Japan’s history institutions to counter Abe’s comfort women perception

Japan’s history institutions to counter Abe’s comfort women perception. December. 12, 2014 04:12. .

Four Japanese historians’ groups will hold a meeting Friday to discuss measures to counter Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s distorted view of the wartime sex slavery issue. The historians’ direct criticism of Abe will likely undermine the Abe administration`s logical grounds for denying the Japanese military’s involvement in the sex slavery.

Sanae Fukuto, a historian at Saitama Gakuen University, told the Dong-A Ilbo on Monday that a four-party meeting on history will be held at Keio University in Tokyo to discuss future tasks, including ways to counter the Abe administration’s distortion of the sex slavery issue.

The four-party meeting is a consultative body involving Japan’s four major academic societies on history and history education A joint decision by the organizations is expected to set the academic standards for history societies across Japan. “No historian in Japan argues that there was no forceful mobilization (of the so-called ‘comfort women’),” she said. “Prime Minister Abe is a historical revisionist, and what he is saying is based on no historical evidence. As a historian, I feel so ashamed about Prime Minister Abe’s perception of history.”

Separately, Tsutomu Suda, a professor of information and communication at Meiji University and the head of a Tokyo-based history research group, said in late November that it was “evident” that the comfort women was forcibly mobilized by the Japanese military and served as sex slaves. He also stressed the importance of joining hands with civic groups studying the sex slavery issue, suggesting his possible collaboration with non-governmental organizations on the issue.

In mid-October, Japan`s Association for Research on History, an authoritative scholarly organization and a member of the four-party meeting, became the first Japanese historical society to issue a statement rebutting Abe’s perception of the sex slavery issue. The association posted an English-translated version of the statement on its Internet homepage last Friday to promote world media’s awareness of the issue.