One of the Japanese stories sometimes mentioned in the "comfort women" controversy is "Shunpu den" by Taijiro Tamura (1911-1983). That's because the story, written in the spring of 1947, depicted Korean "comfort women," but the U.S. Occupation "suppressed" it.

A few years later, when an attempt was made to turn it into a film, Occupation censors intervened again and ordered the rewrite of the script for a total of eight times. As a result, in the film, its main character was changed from a comfort woman to a singer visiting soldiers in a war zone.

Today, the Asahi Shimbun, et al., might point to the story as yet another proof of the Japanese abuse of "sex slaves" during the war. Back then, though, it wasn't a matter of controversy. Prostitution was rampant in a devastated and occupied nation. Also, standards of judgment were different, not least with the U.S. policymakers.