Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday said that his government would not revise a landmark 1993 “comfort women” apology and said he was “deeply pained” by the suffering of women drawn into a system of wartime brothels.
Abe, who has made similar remarks in the past, has faced criticism for his government’s alleged plan to review what is known as the Kono Statement, which acknowledged official complicity in the coercion of military sex slaves, a historical legacy that draws raw resentment in neighboring South Korea.
Respected historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, but also from Taiwan, China, Indonesia and the Philippines, were forced to serve Japanese soldiers. They are sometimes called “comfort women.”
Photo: AFP
Abe said yesterday that his Cabinet “upholds the position on the recognition of history outlined by the previous administrations in its entirety,” including the Kono Statement.
“With regard to the comfort women issue, I am deeply pained to think of the comfort women who experienced immeasurable pain and suffering, a feeling I share equally with my predecessors,” he told a parliamentary committee, according to a statement issued by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“The Kono Statement addresses this issue... As my Chief Cabinet Secretary [Yoshihide] Suga stated in press conferences, the Abe Cabinet has no intention to review it,” he said.
Suga, the government’s top spokesman, said on Monday that there was no plan to revise the statement, adding that Tokyo’s review was aimed at verifying historical facts and to determine if South Korea was involved in drafting its text.
Neither Suga’s comments, nor the latest remarks from Abe, clarified what would happen if Tokyo’s review was at odds with the official apology.
In 1993, after hearing testimony from 16 South Korean women, Japan offered “sincere apologies and remorse” to the women, and vowed to face the historical facts squarely.
However, repeated wavering on the issue among senior right-wing politicians has contributed to a feeling in South Korea that Japan is in denial and is not sufficiently remorseful.
Some Japanese conservatives have responded that Tokyo has repeatedly apologized and that the issue was being used for political gain.
“As I have stated earlier, we must be humble in front of history,” Abe also said yesterday.
However, he added that “history should not be politicized or be turned into a diplomatic issue. Research on history should be entrusted to experts and historians.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Wednesday said that a new chip manufacturing technology called “A16” is to enter production in the second half of 2026, setting up a showdown with longtime rival Intel over who can make the fastest chips. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced computing chips and a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple, announced the news at a conference in Santa Clara, California, where TSMC executives said that makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips will likely be the first adopters of the technology rather than a smartphone maker. Analysts said that the technologies announced on
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
CALL FOR DIALOGUE: The president-elect urged Beijing to engage with Taiwan’s ‘democratically elected and legitimate government’ to promote peace President-elect William Lai (賴清德) yesterday named the new heads of security and cross-strait affairs to take office after his inauguration on May 20, including National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to be the new defense minister and former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) as minister of foreign affairs. While Koo is to head the Ministry of National Defense and presidential aide Lin is to take over as minister of foreign affairs, Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) would be retained as the nation’s intelligence chief, continuing to serve as director-general of the National Security Bureau, Lai told a news conference in Taipei. Koo,
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues