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发帖数: 1846 | 1 http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/new-nhk-heads-
TOKYO —
The newly appointed head of Japan’s public broadcaster NHK has stirred
controversy by saying the system of forcibly drafting women into military
brothels during World War II was “common in any country at war.”
Katsuto Momii’s comment on Saturday revived a controversy when popular
Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto prompted global outrage last year by suggesting
that the so-called “comfort women” served a “necessary” role by keeping
battle-stressed soldiers in check.
Up to 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines and elsewhere were
forced into brothels catering to the Japanese military in territories
occupied by Japan during WWII, according to many mainstream historians.
The military brothel system was “common in any country at war”, Momii told
his first news conference as NHK chairman on Saturday.
“Can we say there were none in Germany or France? It was everywhere in
Europe,” he said, according to reports.
Noting that this was his personal view, Momii said the comfort women issue
has been “complicated because South Korea says Japan was the only country
that forcibly recruited (women)”.
The politically charged issue of comfort women has stoked regional tensions,
with South Korea and China insisting that Japan must face up to its World
War II-era sexual enslavement of women from across occupied Asia.
In a landmark 1993 statement, then chief Japanese government spokesman Yohei
Kono apologized to former comfort women and acknowledged Japan’s role in
causing their suffering.
But in remarks in 2007 that triggered a region-wide uproar, Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, who also served as premier then, said there was no evidence that
Japan directly forced women to work as sex slaves.
Momii, 70, who previously served as a vice chairman of trading house Mitsui,
is rumored to have been Abe’s preferred choice as NHK chairman, Kyodo news
agency said.
(c) 2014 AFP |
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