Remarks by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, on Japan's wartime military sex slave system and his call for the "greater use of adult entertainment shops" (fuzoku) by U.S. Marines stationed in Okinawa have once again raised serious questions about his nationalistic views and his understanding of human rights. His statements, which have provoked an outcry in Asian countries that suffered from Japan's militarism as well as disdain in Washington, threaten to undermine international trust in Japan and have dealt another blow to already strained ties with China and South Korea.
On Monday, Mr. Hashimoto told reporters that the sex slave system was necessary to maintain discipline in the Imperial Japanese armed forces and stressed that there was no proof that the Japanese state kidnapped women and forced them to become sex slaves, aka "comfort women." This statement flies in the face of the indisputable fact that the most fundamental human rights of tens of thousands of Asian women were violated by the Japanese military.
Mr. Hashimoto also revealed that during his Golden Week visit to Okinawa he had recommended to a U.S. Marine Corps commander at Air Station Futenma that U.S. Marines in Okinawa use local sex shops more often. His "logic" is that frontline soldiers and young servicemen stationed abroad — such as Imperial soldiers during Japan's wars in the 1930s and '40s — need women's sexual services for rest and relaxation so discipline can be maintained. He clearly believes that the war effort justified the subjugation of women as sex slaves. This view of women being first and foremost sex objects for men not only rubs salt in the wounds of former sex slaves but is an insult to the dignity of all women.