The “History Wars” and the “Comfort Woman” Issue: The Significance of Nippon Kaigi in the Revisionist Movement in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

In December 2012, Abe Shinzō became Japan’s Prime Minister for the second time. From the beginning of his political career in 1993 as a new member of the House of Representatives from the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (hereafter, LDP), Abe has been a politician committed to historical revisionist causes. Both times that he served as the prime minister in 2006–2007 and then since 2012, Abe showed extensive interest in denying Japan’s responsibility over the “comfort woman” issue, and the issue gained lots of political attention, both in Japan and abroad.1 At the national political level, the revision of the Kōno statement issued on 4 August 1993, by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary, Kōno Yōhei, became the topic of intense discussion. The statement includes the phrase, “[a] government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments.”2 Rightwing forces argue to this day that the Kōno statement’s indication that the “comfort women” were forcibly recruited by the Japanese military is false. After the building of the “comfort woman” statue (Statue of Peace) in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in December 2011, the Japanese right-wing and the government have been obsessed with “comfort women” statues and memorials in different overseas locations, given their heavy interest in the international reputation of Japan. The building of the first “comfort woman” memorial in the U.S. in front of a library in Palisades Park, New Jersey, in 2010, gained attention of Japanese conservatives in spring 2012. Subsequently, statues were built in