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[NYT] Whitewashing History in Japan

December 4, 2014
japan2

The Abe government is playing with fire in pandering those demanding a whitewash of wartime history.

[THE NEW YORK TIMES] Right-wing political forces in Japan, encouraged by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are waging a campaign of intimidation to deny the disgraceful chapter in World War II when the Japanese military forced thousands of women to serve in wartime brothels.

Many mainstream Japanese scholars and most non-Japanese researchers have established as historical fact that the program allowed Japanese soldiers to sexually abuse women across the Asian warfront — based on widespread testimony from the “comfort women.”

Now a political effort to treat these events as wholesale lies concocted by Japan’s wartime enemies is gaining traction, with revisionists trying to roll back the government’s 1993 apology for the coercion of women into prostitution. [READ MORE]