Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s arch chiffonier secretary, said at a account appointment on Friday that “erecting abundance women statues in the United States and added countries is in battle with our country’s attitude and acutely regrettable.”
The women were affected into brothel assignment at “comfort stations,” which were set up in assorted territories active by the Imperial Japanese Army. A United Nations analysis begin that abundance stations were in use as aboriginal as 1932, and that as abounding as 200,000 women had been apprenticed by the time the war concluded in 1945. Most of the women are anticipation to accept been Korean, but some were from China, the Philippines and added countries.
The bronze in San Francisco was not advised as an corruption to the bodies of Japan, said Julie Tang, a retired California Superior Cloister adjudicator and a administrator of the Abundance Women Justice Coalition, which has been alive for years to arrect the statue.
“The affair is women’s abandon from animal violence, abnormally from abduction and advance during wartime,” she said.
Critics of the movement say that the activists are announcement an asymmetric adaptation of history, and that statues like the one in San Francisco ability stoke acrimony adjoin bodies of Japanese ancestry, added than 110,000 of whom were affected into bondage camps in the United States at the aforementioned time the Imperial Japanese Army was active its abundance stations.
South Korea, too, has been accused of befitting abundance women. This year, a South Korean cloister disqualified that the government was accusable of detaining women to assignment as prostitutes for American soldiers during the 1960s and ’70s.
After the San Francisco bronze was aboriginal apparent in September, Jun Yamada, the delegate accepted of Japan in San Francisco, said in a account that “the aim of accepted abundance women canonizing movements seems to bolster and apply on assertive biased interpretations.”
He added: “This is baseless and hardly accessory to cold actuality award and alternate agreement, let abandoned a final reconciliation. Rather, they are rapidly alienating the absolute Japanese public, who could contrarily be affectionate to the wartime plight of these women, by disproportionately exacerbating affecting antagonism.”
Judith Mirkinson, the admiral of the Abundance Women Justice Coalition, said it was applicable that the bronze was apparent at a time back abounding women are activity added emboldened to allocution about animal advance — and back statues accept become lightning rods for political debate.
“As we’ve apparent over the aftermost year, statues are actual allusive to people,” said Ms. Mirkinson, whose accumulation adjourned the architecture of the memorial. “They represent history.”
Japan’s position on abundance women has been evolving for decades. In 1993, the government clearly accustomed that its wartime aggressive had affected women to assignment in brothels.
At the time, above abundance women were alpha to allege out added forcefully, and they connected to criticize Japan for abnegation to accept to the ambit and calibration of the abuse. In 2011, a bronze assuming a sitting babe with clenched fists was installed abreast the Japanese admiral in Seoul, area several above abundance women had been staging approved protests.
Since then, dozens added statues accept been erected, including some as extensive as Australia, Germany and the United States.
In 2015, Japan and South Korea came to an agreement. Fumio Kishida, Japan’s adopted abbot at the time, said in a account that the government of Japan “painfully acknowledges its responsibility,” and that Prime Abbot Shinzo Abe bidding “sincere affliction and remorse” to all those who suffered as abundance women.
Japan promised about $8.3 actor to accommodate medical affliction and added casework to abundance women, and Seoul was asked not to about criticize Tokyo over the issue.
But in December, addition bronze in South Korea — this time in the southern burghal of Busan — was installed in advanced of the Japanese Consulate. In January, Tokyo withdrew its agent to South Korea and its delegate accepted in Busan. (They both alternate in April.)
When Admiral Trump visited Seoul this month, South Korea arrive Lee Yong-soo, a above abundance woman from Korea, to Mr. Trump’s accompaniment banquet, ambience off a academic beef from the Japanese government.
And now there is a abundance woman bronze in San Francisco — the aboriginal in a above burghal in the United States.
San Francisco and Osaka accept been sister cities back 1957. The accord is meant to advance cultural exchange, including through appropriate contest and apprentice agent programs.
Mr. Lee, the ambassador of San Francisco, apprenticed Mr. Yoshimura, his analogue in Osaka, not to cut ties in a letter aftermost month, emphasizing that the affiliation was amid people, not aloof governments. “It would be a abashment to amerce those who formed so adamantine to body a able approaching of cooperation amid our residents,” the letter said.
Ms. Tang said the affiliation had accustomed belletrist of abutment from bodies in Osaka who disagreed with Mr. Yoshimura’s position.
“What he’s accomplishing is acutely abject and shameful, and it is adjoin what we are aggravating to do in America,” she said. “This is to sensitize bodies to the affair of women and the kinds of animal advance that they accept from men in authority.”
