"Comfort women," as Japan refers to the females who were forced into sexual servitude for the nation's wartime forces, have been a constant source of controversy since the early 1990s, when the media started to take a serious look at their ordeal.
These women have recently again become a focus of debate in Japan, helping to fuel a diplomatic row with South Korea amid speculation that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might be trying to rewrite history.
The Japan Times looked into some of the details pertaining to the comfort women issue in an FYI article on March 13, 2013, (www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/13/reference/in-abes-future-a-nationalist-rewrite-of-the-past/)