Japan Backtracks Over Denial of 'comfort Women'

Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, tried to defuse the growing diplomatic dispute over his country's wartime record yesterday by backtracking on his earlier claims that the Japanese military did not force tens of thousands of Asian women to work as sex slaves.

Last week he said there was "no evidence" that Japan had coerced as many as 200,000 mainly Chinese and Korean "comfort women" to work in military brothels between the early 1930s and 1945. South Korea accused him of attempting to "gloss over a historic truth".

Yesterday Hiroshige Seko, an aide to Mr Abe, said the prime minister stood by an apology made by Japan more than a decade ago, an apparent attempt to quell international criticism.

An apology in 1993 by the chief cabinet secretary at the time, Yohei Kono, acknowledged that many of the women had been forced to have sex. Successive leaders have supported the statement, although most of the victims refused to accept it because it had not been approved by parliament. Lee Yong-soo, a Korean who was 15 when snatched from her home in 1944 and taken to work in a military brothel in Taiwan, said the idea that she had acted voluntarily was an insult. "The Japanese government is saying there was no coercion involved, but we didn't do this voluntarily," said Ms Lee, who testified at a US House subcommittee last month.

"I want Japan to formally acknowledge what it did. And I want prime minister Abe to apologise to my face."

Mr Seko said on Japanese television: "Though there are many definitions of coercion, prime minister Abe has said...that he will stand by the Kono statement. He has not denied the statement."

The issue still threatens to sour US-Japan ties ahead of Mr Abe's expected visit to Washington in the spring. In the next few weeks Congress is due to vote on a nonbinding motion calling on Japan to "formally acknowledge [and] apologise ... in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery".

Japan has refused to compensate former comfort women, insisting that all payout claims were settled in postwar treaties with its former enemies. A fund it launched in 1995 was denounced by most of the victims as an empty gesture because it depends on private donations.

A group of 120 of Mr Abe's Liberal Democratic colleagues want to water down Mr Kono's apology. "Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs and set prices," said its leader, Nariaki Nakayama.