The debate on Japan's history of wartime sexual slavery (aka the "comfort women" issue) has heated up again, with the Japanese government extending its efforts to revise school textbooks to overseas.

In November, McGraw-Hill, publisher of the world history textbook "Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, Vol. 2," by history professors Herbert Ziegler and Jerry Bentley, was contacted by Japan's Consulate General in New York. The request: that two paragraphs (i.e., the entire entry) on the comfort women be deleted.

On Jan. 15, McGraw-Hill representatives met with Japanese diplomats and refused the request, stating that the scholars had properly established the historical facts. Later that month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe directly targeted the textbook in a parliamentary session, stating that he was "shocked" to learn that his government had "failed to correct the things it should have."