Does it happen to you? You are looking for something which you can't find, but what you do find are all sorts of things you have looked for previously but have not been able to locate. One "something" I found was about indiscreet remarks by politicians, many of whom are still making similar indiscreet remarks today.

This 1988 Asashi Shimbun list (the present prime minister was on it) was summed up at the end with: "Recently even the LDP politicians have started to feel that this rash of statements stems from the arrogance of having 300 seats in the Diet. If this arrogance continues, the LDP will get their just due at the next election."

It tends to confirm what I was looking for, a letter to the editor about a Japanese tendency toward collective forgetfulness, so cleverly written that the prejudice, the generalizations, tended to be overlooked. He explained how topics such as bullying, comfort women and graft/corruption are reported periodically, people wring their hands in despair, official reports are issued, and then they are forgotten until the next time around.

There has been plenty of evidence to support this view in the past, but I don't think the total forgetfulness the writer spoke of is likely to occur again. Especially among many younger people, there is a more realistic acceptance of history and a willingness to deal with it. When this is accomplished, it can be relegated to the past where it belongs, instead of the present where it will continue to simmer below the surface and occasionally break out with once again repeated revelations followed by the customary denials.

Recently it was announced that a new law will allow a payment to foreign veterans who fought -- were forced to fight -- for Japan but were not allowed to receive pensions. It is not a perfect solution -- the payment does not approach the amount received by Japanese veterans -- but it does recognize the justice of their cause.

Let's consider comfort women. I can remember seeing a widely distributed, award-winning movie about forced prostitution when I first came to Japan in 1958. It was one of the saddest movies I have ever seen. It told of the miserable life in exile of a former comfort woman who had worked at the infamous Sandakan No. 8 house of prostitution, which became the name of the movie. There is, however, some variation. The time is the early 1900s when comfort women were sent to serve the Japanese who had gone out to colonize Southeast Asia, the beginning of what would become the Japanese empire. The girls were Japanese, lured from their poverty-stricken farm homes in Kyushu and Shikoku by money given to their destitute families. They were hired to work as maids in the city. The city would be somewhere along Japan's advancing frontier and the work prostitution but they didn't know that as they sadly left their families dressed in the best kimono their parents could provide. I don't think this has been remembered, that Japanese girls too were once, because of poverty, forced to serve the empire.

Although a camaraderie developed among the girls, it was a cruel life, and punishment for those who attempted escape was quick, painful and final. This woman was one of the fortunate ones. A businessman fell in love with her and came to buy her contract. He arrived on the same day as the fleet. We saw the men, dressed in their white uniforms, lined up as far as we could see, each waiting for his allotted time. When that day was finished, so was she, and when her lover saw her exhausted, almost lifeless, body lying unclothed on the bed, he took his money and left, unable to cope with that reality. And through it all, she continued to send the small pittance she received back to her island where her family was building a place where someday they could all live happily together, forgetting the past and starting life anew.

It wasn't to happen. The war ended and she went home but she could not stay. Her family rejected her because she had stained the family honor, villagers turned their backs as she passed. She did as the other women had done, and returned to Borneo where she lived in extreme poverty until she died. She was buried, as all those women were, facing away from Japan. Her story should never be forgotten; instead, it is not told.