Issue of comfort women enters most urgent moments

Japanese Media Turn a Blind Eye Collectively

It has been nine years since the opening of WAM. However, annual visitors barely reach 3,000. The majority of Tokyo residents know nothing about the museum. Ms Ikeda said some Japanese newspapers did send journalists here but nobody printed a report. The television stations have never interviewed anyone. In their view it appears the museum doesn't even exist, she said.

Ms Ikeda believes the reason why comfort women have become a sensitive topic on the media is that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tends to portray Japan as a "beautiful country" but the history of forced recruitment of comfort women does not blend well with that perspective. The media clearly understands they will be attacked if they report on this topic. Therefore they deliberately keep away from it, which in consequence makes it taboo. Ms Ikeda made eight episodes about comfort women before she retired from NHK. But it's impossible to make shows on such themes any more. She said there are 12 people on the board of governors at NHK, among whom four are Mr Abe's placemen. When NHK reported the verdicts of the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal, Mr Abe and some right-wing members of the Diet intervened to the extent that announcements such as "the emperor is guilty" and the testimonies of witnesses including Wan Aihua were deleted. Because of support from the powerful right-wing political force, Katsuto Momii, the President of NHK, talked a lot of nonsense. He was quoted as saying "comfort women are commonplace among all states at war".

Ms Ikea said: "Currently the problem of the comfort women is in an emergent period." The media has turned a blind eye toward it and acts like it didn't exist.

To Make Up Missed Lessons for Abe and More for Middle School Students

In 2007, during Mr Abe's first term as Prime Minister, the museum held an exhibition under the theme "Making up Missed Lessons for Abe" and sent two tickets inviting him to learn the history of comfort women.

"I am ashamed as a Japanese person that a figure such as Abe was elected Prime Minister," said Ms Ikeda, adding the missed lessons about comfort women should be made up for other people, not just Mr Abe. The ongoing exhibition in the museum shows the same content as that held in 2007 but it's been renamed "Exhibition for Middle School Students".

Even though the exhibition was tailored for middle school students, said Ms Ikeda, only a few visited because middle school students know nothing about comfort women and their history textbooks avoid such topics.

In the museum, a special section is set up to explain how the topic of comfort women has completely disappeared from history textbooks. After leafing through old history textbooks in the museum, this journalist found that all those published by the seven presses included information about comfort women. For example, in the textbook published by Teikoku-Shoin, it states: "During the war, the males were recruited as soldiers and the females as comfort women." In 2002 only three presses touched upon the issue of comfort women. In 2006 it was only two. In the textbook by Nippon Syoseki Sinsya, there are ambiguous expressions such as this: "At the request of the military, females from Asian countries such as Korea were sent to the troops." In 2012, the words "comfort women" disappeared completely from textbooks published for junior middle schools.

Ms Ikeda raised her concerns that the children of this generation might have greater lack of understanding about history and relationships with neighboring countries because of their limited knowledge about history. In her opinion, so long as Mr Abe is in power, it is difficult for China-Japan relations to experience significant change. "But we can't just wait for him to step down," he said. More effort should be devoted to publicity and "the responsibility falls on the shoulder of this generation".