A Hooker is Just a Hooker - Provided, Of Course, She's Korean

This time they're using Japanese academics to dispute the reality of "comfort women" - women, mainly Korean, coerced into prostitution by the Japanese army during WWII.  A less genteel term would be "sex slaves."

A group of Japanese historians is urging McGraw-Hill, the American publisher, to “correct” a college textbook that they say contains “many erroneous expressions” about sex slaves used by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Saying that the women were simply prostitutes, the group is taking up an official Japanese effort to win support for its perspective on the euphemistically known “comfort women,” a particularly sensitive part of its wartime legacy.

“There are women in Amsterdam who sit in windows displaying their services and in Japan we have Soapland, which is part of the sex trade,” said Ikuhiko Hata, a Harvard- and Columbia-educated emeritus professor at Nippon University, likening the comfort women to those working in the red light districts in the Dutch and Japanese capitals.

“Prostitutes have existed at every time in human history, so I do not believe that comfort women are a special category,” Hata told foreign journalists in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Yeah, those women were just ordinary Korean hookers, the Rape of Nanking never happened and the United States started the war with Japan.  We have this thing we like to use on rogue states.  It's called "sanctions."  Isn't it time we introduced Japan to the concept?

No, This Can't Be Possible. Could Japan Actually Rescind Its Apology to Wartime 'Comfort Women'?

One of several dark stains on the honour of Japan was its practice, during WWII, of impressing foreign women, mainly Korean, into sex slavery to serve Japanese soldiers.  They were called 'Comfort Women' or, in Japanese, Kanji.  Somewhere between 20,000 to 400,000 Korean, Chinese and Philippino women were subjected to sexual slavery.

For the past two decades, Japan has officially recognised its role in coercing the women into sexual slavery. But last week, the conservative administration of Shinzo Abe said it would re-examine an apology issued to former sex slaves in 1993 by the then chief cabinet secretary, Yohei Kono.
The findings could be reflected in a report Abe is expected to release next year to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war.

Japan's resurgent right wing, with Abe at its apex, says there was no official involvement by the wartime Japanese government or military in rounding up women and forcing them into sexual slavery. Instead, it claims the women were willing prostitutes, hired by brokers who took advantage of wartime demand to make easy money.

"The testimonies of comfort women were taken on the understanding that they would take place behind closed doors," the chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said. "The government will consider whether there can be a revision."