Right-wing lawmakers are leaning harder on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to re-evaluate the government's 1993 apology for the enslavement of women to serve as prostitutes for Japan's wartime forces, in the face of international criticism against such an effort.
Members of the conservative Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) and other parties Monday held a public meeting to discuss their staunch opposition to the Kono statement, issued in 1993 by Yohei Kono, who was chief Cabinet secretary under then-Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa.
With the Kono statement, the government admitted for the first time that females were recruited against their will, including through coercion, to provide sex for Imperial Japanese soldiers and that the military at times played a direct role in rounding them up. The statement was drafted based on documents and testimony given by 16 Korean former "comfort women" picked by Seoul.
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