By touching on the wartime sex slavery involving Korean females, Osaka Mayor and Osaka Ishin no Kai (One Osaka) leader Toru Hashimoto is apparently sounding out ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about joining hands for the next Lower House poll.
Hashimoto's comments earlier this week that there was no proof that Korean women were forced into prostitution by the wartime Japanese military are being seen as a political appeal to Abe, as they were virtually the same as what he said in March 2007 as prime minister.
In response to a U.S. congressional resolution calling on Japan to apologize to the "comfort women," Abe said there was no evidence the "recruitment" was forcible, at least in the narrow definition of the word.