, I feel it necessary to add here
what Mr. Abiru learned then to clear the air.
On September 19, 2007, in the midst of political confusion brought about by Prime
Minister Abe’s sudden resignation due to his poor health, The Sankei Shimbun printed apolitical reporters’ round-table discussion entitled “Story of the Abe Administration told
by reporters-2: Successor with negative legacy”:
Ishibashi: What we had not at all anticipated was betrayal on the part of the UnitedStates. Their shift toward the dialogue-line with North Korea shook Japan’s“dialogue and pressure” line. Although it was an event in the U.S. Congress, theResolution, an anti-Japanese accusation, regarding the comfort women issue wasquite a blow to Japan.
Abiru: At that U.S.-Japan summit in April, it was reported that the Prime Minister
apologized to President Bush for the comfort women issue. In fact, there was no
mention of the comfort women issue during the talks. At the beginning of the press

22

conference, Mr. Bush only said, “Let us presume that we have talked about the
comfort women and the resumption of beef exports to Japan.” But during the press
conference, asked by a reporter, Mr. Bush unilaterally answered, “I accept Abe’s
apology.” That is the truth.
It was as simple as that. Mr. Bush’s careless comment led to the unreal apology from
Mr. Abe. What matters is the risk management ability of the Prime Minister’s Official
Residence under such unexpected circumstances. The careless comment by Mr. Bush is
not the question of his ignorance, but it clearly shows that Americans were not at allinterested in the comfort women issue and are still indifferent to it now. The Japaneseside should have done something about it—immediately after the press conference,
Japan should have made arrangements with the U.S. and held a briefing to correct thecomment in question.
It is equally crucial that the moment he was asked a question of no significance atall, the ex-President promptly and naturally answered that he received an apology,
which shows how totally overwhelmed the U.S. media was by anti-Japanese
propaganda and engulfed in an extremely biased world of information.
Thus, this after-the-fact tale sharply points out the true nature of the comfort womenissue.

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