Japan newspaper retracts explanation of comfort women as wartime sex slavery

TOKYO - One of the major Japanese daily newspapers, the Yomiuri Shimbun, on Friday apologized for explaining "comfort women" as "sex slave or servitude" in the previous stories of its English-language daily, calling the explanation a misnomer that led to misunderstandings.

The apology said that the Daily Yomiuri, now known as the Japan News, used the expression "sex slave or servitude" to explain " comfort women" in 97 stories from 1992 to 2013, adding it apologizes for the misunderstandings caused by the improper wording.

The Yomiuri said it was difficult for foreigners who had no relevant knowledge to understand the word "comfort women," which is an euphemism for women forced into sex slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, and therefore the newspaper cited foreign reports and added explanations.

The newspaper took a report released on Aug. 30, 1997 as an example, saying the story used the explanation as "the issue of 'comfort women,' who were forced into sexual servitude by the Imperial Japanese Army," emphasizing the explanation was added based on wrong recognition after referring to foreign reports and the Yomiuri maintains a different view on the explanation.

A staff of the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace, which fights for the rights of "comfort women" victims, told Xinhua Friday that the so-called apology by Yomiuri proved that the newspaper totally neglected the fact that women under the Japanese wartime military brothels were in a status of "sex slavery."

Japan's right-wingers have spared no efforts to whitewash or deny the country's wartime wrongdoing, including the "comfort women" issue. In August, Japan's Asahi Shimbun acknowledged "major errors" in many articles on the "comfort women" issue, retracting all stories dating back decades ago that quoted Seiji Yoshida, a Japanese man who claimed he kidnapped about 200 Korean women and forced them to work at wartime Japanese military brothels.

Although Japan issued the 1993 "Kono Statement," in which then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoheo Kono admitted the Japanese army involved in recruiting women "through coaxing, coercion, etc.," the current Japanese government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denies that the women were "forcibly recruited" as Abe defined "forcibly recruitment" as Japanese soldiers took those women directly from their houses.

Japan's relations with neighboring countries, particularly South Korea and China, frayed by its attempts to distort history, with the two countries constantly urging Japan to face up to its past.

The United Nations in July urged Japan to take "immediate and effective legislative and administrative measures" to ensure that all allegations of sexual slavery are investigated and perpetrators prosecuted.

The Yomiuri Shimbun is conservative and sometimes considered a central-right newspaper. It had a combined morning and evening circulation of almost 13.5 million for its national edition as of mid-2011.