Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka and leader of the Nippon Ishin-no Kai, recently tried to revise the history of comfort women, saying that there is no evidence that the Japanese military coerced Korean women and girls into sexual servitude in wartime military brothels. His comments echo those of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and challenge the Japanese government's official view along with scholarly consensus.
John W. Dower, the pre-eminent U.S. historian of modern Japan, reminds us that there is a long tradition of such efforts to beautify history and that Japan is not unique in this regard: "A parade of officials associated with the Liberal Democratic Party that dominated politics from the 1950s ... routinely took turns ... denying atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking."
Former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori (2000-2001) is here remembered for evoking "the most extreme and exclusionist nationalistic rhetoric of the militaristic past by referring to Japan as an emperor-centered land of the gods." Dower refers to Mori's penchant for hoary wartime idioms as "rhetorical necrophilia," but notes that this patriotic bombast was unpopular among contemporary Japanese, as few look to the authoritarian 1930s for inspiration.