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RECALCITRANT ABE. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expanded upon his refusal to further acknowledge strongly supported allegations that Imperial Japan forces thousands of women from all over Asia into sexual slavery. His remarks make it clear that, instead of simply wanting to look forward, he's trying to cast doubt on whether the events actually took place:
Abe, elaborating on his denial last week that women from across Asia were forced into sexual slavery in the 1930s and 1940s, said none of the testimony in hearings last month by the U.S. House of Representatives offered any solid proof of abuse.Right... Without pressing too deeply into the allegations, most historians seem to think that the case for Japanese enforced sexual slavery is extremely compelling, which makes me wonder whether Abe is directly borrowing from the American conservative movement's tactic of trying to create academic controversy where none exists. In any case, Abe's remarks are going to prove deeply irritating to Japan's neighbors.Although all of this may seem like ancient history (soon, all of the victims and perpetrators will be dead anyway), I don't think that a concern with these issues is silly. In China and Korea, for example, the experience under Japanese occupation is intimately embedded in the narratives of nationhood. Refusing to acknowledge that experience is a challenge to national identity, something that people around the world tend to cherish. Similarly, recognition of the Armenian Genocide is critical to Armenian nationalism, and to the Armenian sense of identity. People fight and die over these questions, but nearly as importantly, communal identity and experience help create the individual, and set the terms for general political and social outlook. The process by which the United States in particular comes to deal with these questions may be ridiculous, but the questions themselves are quite important.
--Robert Farley
