South Korea has fallen for North Korea’s charm offensive at the PyeongChang Olympics. One wonders whether South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his chief presidential secretary, Im Jong-seok, now think that the existence of North Korea is more legitimate than that of South Korea. The foundation of South Korea has clearly been eroded […]
Late last year, according to multiple sources, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited the ambassadors of at least 16 countries to a December 13th ceremony at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. “The nation’s chairman is expected to attend,” the invitation read, “so those ambassadors attending the memorial ceremony may afterwards be able […]
Aerial view of Hashima (or Gunkanjima), the UNESCO’s cultural heritage of the world The KAKEN database is a record of research carried out with the financial support of “Kakenhi” (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research). These grants are distributed by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Monbu-kagakusho, or MEXT), as well as […]
On November 30, 2017, Hong Kong-born Jenny Kwan, a member of the Canadian House of Commons from the western province of British Columbia, took to the assembly floor to deliver a statement. “Mr. Speaker,” Kwan began, “80 years ago, 20,000 to 80,000 Chinese women and girls were raped, and approximately 300,000 people were […]
The Jewish Woman Behind the “Curaçao Visa” During World War II, Chiune Sugihara saved many Jewish refugees with “Visas for Life.” This incredible feat is well-known. But it is less widely known that there was a Dutch diplomat who, along with Sugihara, issued life-saving visas to rescue Jews fleeing the Nazis. In November 2017, we […]
Despite a Japanese official expressing to President Rodrigo Duterte her disappointment in the sudden construction of a comfort woman statue in Manila, the Philippine chief executive will not act on it himself, his spokesman said. In a press briefing on Thursday, January 11th, a Filipina journalist asked Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque about Duterte’s […]
The approximately three-kilometer Roxas Boulevard promenade along Manila Bay in the Philippines is well-known to residents of Manila for the bronze statues of popular actresses and former presidents lining it. To this row of statues has now been added one person with no discernible identity. She is supposed to represent a comfort woman […]
As North Korea continues upgrading its intercontinental strike capacity, the United States and South Korea are responding with largescale military drills. But China’s expansionism and Japan’s shrinking population and weakening power are continuing apace while, within America, political divisions are growing steadily worse. This is a challenging security environment for Japan in which no […]
San Francisco’s Mayor Edwin Mah Lee has accepted the donation of a comfort women statue erected in the city by Chinese-American community groups. The comfort women statue, which distorts historical facts and condemns Japan, has become public property. This act amounts to abetting anti-Japanese propaganda, and cannot be condoned. It should be revoked […]
“Double standards.” “Unfair.” These are some of the comments from applicants to the “Memory of the World” program of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after it announced the results of its vetting process at the end of October. The comments resulted from the apparent lack […]
The content of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) working group’s interim report has become extraordinarily tainted due to the unreasonable inclusion of submissions from both China and Korea. There are demands for the Japanese government to issue an apology and extend compensation in relation to the comfort women issue. It is completely […]
This piece was first published under the title “Seoul University professor denied the theory of comfort women as the sex slave” in Monthly Hanada Selection: Hopeless South Korea and Tragic President Park Geun-hye, a special December 2016 edition of the Japanese monthly magazine. JAPAN Forward is serializing it. (Conclusion) Part 1: Why […]
