That Ain’t No Good

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has retracted a 1992 acknowledgement that, before and during World War II, Japan enslaved women from all over Asia for sexual purposes. Celtic Dragon has an exhaustive discussion of the topic.

Abe has already been on thin ice with China and Korea because of his rightish foreign policy views and refusal to rule out visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. The Shrine, visited repreatedly be Abe’s predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, contains the names of thirty class A war criminals from the imperial period. I expect that the South Koreans are going to freak over this, and with good cause.