JAPAN:Prime minister Shinzo Abe attempted yesterday to head off weeks of diplomatic tension by apologising in parliament for wartime Japan's enslavement of Asian women, but the controversy is unlikely to end there.
Mr Abe again told the Diet he did not intend to reverse a 1993 government admission that Japan had forced an estimated 200,000 women from across Asia into sexual slavery during the Pacific War.
"As I frequently say, I feel sympathy for the people who underwent hardships, and I apologise for the fact that they were placed in this situation at the time," he said.
The fresh mea culpa follows weeks of bitter criticism that Japan is again trying to whitewash its war history in Asia. A weekend Washington Post editorial said Mr Abe was guilty of "double talk" and called his recent statements on the so-called comfort women "odd and offensive". The prime minister appeared to backtrack on the landmark 1993 statement earlier this month when he denied a government role in setting up thousands of brothels, dubbed "comfort stations" by the wartime military.
The denial, which was sparked by a proposed US congressional motion demanding Japan officially apologise to the women, has caused outrage in Asia and enormous harm to Japan's international reputation.
Many believe yesterday's statement is an attempt to dampen down the diplomatic fires, but his critics immediately pointed out that it contains no admission of coercion, the key issue in the comfort women controversy.
Conservatives in Japan claim that the women were sold into slavery by their own families or brokered by locals, and say there is no proof that the military was directly involved in rounding them up.
Mr Abe's right-wing cabinet is dominated by revisionists who want him to fight the US resolution, leaving him little room to manoeuvre. The prime minister's Janus-faced position was underlined over the weekend by his deputy chief cabinet secretary Hakubun Shimomura, who again denied direct military involvement in recruiting sex slaves.
"It is true that there were comfort women," said Mr Shimomura. "I believe some parents may have sold their daughters. But it does not mean the Japanese army was involved."
Mr Abe is also likely to have been embarrassed by a call last week from former Japanese premier Yasuhiro Nakasone to "apologise many times" for the sex slaves and other war crimes.
Mr Nakasone's wartime memoirs, published in 1978, include a section on how, as an imperial navy officer, he helped set up a comfort station. "Some [ soldiers] began assaulting [ indigenous] women and others started to indulge in gambling. I took great pains to set up a comfort station for them," he wrote.
Repeatedly questioned at the Tokyo foreign correspondents' club last week, however, Mr Nakasone said the station was used for R&R, not sex.